First of all, our readers would probably like to know about your martial arts background, how you got started in judo and later in aikido. Would you tell us something about that?

When I was young, they formally started teaching judo or kendo in middle school, at the beginning of seventh grade. But the war ended before I was quite old enough, and the teaching or practicing of judo, kendo, and also aikido, which was not too well-known in those days, was forbidden by the Occupation Forces. In fact, Professor Tomiki and some of the judo and kendo leaders worked very hard to get that prohibition removed. I think in about 1950 it was again legal to practice judo or kendo. And shortly thereafter, in about 1952, I took up judo, just for a hobby. I didn’t really keep it up continuously, but practiced occasionally in college. I left it for a while for various reasons, and I hadn’t practiced for a number of years, when in 1966,1 saw an ad for a judo club at Goddard Space Flight Center.

So by that time you were in the States? How did you end up at Goddard?

In 1960, a few years after college, I went to New York by way of Brazil. I was thinking of starting graduate work, and did so in 1961. I could not enroll immediately in natural sciences because of my humanities background, but I was able to take a course in physics at City College of New York. The next year I had the great fortune of being admitted into the graduate program, on probation of course, at the University of Pennsylvania. I didn’t expect it, but it was a wonderful break. I figured that it would take me about nine years to get my Ph.D. in astrophysics, but it worked out that I did it in four years. I was very pleasantly surprised that this was possible. So although there was an excellent judo instructor, Mr. Ishikawa, in Philadelphia, I never got around to going to his class. But in 1965, when I came to Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, about 15 or 20 miles from Washington B.C., there was a judo club taught by Edwin Takemori. I started there in 1966.

Did you have any dan ranking?

I never bothered about it, I just did it for a hobby because I enjoyed it.

Eventually a friend of mine who became an astronaut talked me into joining him in Houston at the Johnson Space Center, which was then called the Manned Spacecraft Center. I found a judo club there too, and continued practicing.

Was that Karl Geis’ school?

No, it was the Johnson Space Center Judo Club, but they took members from outside as well, because we practiced outside the Center. Eventually there was an opportunity for Eli Morrell to start an independent class. He asked me if I would be one of his assistant instructors; my friend and I joined him. He was quite a nice guy. We started to teach judo at the Ed White Memorial Gymnasium, which was named after one of the astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 disaster on the ground. Ed White was the first American to walk in space; there were many memorial donations, and this place was built.

Well, the fellow who got us started had to move away because of his job, and he left the club to us. This friend of mine, David Drake, was junior to me in judo, and he expected me to take on the class, but I had other responsibilities, and since he was already teaching there too, I asked if he would take it. We taught a class, and it was rather embarrassing not to have a rank; I was certified as a black belt shortly afterward. After that, the promotions came whenever I thought about it perhaps, or whenever someone reminded me.

Then, in the mid-70s, there was a visitor at Johnson Space Center. He heard about me, and wanted to visit me with a VIP from Japan. This gentleman was Master Kogure [Riki H. Kogure, presently CEO and Acting Chairman of the Japan Aikido Association] . I had read about him in the Sunday edition of the local newspaper. I asked if he was the same person, and he said, “Yes, indeed.” Then we got to be friends. He told me, “I do enjoy judo, but as you get older, bit by bit, aikido might be easier on your body.” He asked me if I would be interested in coming to his class at Karl Geis’ judo school. I went there when he was teaching, and went for a year or two afterwards. It was a bit of a distance from where I lived, about 45 miles or so. But a friend of mine wanted to take aikido too, so we took turns driving.

That went on for a while, and then I had to move back up to the Washington area, because of the perestroika in NASA, the restructuring. Some people were reorganized out. In my particular case, the Director of the Science Program at God-dard had thought well enough of me to offer me a job whenever I might need one; so within a few hours of the announcement that my division was being abolished, I made a call to take him up on that offer. I never really worried about the prospect of unemployment.

You might be interested in knowing that this Director, George Pieper, and I had gotten to know each other better because of our participation in the SETI program, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. I was representing Houston, because two or three of the astronauts had recommended me. Indeed, there were all sorts of interesting high-powered people, like Philip Morrison of MIT, Barney Oliver of Hewlett Packard, Carl Sagan of Cornell, and Bruce Murray of Caltech, taking part in it. Maybe George Pieper thought I must be good too. He might have been mistaken [laughter]. But anyway, I wasn’t going to fuss about that. I went back to Goddard. I wanted to continue both judo and aikido, and for judo I found Edwin’s class, although it was significantly smaller than when I had seen it before. I also wanted to continue aikido, but the only way to do that was to start a class of my own.

And you had a dan rank in aikido at that time?

I think I was a nidan by then. I started teaching aikido in Columbia, Maryland in 1978. We moved once after the first several months, but now the class has been in the same place for about twelve years.

About how many members do you have?

If you talk about actual membership, we have over forty, which is much too large for the practice place, should they all show up at the same time. Many people have been with me for ten, eleven, twelve years. The first several people that started are still with me. Some of my students also have their own classes. For instance, Brian Sutherland, yon dan, has about as many students as I do.

That’s a good record, considering the usual drop-out rate.

Many of them are black belts in other martial arts too. Jim Thomas is a 6th degree, rolcudan, in Shotokan karate. Clayton McKindra is a 5th degree and Linda Levy is a first or second degree black belt in Korean karate. Hermenzo Jones is also a black belt in the same art. We also have a very high percentage of professionals. Clayton has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, Hermenzo Jones has a Ph.D. in physics, and John Ferkany has a Ph.D. in a medical field. You’d think it was a professional convention of sorts, if you were to look around the class. We have two lawyers, and a physician, too. Anyway, it has been a wonderful class. But some people don’t come too regularly, once every week or once every couple of weeks. That’s OK too; they still come. For a while, the class was so huge that I didn’t recruit at all. That was a mistake. Then at one time the class was almost all black belts, and we stopped getting any new students. That went on for two years or so and was not good. There were evenings when we had only black belts; white belts would come in, but they would usually drop right out. Then I discovered that they were intimidated. They thought that the things they saw everyone doing were incredible. They didn’t think that they could attain what they thought was a super-human level of proficiency.

They didn’t see a place for themselves.

Exactly. I didn’t know that. I should have thought of it. I took it for granted that, if they practiced, they would become black belts too. About two or three years ago, there was a change. This time I made really sure that the white belts would stick with the class. But before that the class size had gradually gotten smaller, because people moved away; it’s a high turnover area. Just about the time when I was really beginning to worry that there might not be enough people for the athletic club to let me have the class, we experienced an upswing, and we have been able to keep it up. Now we have more than 40 people. Typically, we have maybe a dozen and a half people in class, sometimes close to thirty, but sometimes only thirteen or fourteen. I think that whenever you have a steady flow of more than eight people that’s a pretty good class. Less than six discourages some students. It won’t discourage me. Professor Tomiki once told me, “If you have one tatami mat area and another person who wishes to practice you can do suwari waza and it’s a dojo.” That is indeed true. As long as there is one person who wishes to study with you, you have a dojo. But it helps if you have more [laughter!.

Since there aren’t too many aikido teachers who are also science fiction authors, can you tell us how you got into writing science fiction? Was it another of your fortuitous accidents? Or was it something you had always wanted to do?

Writing science fiction was never any part of my conscious thinking. I was interested in writing a historical novel, and I may still do so. Through my acquaintance with an author whom I held in high regard, I had an increasing number of science fiction writers among my friends. At one point, I met a science fiction publisher who was interested in having me write science fiction. I was reluctant to do so, because I had many other commitments, including some other writing to do. About then, Eleanor Wood sort of became my agent. She used to be Robert Heinlein’s agent when he was alive; he said, without exaggeration I think, that she was the best literary agent he had ever known. She’s really wonderful. She invited me to a party at the World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore in 1983, where she introduced me to John Maddox Roberts, an ex-Green Beret, who was also relatively new in the field, but who was doing a pretty decent job. He was interested in working with someone like myself, so that he could turn out hard science fiction, rather than something that was a bit more on the fantasy side. I invited him over to dinner, and we hit it off pretty well; so we wrote a book together. I said I would just do one book.

And now you are working on number?

My fourth book just came out. I hope to finish my fifth book, jointly with Roger MacBride Allen, before the end of the year.

I assume it was your idea to get aikido into your first couple of books.

Yes, that particular theme was my idea, but John was fascinated by the subject, and he came to my class a few times to practice. The protagonist in our first book, Act of God, was trained in judo and Tomiki Aikido, and there is an aikido scene in our second book, The Island Worlds. This is perhaps the first science fiction novel in which unarmed fighting in free-fall is described correctly, at least physics-wise.

To get back to your own aikido experiences, did you have much contact with Tomiki Sensei on your visits back to Japan, or by correspondence?

As you may have surmised, since I was only introduced to this aikido school in the mid-TOs and Professor Tomiki passed away in 1979, my contact with him was limited. The first time it was Mr. Kogure who encouraged me to call him up. I wasn’t going to be so forward, but he said “I told him about you, why don’t you give him a call?” So I did and he said that he would be pleased to meet me. He was gracious and courteous, and he treated me to a very nice dinner at the Waseda Faculty Club. He talked about aikido and the martial arts, and his philosophical outlook on life. It was a wonderful experience. I saw him only one more time. He had invited me to meet his family, but before I was able to do so, he passed away.

Master Tomiki was by no means fanatical, or anything like that at all. He was as far as he could possibly be from these things; he was very scholarly. There are people who say, “I have attained satori, and it came like a flash, a revelation, and it created a nirvana for me in this world.” He was not like that at all. When we talked about it, he said that he thought it was the kind of thing that you attained patiently, through understanding yourself, and improving your understanding of the world around you. He did not think that it comes as a miracle. Sometimes a certain event may trigger your realization of some things, but we didn’t discuss this idea too deeply.

He also thought in terms of basic principles. One of the things he demonstrated to me was how to release a grip. He said, “Please take this home as your souvenir.” I remember that even now. It was in such a wonderful way that he put it; the way he demonstrated it was so clear. Then I heard that Professor Tomiki used to have seminars and he always liked to talk about these basic things. Some people apparently wished that he had talked about some more “profound” techniques. But there is nothing more profound than these basic principles.

Professor Tomiki was truly gifted in expressing his thoughts clearly. That’s rare. It’s difficult enough to do so in the so-called hard sciences; it’s extremely difficult in the arts. And very few people as far as I know have succeeded.

Which one would you say of all of Tomiki Sensei’s books, is the most seminal, or perhaps the most needed in English?

I can’t really come up with the title; it is in my bookcase back home. It was a fairly popular one. It has color photographs for the first few pages. I think it was the last book he published. In fact, he autographed and gave it to me, when I visited. It was written for a popular audience. He tried covering what he could about self-defense and martial arts in general.

Was that the Goshin Juteu Nyumon?

I think so.

There were lots of cartoons…

Cartoons, yes. I thought that book was excellent. He doesn’t assume that the reader knows anything about martial arts. He starts off from the very fundamental issues. How the purpose of martial arts has evolved from being a more efficient means of destroying your opponent into a means of gaining mastery over yourself and the world.

You also knew Ohba Sensei?

My acquaintance with Master Ohba was likewise limited. But he was a very gentle person, and gracious, as Professor Tomiki was also. He was a marvelous man. He didn’t think that there was a single way to teach or practice aikido. He listened, offered comments, but was by no means dogmatic. Professor Tomiki was like that too. Master Ohba truly comprehended what it takes to practice martial arts. For instance, I mentioned to him that we didn’t do very much in the way of tanto randori (free-style self-defense against knife attacks) tournaments, because we were mostly people already out of college; the average age then might have been somewhere in the thirties perhaps, although there were some youngsters too, in their teens, and college kids as well. He thought that it was quite appropriate for us to emphasize unarmed randori, in whatever form suited us. And he didn’t see anything wrong at all about emphasizing the self-defense aspect, which is what attracts many people in the U.S. Not that I really disregard the spiritual or mental aspects. However, I have seen people who talk exclusively about spiritual aspects, which perhaps they themselves understand, but which their students seem to be unable to follow. For instance, there are people who talk about mastering mystical ki, which can make you a superman. I once went to a class which was taught by an American, though I think he actually got what he was teaching from a Japanese. He apparently believed that you could make yourself physically heavier by turning on your ki. He tried to demonstrate this, but he made a mistake, I think. He chose one of the beginning students, a big one, and asked him to pick him up. The student was able to do so, because he didn’t know that the teacher was supposed to get too heavy. So the teacher said, “I was heavier when I turned on my ki, wasn’t I?” And the guy agreed. I didn’t say a thing at that time. A while afterwards some of my students who saw this were wondering, and asked me about it. I picked the biggest guys, both 6 feet plus, quite athletic and powerful, and asked them to pick me up. They picked me up. Then I said, “Now try doing it again.” And they couldn’t, no matter how hard they tried. I explained to them what I was doing. I told them also that if they put a rope around my waist and had a pulley, they would have picked me up both times with the same exact strength.

Can you explain it to us too?

I just relaxed. Not only that, since I’ve been practicing judo for a long time, even without thinking my body shifted its weight a little bit, so both parties were becoming unbalanced whenever they tried to lift me.

Oh, I see. So they move, and your weight just subtly shifts to the spot where it’s most difficult for them to lift you.

They didn’t even see it, because I appeared to be merely relaxed.

It’s all internal.

I wasn’t heavy at all.

It’s just the way you were holding your body.

Exactly, I was continually shifting my weight so they would never really get a good purchase.

Some people also demonstrate a push to the shoulder. It is very simple and straightforward to show how you can make it impossible for the biggest and strongest guy to push you over by pushing at the shoulders. Some masters say this only comes from years of practice. It doesn’t. I can explain it in terms of physics. Your body has to learn a little bit about relaxing and about balancing reasonably well, but most people seem to learn that in two or three minutes. Since I’ve seen and heard things like this, I don’t like to talk too much about aikido’s mental and spiritual aspects. They are very important. But I also feel that they are something that is difficult to put your finger on. If you talk about it, sometimes you lose it.

Each individual in his or her own studies comes to terms with that aspect themselves.

Yes, through practice. So far as I can understand it does include your body and mind becoming one, instead of your mind doing things that your body doesn’t want to follow or vice versa. Some people talk about mushin or mu, which is translated somewhat misleadingly as no-mind. Well, it really means a mind that has no obsession with anything, that is free. I really shouldn’t be trying to define it, because any time you try defining something like that you are in danger of losing its meaning. But, if I may make an attempt, while it is not something you can define easily, it is something you can attain through practice. And as you practice, your body and mind learn to become one, and when you attain that state, it becomes much easier to understand what mushin might mean. It’s not magic; you can attain it by practicing aikido, and especially judo. I say judo because you are in fact competing with your opponent much more closely, whereas in aikido you maintain distance. In judo you have to be reacting by reflex on a much shorter time scale, and that forces you not to think of anything. For instance, one of the greatest benefits I have had from judo, is that no matter what has happened during the day, I can go to my judo club, and in five or ten minutes I can completely forget what was going on before. Afterwards, I am completely relaxed. It’s really great. So I know what it is when I do it. But it is very difficult to attain something similar through, say meditation, although some people do apparently attain it that way. Many people think that I must meditate. But I haven’t found the necessity for it.

There are many different approaches to the teaching of aikido. What do you emphasize and what ways do you make use of your judo background in your teaching?

Aikido may be practiced for any number of reasons. As long as it is beneficial for you, then I won’t argue what it should be. But typically it tends to have three aspects. One is the martial arts aspect; this involves self-defense, defeating your opponent. When you really accomplish what you have been trained for, and if you have the room for it, then it is controlling violence rather than demolishing your opponent. If it is called a martial art, any martial art worthy of the name has to be effective, potent. In fact, I might add, if it really is an efficient art, it is not unreasonable to think that a smaller person can become proficient enough so that he or she can defeat a large person without that much difficulty. It’s never with 100% certainty, of course, but you can in prove your chances of being victorious.

Then, in addition to the martial art aspect, or self-defense, you can enjoy the aesthetics of aikido. In fact when you do aikido right, the human body moves perfectly. If two moving bodies are in harmony, without any extraneous thought, it is beautiful. It is at least as beautiful as any ballet or other dancing art. Perhaps because every motion has its reason, it looks even more beautiful to me than movements contrived just for the form.

The third reason to do aikido is health, both mental and physical. These three are all worthwhile reasons why one should practice martial arts. But if you want to call it a martial art, then I think that the first aspect must be there. There are people who think that the martial aspect is really less important; I think they are talking about a mental discipline, rather than a martial art discipline. I would not argue. If they say that aikido is a mental discipline, and has noth ng or little to do with a fighting art, then that’s his or her definition. I think it is important to sort out what each student is looking for and then fill in the blank spots and direct them towards a balanced viewpoint.

Another thing that one may bear in mind is two principles enunciated by Professor Jigoro Kano. I’d like to point out that he was really a man of letters as well as an outstanding martial artist, and he had the ability to express himself clearly. When he wrote about something as difficult to understand as judo or martial arts, he could really let you see the whole picture. Professor Kano was, among other things, president of a prestigious college, which was the predecessor of Tsukuba University. Professor Tomiki, who was a professor at Waseda University, had been Kano’s disciple at the Kodokan. I might add, that Professor Tomiki had that same gift. If you read what they wrote, it opens your eyes to the reasons why this or that is so, and they explain it in good straight language.

Two of the principles that Jigoro Kano enunciated were “Seiryoku zenyo” and”Jita kyoei.” “Seiryoku zenyo” is translated as “Maximum efficiency with minimum effort”; in fact Professor Kano himself used this translation. I think he had a Ph.D. from Cambridge University too, so what he wrote himself in English is quite good. The word doesn’t just mean efficient use, but good/beneficial/benevolent use as well. I guess that Professor Kano didn’t want a lengthy translation; I feel he knew what he was doing. In fact, the second maxim takes care of it. “Jita kyoei,” “You and I prosper, or benefit, together.” It is translated as “Mutual benefit.” In fact it’s a logical thing to do. It is important not only because it’s the humanitarian thing to do, or the good thing to do for some philosophical reason, but because it makes perfectly practical sense. That’s the beauty of it. Because, if practice is not mutually beneficial, whoever is getting hurt, injured, or abused won’t come back. Then where are you? You can’t practice. But if it is mutually beneficial then you will both want to continue. So it is not only an ethically attractive idea, but it is really a viable way for two people to practice. Since we are practicing a deadly art, the important thing to remember is that you should not hurt your opponent. Of course, it is plainly silly to hurt yourself.

This article is used with the permission of Aikido Journal and originally appeared in Aiki News #87 (Winter/Spring 1991).