Hitohiro – Morihiro Saito Sensei

Hitohiro in front of the Aiki Jinja

1998

Photo: Sonoko Tanaka for Aikido Journal

Daruma

September 1991. Hitohiro Sensei paints a daruma figure on the back of Joerg Beile’s t-shirt. The two on the left are Torbjoern and Anders, from Sweden, and sporting the classic summer dojo “bar ber” hairstyle. This is in his former restaurant, the “Yoshida Teshoku,” and now the home of uchi deshi visiting Iwama to train with him.

Photo: Joerg Beile

Summer

1989, summer. Joerg writes: “At the time going to the waterfall was mainly for taking a cold shower and only later people were doing it mostly for spiritual enlightenment. The advantage of the first approach: it was working every time! The guy on the right is Alan Roberts, one of the pioneers of the second approach.” Person in the back is unidentified.

Photo: unnamed photographer

Sayonara Nikyo

1989. Hitohiro, Teruo San, and Patricia Guerri from France, “who was handling the whisky bottle like a true expert!” and Hitohiro give Joerg Beile the infamous “Sayonara Nikkyo” in the dojo kitchen.

Photo: Alan Roberts, probably