(Shodan Essay) Space, Time, and Aikido

SPACE, TIME AND AIKIDO*
​by Cathy Garret
(Shodan test Dec 2017)
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*with apologies to Giedion and his book “Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition

This article was submitted as part of a requirement for Dan test.

We were on our way to Iwama.
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It’s a couple of hours north of Tokyo by local train on the Joban line, a country town now officially subsumed by the larger nearby Kasama City.

As the long-time home, farm, dojo and jinja of O Sensei, and seat of Saito Sensei’s teaching, it has a natural draw for aikidoka.  My Emeryville chums and I spilled off the train, beamed at the statue of O Sensei, and rolled down the road to a woodlot in the middle distance. Like other shrines, the Aiki Jinja sits amid a forest. Tall Japanese beeches clothe the generous space around the traditional wooden shrine and smaller, more sacred shrine tucked behind it. We passed the beech wood, walked up a gravel drive and found ourselves in the realm of O Sensei and the open dojo of Iwama. 

With senses alert and full of anticipation, impressions burn deeply on the memory. Places imbued with meaning have always attracted me. Luckily, part of my work as a landscape architect consists of recording, assessing and shaping the future of culturally valuable places so the trip to Iwama held great allure.

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In my profession we talk about “cultural landscapes”, which are essentially sites of significance comprised of built and natural forms and all the creatures within. They are places that show the handprint of us, the people who inhabit or inhabited them. They are often places where important things happened. The site tells the story of its past. The fact that there is physical evidence of activities from these past times gives the place integrity. The Iwama dojo tells of its human characters and events.

I found myself looking at the Iwama dojo, the Aiki Jinja and its context through the lens of cultural landscapes. An accepted approach to looking at cultural landscapes highlights multiple features focusing on one component at a time. I have chosen three of these: patterns of circulation, spatial organization, and places of connection.

​Patterns of circulation: for me the arrival from the station was a gentle drumroll. It was quiet, even uneventful, but the place it led to was full of promise. It was enticing.
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Like the practice of aikido itself, the day to day pattern of circulation in Iwama is a series of circles, each one a little larger and offering something beyond the first. At the center, where we always returned, was the dojo. The daily pattern of movement encompasses the shokudo - the kitchen and social heart of the place - the dojo, and the grounds. The rhythm of a day in the life of us as uchi deshi could be described as:
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Prepare the jinja / train / eat / rake / train / rest / train / eat / sleep / repeat.

Raking leaves is a good way to get to know the grounds, to know the pattern of roots of the trees as they meet the ground, to become familiar with the stones of the original Aiki Jinja, to gently clean and care for it, to move around it and to trace the path of many people, and originally O Sensei himself, as builder and planter of trees. The pattern of circulation becomes an experience.

​Beyond the circle of days spent at the dojo lies walking through the town of Iwama to shop, do laundry or visit the home of one of the local aikidoka who offered a tour of his beautiful traditional Japanese home. Bicycling around town with shopping hanging from the handlebars, walking laden with goods to feed our insatiable appetites, we’d exchange waves and salutations with some of the dojo’s senseis, or beetle on to dodge the raindrops.

The widening circle reached up to the top of Atago-san, the nearby sacred mountain with almost a thousand stone steps straight up to the summit. These steps were taken by O Sensei assisted by Saito Sensei. We passed giant bamboo forests and hundreds of stone markers inscribed by families on our way to the jinja on top of the mountain with its spectacular view of the farmland below.

This type of overlook reveals another layer of the cultural landscape, namely spatial organization. It frames how things are organized in space and how they themselves shape space. Space is an elusive thing. Unlike architecture, which is readily identifiable with its clear boundaries and size, space is harder to visualize. As a spatial volume, it can come in vast scale or be disarmingly intimate. It may be defined by a myriad of forms like topography, buildings, stands of trees or other elements. It is within space that we move.
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Two spots at the Iwama dojo reveal distinctive spatial volumes, the dojo itself and the zone between the shokudo and the uchi deshi room/dojo. They are both places where much of daily life occurs.

The dojo is a large room with three sides that are walls with windows and doors; along the fourth, one of the long sides, are large floor-to-ceiling panels that are lifted out and put to each side for practice. The dojo is opened regardless of the weather. This gives the feel of being completely open to the south. The dojo sits up on half a dozen steps and addresses the garden through the open side. The space flows, so it is immaterial that half is building (with mat and shomen) and half is garden. It is one spatial volume. The dojo has a slender physical connection to O Sensei’s house immediately next door and the shokudo is nearby across the way, but these lie outside the place that defines the dojo and its associated spatial volume. The space has a rarified quality stemming from its association with the shomen and the singular purpose of practice.

If the space associated with the open dojo is hallowed space, the roughly triangular space between the uchi deshi room/dojo and the shokudo is secular space. This is the place of daily activity. Inside the shokudo is the warm heart. Outside it is a place of rest at tables, and of activity as it is the crossroad to and from showers, tools and places to dine, sleep and practice. Its role as a people-place is strengthened by the fact that this is the best spot on the grounds for a wifi connection! Uchi deshi hang out here.
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As well as contributing to the spatial organization of the place, the space between the shokudo and uchi deshi room/dojo is a natural place of connection. Aside from volumetric considerations, spaces in a cultural landscape can also consist of nodes, places of gathering, where things converge on a point.

​The mat is also a place of connection. Through multiple classes a day you get to know the local aikidoka, their generosity and smiling encouragement, visiting aikidoka from other countries, and of course, the senseis of the Iwama dojo. As you grab a partner’s wrist there’s a connection. Then you do it over and over with a range of partners. Each time there is focus on the effort at hand. The frequency and intensity of each connection bring an enduring energy to the mat.  Lines are drawn in from the local area and around the world. They are built up and extend over time.  These human connections and friendships are central to the Iwama experience. 

​Lines converge on the Aiki Jinja too. For special occasions hundreds gather here.  That was not our experience though, as there were no special events. Instead the jinja offers an emotional place of connection; it invites you to look back. While we were in Iwama, Inagaki Sensei lent us a few books. One had pictures of O Sensei and the newly planted trees around the new jinja. The photos are simply of a guy working on his land. Layers of time, knowledge of O Sensei, and the accumulation of respect and value, at first from a few, and now from many, have built up an attraction that draws aikidoka to it. It has become a landmark. We each trace a line towards the node. The Aiki Jinja is that node. It expresses the quintessential spirit of aikido as telegraphed by O Sensei.

​The concept of the Iwama dojo as a cultural landscape is not fixed in time. It is a continuum. The place lives. O Sensei is still present in a manner of speaking; the people of today, Inagaki Sensei, the rich collective of other senseis, and the local and visiting aikidoka all contribute to its continued value and significance. 
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Over time the place has acquired a kind of communal value. By visiting it and joining in the practice, I had the chance to experience something shared by the collective aikido community.

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In addition to these three analytical aspects, cultural landscapes can have an intensely personal component. Every individual, past and present, who comes to Iwama, participates in the evolution of this as a cultural landscape.

For myself, while I was in Iwama my daily patterns changed, and as a result my priorities changed. Getting up at 5 to prepare the jinja or clean the mat, and then to engage in exhilarating and arduous daily practice, made me focus on my physical self and the well-being of the group. Each of us buoyed the group and it buoyed each of us in turn.  

Fatigue necessitated efficiency of movement. How to move less but achieve the desired goal of moving your partner? The notion of space in the landscape shifts in scale to become very personal during practice. On the mat, space itself has a presence. You’re aware of it. Every cubic inch contributes to the practice and where you position yourself in relation to your partner.
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There was a striving to listen with your body, i.e. not to rely on words but instead to see an action and try to emulate it. During practice there was an imperative to relax even as you needed to be most alert. As an uchi deshi, even for a short time, you are a part of the organism that is the life of the dojo. That experience, and the enduring physical presence of the Iwama dojo, give it a sense of place that is, in every sense of the words, a living cultural landscape.
 
Cathy Garrett,
​Shodan