I would like to request assistance from our readers to help us gather information on the travels and seminars of Morihiro Saito Sensei during his long career of foreign travels. We will post them on our new Morihiro Saito Resources website so that they remain accessible to interested persons. If you can assist us, please provide your information in the following form.
Dates:
City/country:
Sponsor (if known)
Comments: (any particular information that might be relevant)
your name:
your email:
If you are or have contact with any of the following individuals who invited Saito Sensei in the past, please gather together and email your information in the format indicated above to aj_staff (at) aikidojournal.com:
Paolo Corallini
Ulf Evenas
Tony Sargeant
Alessandro Tittarelli
Bernice Tom
Pat Hendricks
Daniel Toutain
Michael Field
Richard & Kathy Crane
Gaku Homma
Mark & Ute Van Meerendonk
Takeji Tomita
Many pertinent names have been unintentionally omitted. Please help us with the legwork and we will see that this information is recorded for posterity.
Thank you!
I was a new student when Saito Sensei came to the old College Avenue (Oakland, CA, USA) Aikido Institute in Fall of 1974. Bruce Klickstein had taken over from Alan Gros in June, the same month I started. If my memory serves me well I trained with Shigemi Inagaki, Dennis Tatoian, Sugawara Sensei, and another American whose face I remember, but whose name escapes me. All were very helpful. I particularly remember Inagaki San’s precise power, Sugawara Sensei’s kindness and Tatoian Sensei’s step-by-step help with koshinage.
In 1984 I remember training with Saito Sensei at Frank Doran’s school in Redwood City. Particularly memorable were some spiral jo tsuki variations which are not preserved, as far as I can tell, on any of the video products. Maybe they were left aside as basics. Took me years to become moderately satisfied with my performance of them.
The last time I saw Saito Sensei was at Tatoian Sensei’s Rohnert Park school in about 1998 or so. Kind as always, he complimented me by prefacing one of his suggestions with, “When you teach…”