Hello Jan,
I have studied your letter and I congratulate you for writing it. I practice aikido, and have done so continuously since I was a student at Sussex University in 1966. We were just a group of students practicing a Japanese art, led by a (male) Japanese graduate student who acted as our instructor. There was no contact with the Hombu in Japan, but it was not until much later that I discovered the reason for this. I practiced in London and there was a good mix of male and female students, but the Japanese instructor was male.
The instructor came to the UK after wandering around the world from Japan. He graduated from Takushoku University, which was regarded as 'right wing' (i.e., strictly traditional), where women knew their place. He attached himself to another instructor, named Chiba, who lived in London and had been 'dispatched' to England to teach aikido to the English, Welsh and Scottish, though he never made such distinctions. Aikido needs an 'uke' and 'tori' and his favorite 'uke' was Margaret, who was female. Of course there were female students in the UK association, but the gender mix seemed more equal than the situation that Jan describes in his mails. Chiba was very rough and actually surviving his lessons was thought to be a mark of pride, by the women as well as the men.
Eventually, I began graduate studies at Harvard University and trained at an aikido dojo in Cambridge. Here again there was a male Japanese instructor and a good mix of male and female students. Genderwise, there was a pretty equal balance among the senior instructors.
I came to Japan in 1980 and am now a senior instructor in the main dojo. I have had to surmount two hurdles. One was being a foreigner, though this was not special to aikido; I encountered this hurdle when I was taking the tests for riding a large motorcycle--I think the examiners needed to be sure that I was a human being. The other was that I was a high-ranking foreigner; in fact I had the most senior rank in the dojo and so was expected to preside at dan examinations. There were a number of female members in the lower dan ranks, but none above 2nd or 3rd dan. This will change, since I will promote as soon as I am able, but there is a waiting period, which becomes longer, the higher the dan rank.
Finally, a useful book for explaining the more traditional aspects of Japanese culture: it is Above the Clouds: Status Culture of the Modern Japanese Nobility, by Takie Sugiyama Lebra.
Peter Goldsbury,
Forum Administrator,
Hiroshima, Japan