Frenchman Jacques Payet came to Japan in 1980 searching for a martial arts master he had seen only once on a video. What he found was his destiny.
There was no internet to do a quick search and he spoke neither Japanese nor English at the time. It took him one month to find this master, Shioda Gozo, founder of Yoshinkan aikido. To his surprise, he was given a chance to stay as uchi-deshi (live-in-student) at the master’s dojo, and this is when his real journey began.
“Suddenly thrown into this strange world where I had to guess what was expected of me, I needed to react quickly, but did not know how – and I made many mistakes and got shouted at. Yet, I did not understand why.”
It was extremely rare for a foreigner to be accepted as an uchi-deshi. Daily life was less than glamorous. Payet describes it as pure survival at the bottom of the dojo hierarchy.
“Imagine, I was not allowed to leave the dojo without permission. On my days off I went to teach French to earn my bread. For me it was such a treat to slip back into the ‘normal world’ and relax a little. Meanwhile, my superiors went out drinking and locked the dojo. I had to wait for their return outside and got so cold in winter that I started training just to keep warm.”
Speed, timing and intuition were essential elements of Payet’s aikido training.
“I would always be alert and compete with my fellow uchi-deshi; for example, to open the door for Shioda Sensei. We would not know when and which door, but had to be there first and open it just on time. When helping Sensei with his bath, I had to feel the right moment when to step forward and help, and when to step back and wait. My body became like a sensor, in tune with my teacher. If he needed to tell me what to do, I was too late.”
Now aged 53, and a 7th Dan black belt, Payet has his own dojo in the serenity of a Kyoto shrine. And he is still passing on those hard lessons learnt some 30 years earlier.
Mugenjuku Dojo www.aikidomugenjuku.com