Knock on the gate

The number of students of the Setagaya Branch has gradually increased, and recently the dojo space has come to feel small.

One of many things I learned from opening a dojo was the “heat” of the people who knocked on the gate to request for instruction.

Stepping into a budo dojo for the first time is accompanied by a sense of tension. Furthermore, the Setagaya Branch has been in the midst of Covid-19 since its founding, so it will be necessary to overcome higher hurdles than normal times to knock on the gate.

There are some special motivations and decisions for those who come over in such circumstances. And once they get started, they try to find something that makes sense to them.

Such people have natural “heat”. The resonance of heat and heat will energize the dojo. As if responding to that heat, I will instruct while mobilizing all the heat in myself.

In any case, “taking a step forward with your own will” has a strength by itself. The students taught me that.

The Setagaya Branch is home to such students across generations, genders, and nationalities, and is growing little by little but steadily as a dojo.

Hideto Usuyama
Vice Headquarters Director and Setagaya Branch Chief
Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu