Why Are There No Competitions In Aikido?

I made a comment recently that there were no competitions in Aikido.

This is technically not correct.

There is a style of Aikido that does have competitions. In fact, there may be more than one style but the main one is called Tomiki Aikido.

This was named after Kenji Tomiki, a student of the founder of Aikido who came up with this style. He was also an expert in the martial art of Judo and is highly regarded within that art also.

The Aikikai, which is the main Aikido organisation still run by the family of the founder and based in Japan has stated:

“the founder of Aikido, Ueshiba Morihei O-Sensei proclaimed that Aikido is a way, through daily training, to improve human nature and pursue social harmony. Therefore, any kind of contest or competition is not needed and should not exist in Aikido. If contest or competition is introduced to Aikido, it is no longer Aikido.”

As with many things in the Aikido world, not all may be as it seems.

The second world war had some effect on the practise of martial arts in Japan and this may have been a motivation to change aikido to a “way”.

At the same time, when an activity is called a “sport” and has a competitive aspect then it may become available for funding or inclusion within the activities of universities, schools and public gyms for example. This could be the real motivation to create a competition based style, rather than it leading to an improvement in trainig.

There may be more to the story on both sides than meets the eye.

We do not train Tomiki Aikido at our club.

We train in a collaborative way, but gradually as a student improves they should be continually tested to perform at a higher level by their peers and higher grades.