© Malcolm 2014
History of Ki Aikido
Morihei Ueshiba founded Aikido, Koichi Tohei
trained under Ueshiba and then went on to
develop our line of Ki Aikido. It is that history
which is described here. Tohei was born on 20
January 1920 and had a number of health
problems during his early years. These started
when his mother was pregnant and contracted
pneumonia. This was nearly fatal; both
survived but his mother was very protective of
Tohei after the experience. His father
recognised that this ‘protection’ actually
seemed to be causing more sickness and set
about ‘toughening up’ Tohei. From the age of
9, this included Judo training, where he
reached 1st Dan level by the age of 14;
Tohei’s father was himself a 4th Dan.
Tohei studied at the Keio Gijuku University
Preparatory School from age 16 and was in
the judo team. After a bad throw he injured his
chest and had to take a year out after the
doctors’ diagnosed pleurisy. Worse, they
advised his fragile body should be subjected
to no more exercise than a brief walk, he
should not raise his voice and should not raise
his left arm too high. Tohei initially followed the
advice but became sicker.
After reading some books on self-
improvement, Tohei was able to make some
progress toward healing himself. The real
inspiration came after his sister brought him a
book called ‘My teacher’ by the then still living
Tetsuju Ogura; the ‘teacher’ being Tesshu
Yamaoka, a famous swordsman and
calligrapher. After reading the book Tohei
travelled to a dojo in Tokyo where he met
Tesso Hino who agreed, despite Tohei’s
admission of pleurisy, to let him join, provided
he first practised Zen meditation and then the
demanding breathing and chanting of Misogi.
This was a very demanding regime but Tohei
learnt how to sleep whilst being fully aware of
what was happening and being said around
him. This earnt him the nickname, ‘Sleeping
Buddha’.
As Tohei’s health and strength returned, he
resumed judo but was dissatisfied with its
emphasis on strength and technique and the
absence of any consideration of the influence
the mind can have on performance. Then he
met a former pupil who gave him a letter of
introduction to a powerful martial arts teacher,
Morihei Ueshiba. Tohei, now 19, went to
Ueshiba’s dojo and witnessed him throw
people much larger than himself; something
that rarely happened amongst equally graded
judo black belts. On being thrown himself,
easily, Tohei was sufficiently impressed and
began training with Ueshiba.
After graduating from university on 30
September 1942, Tohei was drafted into the
army; at which point Ueshiba awarded him his
first Aikido grade – 5th Dan (he eventually
became a 10th Dan in 1969, 3 months before
Ueshiba died). Army training was hard but in
many ways not as physically or emotionally
demanding as the time spent doing Misogi.
Staff made the life of recruits difficult but Tohei
adopted an unconfrontational approach that
along with some clever thinking and his skills
meant that they usually left him alone. On
passing boot camp in 1943 he was selected
for officer training for a further 8 months. The
final test was 3 days and nights of marching
and hard training followed by a written test.
Tohei’s ‘Sleeping Buddha’ ability came in
useful once again and enabled him to be the
first student ever to score 100% on the written
test.
In February 1944 Tohei was posted to the
battle front in China. He quickly earned the
respect of his colleagues due to his ability to
focus and concentrate for long periods and to
sense, and hence avoid, danger. However,
despite his meditation and earlier resolve to
face death with an unmoveable mind on the
battlefield, Tohei found himself becoming
fearful of death. This lasted until he was able
to retrain his mind to believe his fate would be
determined by the universe. From that time,
he was able to relax; accompanied by a vague
realisation that only when relaxed did he have
the ki necessary to move safely through life.
He found this to be true not only when facing
physical danger but also to any problem or
pressure. He had been taught in Zen and the
martial arts that if one put their strength into
the lower abdomen (by tightening it), the mind
would become fearless and unmovable. In
practice, under enemy fire, he found that
tightening his abdomen soon resulted in
tiredness and restricted his movement but,
keeping it loose, resulted in feeling his fears.
The solution he discovered was to focus his
mind in the lower abdomen; later he was to
name this point of focus the ‘One Point’.
Tohei returned to Japan, out of the army, in
August 1946. He tried farming and business
but neither worked out. He did, however,
return to his practices of misogi and Aikdo,
where Ueshiba promoted him to 6th Dan.
Tohei also met Tempû Nakamura Sensei, who
taught that the mind and body were
inseparable and should be unified. Tohei had
noticed that Ueshiba’s verbal teaching was
vague, mystical and sometimes contradictory,
so his students would often struggle; but
Ueshiba himself had perfect mind and body
coordination and was always smooth in the
execution of his moves, even with much larger
opponents. On this realisation, Tohei learnt
from what Ueshiba did rather than what he
said.
In 1953 Tohei made his first trip to Hawaii to
spread the principles of Ki and Aikido. He
devoted his life to its development; forming the
Ki Society International on 16th September
1971 to teach the principles of Ki, and Mind
and Body Coordination. In 1974 he formed
Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido Kai to teach Aikido
with Ki.
The Story of Koichi Tohei and Ki Aikido
The main source of the Story of Tohei and Ki Aikido is the book:
“Ki: A Road That Anyone Can Walk”, William Reed; 1992; Japan Publications Inc. ISBN 0-87040-799-6