Читать книгу Complete Aikido. Aikido Kyohan: The Definitive Guide to the Way of Harmony онлайн

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Warren Suenaka throwing Roy Suenaka sayu-nage in their back yard in Honolulu, Hawaii, just before Suenaka Sensei’s departure for Japan; March, 1961.

Although Suenaka would later develop a close and lasting personal relationship with Koichi Tohei, he had little contact with his future mentor during these early days of study, other than the normal contact one of many students has with his sensei (of course, Tohei remained in Hawaii but a year during this first visit, and Suenaka had left Honolulu by the time of Tohei’s subsequent visits). Suenaka studied hard and learned quickly, in large part because of his prior experience in other martial arts. His skills in ukemi (falling and tumbling techniques) were already honed through his judo study, while aikido’s similarities to jujutsu enabled Suenaka to readily assimilate aikido technique. “I just sort of melded or fell right into aikido,” he says. “It was almost natural for me. (These other arts) were building a foundation for me, so when I went into aikido it was second nature.”