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Mitsunari Kanai, 64, leading teacher of Aikido martial art by Gloria Negri, Boston Globe Staff [from the Boston Globe, Wednesday, May 5, 2004.]
When Mitsunari Kanai came to Boston from Japan in 1966 to introduce the martial art of Aikido, six students showed up at his dojo, or studio, then located in downtown's Combat Zone. Mr. Kanai, in his characteristically optimistic manner, did not despair, and his dojo, now in Cambridge, has attracted more than 6,000 students over the last 38 years. "Aikido was his world," Mr. Kanai's wife, Sharon (Henn) of Lexington, one of his former students, said yesterday. Mr. Kanai, 64, who was given the title of "shihan", or master teacher, and the rank of eighth degree black belt by Aikido's World Headquarters in Tokyo, was in Toronto teaching a seminar March 28 when he died of a heart attack. "It's sort of like hearing that Superman died," said Sioux Hall of Cambridge, a Kanai student for 26 years. Mr. Kanai, called Kanai Sensei (teacher) by his students, was sent to Boston in 1965 to spread the word about Aikido by Morihei Ueshiba, who developed Aikido in 1935 and who taught Mr. Kanai. He not only made the dojo here "one of the world's foremost," his wife said, but he was instrumental in founding the United States Aikido Federation and was the technical director for Aikido in the eastern United States. Mr. Kanai, described by Gilda Bruckman of Cambridge as a man small in stature who "looked the embodiment of martial power on the mat," converted many casual students into lifelong practitioners. "Kanai Sensei was a warm and nonjudgmental person. He was generous with his knowledge, with his humanity, and with his spirit," Bruckman his student for 32 years, said yesterday. "He also had many unusual talents that didn't come out in the course of a class. He had amazing medical knowledge and was an expert diagnostician. If you went to him with a pain in your wrist, he would draw [a diagram of] all the bones in the wrist and make a primary assessment, sometimes more accurate than a medically trained diagnostician." Aikido, a practice of mind, body, and spirit, was designed for peaceful conflict resolution. "There is a lot of motion and a lot of falling," Bruckman said. "There is always an attacker and always a defender...the idea is the attacker strikes and the person defending learns to blend with the force of the attack and divert it." Mr. Kanai never embarrassed his students, they said. "One reason Kanai Sensei's students were devoted to practice was that to him, whatever the ability level, no committed student was invisible," said Marjorie Farrell of Milton. "He encouraged and challenged all of us." Mr. Kanai was born in Manchuria, where his father was a military policeman for the Manchurian railroad. After World War II, the family returned to Japan and eventually settled in Tokyo, where his father worked for the post office and taught calligraphy. Mr. Kanai became interested in judo as a teenager, but, his wife said, "increasingly, he felt something was missing in judo." After high school, she said, Mr. Kanai took night courses in German and older forms of Japanese "in order to reach historical documents about the martial arts." His newfound knowledge about Aikido and its founder persuaded him to give up judo, quit his job at a typewriter company, and present himself to the Ueshiba family as an apprentice, according to his wife. When he was told the family could not support another apprentice, Mr. Kanai went to their dojo every day anyway, cleaning the buildings before the other students arrived. When his train fare ran out, he traveled to the dojo on foot. Later, he was accepted as an apprentice and studied with Ueshiba for eight years. When Mr. Kanai opened his New England Aikikai dojo in Boston, his wife said, "he set high standards, awarding only nine black belts during the first 11 years." He also turned down offers to teach at other schools that included accommodations and a salary. At one time, she said, he lived in a warehouse and survived largely on potatoes. Mr. Kanai's practice also included a study of the Japanese long-sword, or katana, and a sword art called "Iaido," many of whose moves he incorporated into his Aikido. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts consulted Mr. Kanai on the display of its sword collection. As word of Mr. Kanai's work at his New England dojo spread, he was invited to train others in Japan and at seminars and camps in this country, Canada, South America and Europe. Mr. Kanai's special skill, Hall said, "was that every one of his students thought that they were his favorite." Stephen Carrabino, a Somerville police officer, was a student for 17 years. "I went every day and every day what he taught me made me a better person," Carrabino said. "He was a great guy and extremely intelligent. One day I broke his family sword in half during practice. It was generations old and I knew it meant a lot to him. After I did it I looked at him and he wasn't the least bit upset. 'Don't worry about it,'" he said. Besides his wife, Mr. Kanai leaves a daughter Yuki, and a son, Misha, of Lexington, and a sister, Mitsuko Ohashi of Japan. Services have been held. Lexington Loses Mitsunari Kanai Shihan Renowned Aikido Teacher [Reprinted from Lexington's Colonial Times Magazine, May/June, 2004.] Mitsunari Kanai Shihan: A Devoted Life By Mary C. Fuller (New England Aikikai) By George Mokray (New England Aikikai) Technical Aikido Conclusion: Develop Eyes to Differentiate False and Truth By Mitsunari Kanai
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