09/07/2026
Shared Post from our Patreon Training Group (Video not included here):
(Note: Only the Aikido video is link here. To gain fuller insight into what is being discussed, visit the Sports Agency's YouTube Channel and watch all the related videos.)
The Japanese Sports Agency just put out a kind of Budo campaign on their YouTube Channel. Aikido is featured as a part of this campaign - it having its own related commercial. For those that do not know, the Sport Agency falls under MEXT, The Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. This agency has multiple roles and responsibilities, and noting some of these roles and responsibilities could be way of understanding this campaign, understanding the why and the why now of said campaign - shedding light on our own practice and on why Senshin Aikido is not Modern/Federite Aikido.
For example, perhaps it is a campaign aimed at addressing the astonishing dwindling numbers of Japanese natives in Budo. These dwindling numbers are both directly and indirectly a concern for the Sports Agency. Toward this hypothesis, the All Japan Judo Federation figures cited in 2026 reporting show registered competitors at high-school age and below falling from about 136,000 in 2004 to about 74,000 in 2025 — nearly half: The All Japan Judo Federation itself has been producing “judo population decline” explainers and a “Judo for All” long-term development plan. And/or, as another example, the All Japan Kendo Federation says the kendoka population is shrinking faster than the national birthrate - which is currently at a governmentally recognized critical level. At that time, brainstorming Kendo officials noted the cost of the sport, its associated pain (LOL), and the sport being difficult to understand for non-practicing spectators as possible causes for both member and interest decline. That same year (2025), the All Japan Kendo Federation launched the “Kendo Future Project” and released an official campaign with the slogan, “Kendo, let’s do it!"
While both federations are considered to be what are called, "public interest incorporated foundations," the Sports Agency sets overall national sports policy, distributes subsidies, and monitors compliance with the Sports Governance Code in regards to these federations. More importantly here for this hypothesis, the Sports Agency also explicitly handles martial-arts promotion. If you look at the commercials, they are definitely attempting to spark interest, and seem to be very much a kind of promotion.
Another aspect of the Sports Agency is to control and address public education's compulsory training in Budo. Under such a responsibility, the Sports Agency has officially prescribed the course of study to define Budo so as to note, "Japan’s unique culture originating in martial techniques,” and to understand such compulsory training to require students to "learn traditional ways of thinking, respect for the opponent, and reihō..." When you watch the videos, all go into these social-etiquette points - though some more than others. Meaning, there's a kind of "how to" aspect to the videos, especially regarding these points.
Relatedly, compulsory Budo training was lowered to include Junior High School in 2012, and this came with added concerns and problems of being able to find qualified teachers for such. Nippon Budokan has for years flagged short class hours, incomplete budokan facilities, and non-specialist instructors as the weak points of compulsory Budo training in public education. (Note: After noting the old-man and bored housewife training culture in Budo that as training is held across the many community centers found throughout Japan, many westerners falsely believe and even pass on the cultural fiction that a martial Budo resides within the compulsory educational system. This is not true: There, at the High School level, Budo is mostly akin to an elective, with many students opting not to take it than to take it, and at the Junior High School level it is an option amongst two, between either a ball game or Budo, with said Budo training only required to meet 8-10 times for 50 minute sessions within a 9-10 month period. This hardly meets the training equation of deep understanding and advanced skill.) Toward addressing Nippon Budokan's concerns, the Sports Agency has ran an online portal that includes training clips aimed mainly at junior-high students and PE teachers - clips that are structurally consistent with the videos in the here-discussed Budo campaign. It should also be noted here, early September is the start of Japan’s second school term - which is when many schools schedule the compulsory optional Budo unit. Perhaps this is why these videos were released and release now by the Sports Agency?
A third educated guess is related to another of the Sports Agency's priorities: The promotion of what is called, "Budo Tourism." Since 2018 and the formation of the "Sports Tourism Demand Expansion Strategy," the Sports Agency has treated Budo tourism as a kind of flagship item. And, perhaps this is the reason why so many Caucasian men and women were featured in the video(s). Whatever the case, and especially with the above in mind, it is reasonable to deduce that what is being demonstrated in said videos is what is being officially recognized. Meaning, what is being demonstrated is what the Japanese understand Aikido to be and what they want you to understand Aikido to be.
This is obviously why, despite people as far away from Japan as France have recently said that Aikido has no martial concerns and never did, the current Doshu, who was prominently figured in the video, did his Kihon Waza with the imagined appearance and imagined facial gestures of martial concern. After all, he has to reflect the Sports Agency's official statement that culture and martial technique are intimately intertwined in Japan. Meaning, he could not and would not join the growing Western movement that posits Aikido as not concerned with the martial but rather concerned with something else (almost never clearly defined). As demonstrable, several other things stood out in the video that may not have been the intention of the Sports Agency, or the Doshu, but that clearly note that all is not well with Modern Aikido - not even officially. I would like to talk about two:
First, there is the fact how physically weak the highlighted practitioners are in the Aikido commercial. It is therefore officially clear that Aikido today has no need or cause for strength and nor wants you to feel one. Relatedly, as this is a commercial - a discourse using a discourse already in place - it is clear then that most inside of the modern version of the art do indeed delusionally believe (as I and others have suggested they do) that physical strength is not an aspect of martial viability and/or do not believe that the natural consequence of hard training is the adaptation of strength. Or, perhaps it is that modern Aikidoka do not believe in hard training - while they concede that hard training does cultivate strength: All seem reasonably plausible regarding Modern Aikido's stance on strength.
Likely though, as is seen almost everywhere else in the art - or anywhere else people train solely within controlled environments - it appears official that modern Aikido delusionally believes that technique is all that is needed to gain martial viability. At the least, again though delusional, this is consistent with an art that only trains in forms and only within controlled and choreographed environments. Of course, however, this flies in the face of every other viable martial artist that has ever existed in human history and/or any viable martial artists existing anywhere in the world today. That esteemed population overwhelmingly agrees that forms training alone, or, worse, forms training in choreographed environments only, simply cannot in anyway produce martial viability - regardless of the imagined looks and/or facial gestures of being martially concerned.
Second, there is the irony - perhaps the hypocrisy- wherein on the one hand the official art has clearly separated itself from Osensei's religiosity, and has done so likely due to its sense of being modern, of being progressive, and of being universally accessible, especially to the secular-material and lucrative economies of the West (which obviously support the very existence of the Aikikai), while on the other hand it openly - at least for those that have eyes to see it - practices sympathetic magic and suggests that all modern Aikidoka should as well. The irony/hypocrisy is that sympathetic magic is more much more antithetical to the scientific episteme and to the modern era than the totality of Osensei's religiosity ever was. What is sympathetic magic?
In the field of the study of religions, Richard Andree had first coined the term, "sympathie-zauber" (“sympathy-enchantment”) in 1878 to describe a certain kind of ritual behavior, but it was James Frazer, a watershed scholar in the field of social anthropology, that clearly outlined and defined the behavior in his pivotal work, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890).
Frazer identified sympathetic magic to contain two "laws": The law of similarity and the law of contagion. The law of similarity holds that like produces like; the law of contagion holds that things that have once made contact continue to influence each other though no longer in contact. An example of sympathetic magic would be the touching of a white eagle feather to the hair of a Native American female performing her puberty ceremony: The idea that the feather being white in color (the law of similarity) would bless her with age old enough for her hair to turn as white (the law of contagion). Other examples of sympathetic magic are: An Ojibwe man makes a small wooden figure of his foe and sticks a needle in its head or heart, expecting the real person to feel pain in the same place; Among the Batak of Sumatra a childless woman holds a wooden infant in her lap so that a real child will follow; To bring rain, Omaha men of the Buffalo Society dance around a vessel of water, spit a spray water into the air like drizzle, then dump the vessel; In Samarkand, a baby is given sugar so its speech will be sweet, and glue is put in its palm so valuables will “stick” to its hands (ensuring the baby will grow into wealth and prosperity); In interior Sumatra, women sow rice into their hair, hanging loose down their backs, so the rice crop will grow long-stalked and luxuriant; A Cambodian hunter who has caught nothing in his net strips naked as an animal is, walks up to his net as if he does not see it, lets himself be caught, and cries that he is trapped. After that the net is expected to take game; On Nias, a captured wild pig is rubbed with nine fallen leaves so that nine more pigs will “fall” into the pig pit; An old Indian charm for jaundice wraps the patient in red (the color of health/blood, opposed to yellow) and tries to send the yellow into yellow birds such as parrots and the wagtail; etc.
Sympathetic magic is at the heart of what early scholars of religion like Frazer once called, "primitive religions," and as said above it is far more antithetical than Osensei's overall religiosity ever was to modernity and/or to the scientific episteme upon which it is purportedly grounded - though Osensei's religiosity also contained some elements of sympathetic magic. Cultural-historically speaking, sympathetic magic took major epistemological hits during the Enlightenment, even as it functioned within Christianity, and then again during the Reformation, as it functioned within Catholicism, and today it borders on definitions of insanity with the rise and dominance of secular-materialism. Yet, Modern Aikido still makes great use - official use - of it. How else should one see its pseudo-spiritual claim as put forth in the Sports Agency's commercial video: That by practicing/doing techniques described to be harmonious, one can bring harmony to oneself and to society as a whole. The functionality of such a claim is nothing other than Frazer's two laws for sympathetic magic: The law of similarity and the law of contagion - that like produces like (harmonious technique produces harmonious people) and that two things that make contact continue to influence each other after contact has ended (harmony in a person spread to other people, to society as a whole). What a load of BS.
There's more to consider: As Budo is a Japanese variant of the Silk Road technology of self - which spanned from Europe to Japan - it seems pertinent to note here that all great teachers of that technology (e.g. Jesus, Buddha, Plato, Zhuangzi, etc.) made caveats against the use of and reliance upon sympathetic magic and/or considered it to be "low-level" practice. That is to say, if sympathetic magic is present, it is nonetheless NOT the official practice. This is why are more viable Budo, one consistent with the Silk Road technology of self, would reverse the catalytic order from the one the Aikikai is officially presenting: Bring harmony into yourself, then your technique will manifest that harmony, and your experience of society will be a harmonious one - spreading harmony beyond yourself.
From this point of view, you can see what a conundrum this would present for the Aikikai and/or the Sports Agency, as it rightly posits that a harmonious self must precede a harmonious technique - that the order cannot be reversed via a use of sympathetic magic. However, the Aikikai only trains in technique and only offers training in technique, it having no official equivalency to The Four Disciplines or The Bedrock Practices as in Senshin Aikido, and the Sports Agency is but trying to address logistical concerns for implementing an educational compulsory program amongst a dying interest and a critically shrinking population - having only already identified as failing resources: The Aikikai only offers techniques, so everything of The Way has to be contained within technique training; and the Sports Agency can do little more than but offer introductory classes in technique for those few students that opt not to do a ball game/sport. Hence, Japan's and the Aikikai's official position on what Aikido is and what they want you to know it as.
