It’s been confirmed that some organizations are getting on the bandwagon of the AHAN (Aikido Humanitarian Active Network) activities that Nippon Kan has been active on in order to pretend to be in some kind of relationship with the Headquarters of Nippon Kan to solicit monetary donations or to solicit becoming a sponsor.
AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan does not conduct any activities to ask any third parties for donations as part of AHAN activities. Additionally, I have not received any remunerations, even travel & transportation expenses, for the overseas seminars I have taught, and when local hosting organizations collect seminar fees from participants, the fees collected, minus such expenses as to lease a space for a seminar, have always been donated to local charitable organizations.
Moreover, it’s also worth noting that any instructional staff, including myself, have always taught as volunteers, and nobody has received any amount of remuneration from AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan.
Aikido Nippon Kan is an independent, non-profit organization, and Aikido Nippon Kan does not belong to any of several well-known Aikido organizations that exist. Therefore, Aikido Nippon Kan has maintained not only its ability to teach Aikido in a world that transcends the boundaries of affiliations or organizations, but also its mutually beneficial relationships with other organizations of different sizes. This has been one of important, long standing policies of Aikido Nippon Kan since its inception in 1978.
AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan has been operating in accordance with the applicable rules and regulations that a non-profit organization would have to follow, and anyone who is found interfering with this operating policy, the person could not only be reprimanded but also be suspended.
To date, over 20,000 people, who took interest in the practice of Aikido, have come and go through Nippon Kan’s Denver Dojo alone, and while there have been several people, out of the large number of people, who have opened and continued to operate their own dojos, each out of the vison of their own, none of them has any relationship with AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan.
Recently, I received multiple reports, and I have confirmed that a person, who had left Nippon Kan after having instigated much great confusion by planning a seminar within the Nippon Kan Dojo for personal benefits against the non-profit organization’s operating policy, had misappropriated photos, that are convenient for the person, from articles written by me and posted on my and Nippon Kan’s online pages, to self-promote while seemingly pretending that the person had left Nippon Kan amicably without seemingly any remorse of the person’s past conduct, and because such an assertion could lead to misunderstandings in the minds of Aikido-ka (Aikido practitioners) who do not know what had really happened, I have condemned the person.
There are several others like this person, for example, who appeared as a Sensei several months after abruptly leaving Nippon Kan or who made an announcement of baseless claims as an uchideshi when there was no official record that the persons had ever been an uchideshi.
While today’s social media sites can be quite a useful tool, because it’s awfully difficult to check on the degree of accuracy of information posted online, I urge and encourage everyone to diligently check on the credibility of any information or articles posted by anyone that even hints at having a relationship with AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan, and I would not hesitate to offer my cooperation to you in support of your effort to verify.
In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of people who teach Aikido, and while the continued development of the practice of Aikido regardless of affiliations and organizations is wonderful, there have also been cases where self-claimed instructors were standing in front of you and others who don’t know their past, after having left their base dojos not so in amicable ways (or were suspended by their home dojos), by putting on a different mask, and it’s highly encouraged for everyone to thoroughly check on any instructor’s practice history.
Gaku Homma
Founder and Kancho, AHAN Aikido Nippon Kan, a non-profit organization