Iwama Ryu
岩間流The aikido line of Iwama carried by Morihiro Saito. It trains empty-hand technique together with sword and staff as a single whole.
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Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
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About Iwama Ryu
Iwama-ryu is the aikido line tied to the dojo in the village of Iwama, where Morihei Ueshiba spent the postwar years. It carries the name of a place, not of a school founded in a particular year, and this page therefore leaves the year field empty — the figure 1990 that previously stood here rests on nothing. What is documented are the people and the landmarks. Morihiro Saito (31 March 1928 – 13 May 2002) came to Ueshiba in the summer of 1946, at eighteen, while working for the Japanese National Railways. It was precisely the schedule of twenty-four hours on duty and twenty-four off that let him train almost as a live-in student and receive private early-morning instruction in sword and staff before the others arrived. Before his death in 1969 Ueshiba entrusted Saito with two things: teaching at the Iwama dojo and the care of the Aiki Jinja shrine. The technical distinction of the line is riai, the combined study of empty hand and weapons. Aiki-ken (sword) and aiki-jo (staff) are not trained as an addition but as the other side of the same technique; the movement of the hand in taijutsu is meant to correspond to the movement of the blade. Connected with this is the term takemusu aiki, with which the line is often associated, and an emphasis on precisely executed basics and a firm grip. After Saito's death in 2002 the line divided. His son Hitohiro founded the independent Shinshin Aikishuren Kai, the principal branch outside the Aikikai, which continues to issue Iwama-ryu grading certificates and runs the dojo at Iwama.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.