I studied under Kushida Takashi Sensei for many years. A good friend of mine and I decided to learn all of Kushida Sensei’s toshu and bukiwaza systems. It took us about a year and a half of intense practice to accomplish our goal.

Many of the bukiwaza were never trained in class. Candidly, Kushida Sensei was reluctant to teach the more advanced toshu and bukiwaza systems unless you were a member of his family.

If we had questions on how or why a particular kata was created, we, I mean my senior and I, would ask Sensei and he would tell us. If he wasn’t available we asked his son, Akira, who would then ask Sensei and then relay his answer. This is how we learned Kushida-Sensei’s vast system of bukiwaza and toshuwaza.

Sometimes, Sensei would tell us their origins and, of course, we did our own research. We also had the advantage of knowing many of his original students who also helped us.

Kushida Sensei would tell us how bukiwaza were, in principle, connected to Yoshinkan Aikido technique. He had a vocabulary for Tai Sabaki movements, such as Kamami, Hirakimi, Hitoemi, Irimi, Tenkan and Tenkai, among many others that you could use in his bukiwaza to enhance your Aikido. This helped us be precise with our Tai Sabaki as we switched back and forth between Aikido and bukiwaza.

Kushida Sensei was not perfect and we had our disagreements. But, in my opinion, he was one of the great teachers of Aikibudo.

Kushida Takashi Sensei

After Shioda Kancho banished him, there seems to be a general erasing of the innovations he created and his role in the spread of Yoshinkan Aikido. That is very sad. It truncates the art of Yoshinkan Aikido.

I’ve been studying Kushida Sensei’s bukiwaza for 45 years and I can say, with confidence, that they have been essential to my deeper understanding of the martial way.