Shintaido

Shintaido is a body-movement system conceived as a martial art for the modern age. It was created in Japan, in the 1960s, with the aim of equipping people to deal with the threats they face today. Such dangers – already apparent in the 1960s, but far more so today – include work-related stress, social isolation, and a lack of opportunity for creative output.

The movements of shintaido are based on traditional Japanese martial arts, especially kenjutsu (sword practice) and karate. However these forms have been reinvented around concepts of communication and cooperation, rather than the need to defeat an opponent.

Shintaido was created by a group of martial artists working together as Rakutenkai (lit: a company of optimists). They practiced under the inspirational leadership of Hiroyuki Aoki, himself a student of Shigeru Egami (the founder of Shotokai karate). As well as martial arts they studied a wide range of cultural phenomena, including religious studies, tea ceremony, and flower arrangement. Their goal was to adapt martial-art forms to create a new body-movement system, better suited to the needs of the modern age. The result of this was the embryonic shintaido system.

Since that time, shintaido instructors have spread these ideas to a number of countries around the world, especially Europe and the USA. There, the system has been further refined, principally by Haruyoshi Ito and Masashi Minagawa (both members of rakutenkai) to make it more suited to Western audiences and body types. Their work has largely completed the modern shintaido system, as practiced today, and enables it to be adapted for people with a wide range of physical conditions.

Shintaido movement is based around three dai-kihon, or fundamental movements, known as eiko, tenshingoso and hikari. From each of these three arises a complexity of other movements which form the basis of the core shintaido system. As well as shintaido itself, students often study one or more of three traditional martial arts: kenjustu, bojustu (quarterstaff practice) and karate. Each of these has been modified to incorporate the essence of the shintaido dai-kihon to create a holistic martial-arts system.

The result of all these forms is a rich, wide, and deep shintaido curriculum. This includes open, energetic, expressive movements, as well as calm and meditative forms. Shintaido encourages commitment and is intended for a lifetime of study.

In keeping with their optimistic attitude, Rakutenkai rejected the hierachical, iemoto system traditionally used in Japan to licence martial-arts instructors and their dojos. Instead they created a new, collegial system for grading instructors – according to their experience and ability – which allows them to freely transmit Shintaido in any creative manner they choose. They conceived Shintaido as a cultural movement of body and spirit.

This unique grading system, similar to those used in the academic world, is intended as much to guide instructors on their own shintaido journey as to identify them as individuals qualified to teach shintaido. It includes a five-level Dan system for grading each of the three martial arts studied within shintaido. Administering it is the preserve of national Shintaido organisations in both Europe and America. These work together, on a voluntary basis, to maintain current high standards, and to facilitate the work of the more experienced instructors who oversee those standards.

This spirit of openness and cooperative work pervades many aspects of shintaido itself. For instance, there are no coloured belts to differentiate levels of students. Instead everybody wears white and is encouraged to learn from each other. Qualified instructors may wear a white hakama (traditional, wide, pleated trousers). Shintaido keiko (practice sessions) are often opened and closed in a circle, rather than in hierarchical lines, to emphasise the idea that everybody is learning together. Many people worked to create the shintaido system, which is regarded by practitioners as larger than any one individual instructor.

Shintaido today is, perhaps, a more niche activity than the founders of Rakutenkai might have hoped. However, it tends to attract deeply-committed individuals, who remain firmly convinced of the benefits of shintaido practice, and who wish to preserve the principles by which it was created. The current group of such individuals is dedicated to training the shintaido instructors of tomorrow.