Tomiki Aikido
富木合気道The only line of aikido with competition. Kenji Tomiki was a student of both Ueshiba and Kano and brought judo's principle that technique needs a measurable test.
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JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
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About Tomiki Aikido
Tomiki aikido, also called shodokan, is the only line of aikido in which there is competition. It was founded by Kenji Tomiki (1900–1979), who held an unusual position: he was a student of both Morihei Ueshiba and Jigoro Kano, the founders of aikido and of judo, and reached high grades in both. His conception follows from that. From Kano he took the conviction that without a measurable test technique drifts away from reality over time, and he decided to do the same with aikido. Ueshiba disagreed, holding competition to be a denial of the art's very spirit; the dispute came to a head in the 1960s and Tomiki founded his own organisation in 1967. The competitive form is well thought out and solves an obvious problem: two people who both know aikido will never catch each other. One of the pair therefore holds a foam knife, the tanto, and attacks while the other defends; then the roles change. Clean throws, pins and knife hits are scored. Alongside the contest there are also forms, among them the seventeen basic techniques Tomiki chose as the core. Attitudes to competition still divide aikidoka today.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.