The Lessons From Hashimoto-Sensei

I do not only do Judo in the Dojo. Judo is a much wider concept than the techniques applied in the Dojo. Hashimoto-Sensei guides me into to how to try to understand the conceptual side of Judo and Budo. This is not an easy task. Hashimoto-Sensei often stresses the fact that understanding the concepts he introduces to me is also hard for the Japanese. On the last lecture he even said that the best Budo-researchers are dead and that they died hundreds of years ago. That being said, I would presume that Hashimoto-Sensei is one of the greatest Budo-researchers alive. His reearch-lab is like a library with a museum-like interior, with books, documents, manuscripts, calligraphies, pictures, statuettes and lots of artifacts that awakes the inner curiosity. 

And of course it is the challenge with the language: Well, my Japanese is becoming gradually better and Hashimoto-Sensei is also very good to explain the necessary "blanks" in English, being the internationally-minded person as he is. That being said, it is difficult, but is also very educational and truly inspirational to learn these things in their native language. In English things tend to be over-intellectualized and it can become more of a show-off into elegant phrasing than a good explanation of the actual subject(something that my phrasing also shows). An example of this is that Hashimoto-Sensei gave me a whole book in English to illustrate what was 2 pages in Japanese.

At Tokai I have the opportunity to investigate Judo in several different ways: As  an Olympics Sport, as a lifestyle and as a way of Education, be it physical, intellectual or moral. Understanding Judo as a way of education is not easy. In Norway and in Europe we have a very sports-oriented way of perceiving Judo. This is not necessarily bad, if we compare looking at Judo as ways of injuring other people with the common view of Judo as a safe, enjoyable and fascinating sport, this far better. So one can say that Judo developing into a sport is a positive development keeping in mind the origin being Bujitsu or deadly techniques.

BUT: There is much more to Judo than just the sports-aspect. Judo was originally conceived as a method of education.
And at the center of this lies that Judo can learn us a great deal about human-relationships, Judo can build character and Judo be a great way to learn to know yourself. Hashimoto-Sensei gives me insights into how as to view Judo from different viewpoints, deeply and more lightly.

I can surely say that Judo is far vaster than I initially thought.