For the first time: an aikido book that focuses on the attack techniques! Although aikido is a purely defensive martial art, attack techniques need to be practiced in order for the training partners to exercise the proper defense against them. And for the aikido skills to increase, the attacking skills must improve accordingly.
This book presents all the attacks, kogeki, practiced in aikido - grips as well as strikes, punches, and kicks. Also attacks with ken, the sword, jo, the stick, and tanto, the knife, are included. Each of these attack techniques is examined in depth, with lots of advice and pointers for beginners as well as advanced aikido students.
The book also contains commented lists of all possible combinations of attack and defense techniques. A dictionary of the aikido terminology is included.
Stefan Stenudd is a Swedish author and 6 dan Aikikai Shihan aikido instructor, Vice Chairman of the International Aikido Federation, member of the Swedish Aikikai Grading Committee, and President of the Swedish Budo & Martial Arts Federation. He has practiced aikido since 1972. He is also a teacher of the sword art iaido.
In addition to his aikido life, he is a historian of ideas, researching the patterns of thought in creation myths and cosmological beliefs, as well as Aristotle's Poetics.
His books span both fiction and non-fiction. Among the latter is one about the cosmology and religious beliefs of the Greek philosophers, a little encyclopedia of life energy concepts, and several books about the martial arts and the principles behind them.
On the subject of aikido, he has also written Aikido Principles, about the basics and underlying ideas of the art, and Aikibatto, presenting and explaining a system of exercises with jo, the staff, and ken, the sword, for aikido students. Also his book Qi - Increase Your Life Energy, with very simple exercises for developing one's qi (ki) and explaining this concept thoroughly, is highly relevant for anyone practicing aikido.
I was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1954, and grew up in some of its suburbs. In 1991 I moved to the city of Malmö in the south of Sweden, where I still live - much to my surprise. I thought I was more of a vagabond, but the years pass with increasing speed. Also, with the Internet one's geographical habitat is of less significance than ever before.
At the start of the 1980's I spent a year in the USA - first in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with a winter climate that was quite familiar to me, and then New York as it approached the long, hot summer. I fell immediately in love with that magnificent city, entering it through Washington Bridge in my Chevy '69 Station Wagon just hours before a strike had closed all public transport and cars to the city were stopped.
If I can muster up the energy to move again, New York would be the ideal goal.
Since childhood, my main means of expression have been writing and art. Actually, as an adolescent I entered an art school, but had some clashes with the principal and left after only a few months. School and art - aren't they contradictions in terms?
That same year I wrote my first novel, getting the impulse by an opening sentence appearing in my mind. The first version of the script was 19 pages. The first rewrite expanded it to 90 pages, the second to almost 200. It's still unpublished. Instead, I had my literary debut with my fourth script in 1979, winning a Scandinavian literary competition with a science fiction story that the Norwegian publishing house found so weird that they rejected it, in spite of the competition rules. It was published in Sweden and Denmark, though.
There have been some books since, novels as well as non-fiction, probably most of them too weird for that Norwegian publisher - either in plot or in subject-matter.
Like so many writers, I have also done some journalism through the years, mainly as a critic. Writing reviews one needs to have integrity, a lively relation to experience, and the ability to put words even to subtle impressions. That is very close to fiction.
So, I've been a critic of literature in the tabloid Aftonbladet, a rock critic in the morning daily Dagens Nyheter, and the very secret restaurant critic of the Malmö newspaper Sydsvenskan. These last few years, though, I focus solely on writing books. Not that it brings very much bread on the table and certainly not of the kind I got used to as a restaurant critic.
In this new millennium I started writing books in English. Well, I had tried it during my year in the US, back in 1980. I even got an agency, Sanford J. Greenburger, which was the first one I approached (because it was the agent of Kurt Vonnegut, a favorite author of mine). They were almost ecstatic about another science fiction story of mine, with the drastic title All's End. The agent told me that after a US release they would use their contacts to get the book published in Japan! I had thought that America was the thing, but the agent insisted with emphasis: Japan!
Later, a pop song would make the same statement. It might still be true.
Anyway, the agency was unable to get a publisher for the script, so they dropped it and its author. Years later I could easily understand why. The script needed a lot of editing, which was something the agent didn't have to bother with, but surely a publisher.
So, a few years ago I picked up that script and another one in English, polishing their language as much as I could. Soon other books in English followed. You find them all on Amazon. Mostly non-fiction, but often on subjects that some would call fictional. Well, that's where the human mind dwells.
Apart from the arts, my life has since the teens consisted of aikido, which is a Japanese martial art, a particularly peaceful and inspiring one. It took me surprisingly long to write a book about it, although I have a tendency to turn things that catch my attention into books. In the martial arts, you're supposed to be humble and shut up - an ideal diametrically opposed to that of literature. After twenty years of training and a few black belts around the hips I finally got the courage.
After the initial leap, writing more books about aikido and adjacent subjects has been less of a struggle.
Aikido is intriguing, as are the cultural and philosophical traditions behind it. This is indicated by the many books published on the subject. I wouldn't hurry to call it a sport, although it's done by exercises that can consume a lot of calories. No, it's an art. That's why you can spend a lifetime on it, never getting bored.
So far in life I've found this to be a universal truth: with the arts you never get bored.
Another longtime interest of mine is Taoism, as it's expressed in its original source the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, the legendary father of this philosophy. I was introduced to it by my first Japanese aikido teacher, who gave me a copy of it in English - the Feng and English version with sweet calligraphy of all the chapters. Since then the text has been a constant companion. It combines the wisdom of a Salomon with the simple and direct language of, say, a Hemingway - or, for that matter, Vonnegut.
My first version of it, in Swedish, was published in the early 1990's. I've made several revised editions of it since, but I never dreamed of trying it in English. Tao Te Ching is poetry, the greatest challenge of all for a translator. But at length I couldn't resist. I felt that in spite of the countless English versions of the classic, there's room for one more aiming at the simplicity of the original text and still staying true to it - as much as can be done with a book dated to several centuries BCE.
I was not a persistent art school student, but in the 1980's I enrolled in the history of ideas department, where profound learning is both commonplace and a delight. Oh, how much knowledge some people (not me, with my poor memory) can amass! Lao Tzu, who was wary of formal knowledge, would have expressed concern. But the history of ideas studies wisdom through the ages and in all fields of science, culture, and society. It's the history of thought. What can be more fascinating? It's the mind studying its own manifestations.
Years ago, I started working on a dissertation treating the patterns of thought in creation myths around the world. It's still in the making, but other books have been born in the process, e.g. Cosmos of the Ancients, an inventory of what the Greek philosophers thought about the gods and cosmology, and Life Energy Encyclopedia, discussing and presenting the many ideas, old and new, about a life force of some kind.
Sooner or later I just have to write a book about creation myths, whether it is a dissertation or not. But the subject is big and I've explored it too long to be concise about it, so I hesitate.
And of course, there are still several novels in my head, struggling to get out. Fiction is what this writer started with and it's still the essence of my attraction to the keyboard. Oddly, it's by products of the imagination we grasp that elusive thing we call reality.
Stefan deals with a rarely covered topic and the topic of attacks and goes into great detail as to the mindset, techniques and the 'point' of the attack.
Often in Aikido practice, the role of the tori/nage is often neglected leading to sloppy practice and furthermore we are puzzled with the unrealistic attacks we practice against. Stefan sheds some light on the issue by explaining its origins and the energy required for each attack while remaining true to traditional Aikido attacks.
For instance some excerpts from Shomen-uchi:
Shomenuchi is a strike to the top of tori's head, with an open hand. It is done as a symbol of a sword attack. It would not make much sense to hit a person's skull with the bare hand.
Of course, the shomenuchi attack has no meaning when done with an unarmed hand. The head is hard, especially at the forehead, so there is no hand that can hit it without more damage being done to the hand than to tori's head. This is simply a way of training aikido in a safe way against the sword attack or any other armed attack to the head from above.
He also deals with the less common attacks like bear hugs (kakaedori) from behind and elaborates on the particular challenges for tori and uke on certain attacks.
In summary, this book is an excellent book for Aikido practitioners seeking to better understand their art but it may disappoint some hoping to learn 'Attack techniques' (which I would then suggest you look to another martial art) or like myself, Aikido solutions to more common street attacks. Having been in a few scuffles and training Aikido for 16-17 years or so, the attacks of uke in Aikido do little to prepare you against the fast and unpredictable nature of these attacks which usually do not stop with one or two attacks or the stress involved when you're taken out of a dojo environment. Even so, the book's contents cannot be faulted as it is simply teaching Aikido for what it is.
I would easily give this book a four stars as it does what it sets out to do well with good illustrations. The only reason I gave it a 3 stars was the Kindle version seemed to have many photos missing which detracted from my enjoyment of the book and left me feeling a bit upset since I wasn't getting the whole book.
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I'm glad to see a book observing Aiki from the uke's side of the equation.
Aikido practice depends on this harmony, and the insights found here will
deepen training and understanding. I believe this information is critical in
making the shift from practice to mastery.
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