Building International Community

As I men­tioned in my top 11 arti­cle, one of my favorite aspects of my Taido expe­ri­ence has been the oppor­tu­nity to par­tic­i­pate as a mem­ber of an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity. There are peo­ple all over the world that share my pas­sion for Taido, and I’ve really enjoyed meet­ing so many of them. There are plenty of oth­ers whom I have not yet had a chance to meet, but I hope to get around to it.

The Taido World Tour

One of my goals for the next few years is to visit every coun­try where peo­ple are prac­tic­ing Taido. So far, I’ve trained in America, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands. That leaves Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Portugal, and England. I hope to make it to all of these places at least once before I turn 35.

My rea­son for want­ing to do this is to learn more about how Taido is prac­ticed and what kind of peo­ple prac­tice it. The more I can learn about the peo­ple who do Taido and the prac­tices in which they engage, the bet­ter I can under­stand what Taido actu­ally is and, more impor­tantly, where it’s going. It’ll give me a chance to influ­ence this evo­lu­tion as well.

Taking Personal Action

In the past, we have left the inter­na­tional con­nec­tions to orga­ni­za­tional ties between the lead instruc­tors. In terms of community-building, I think this approach has mostly failed. It seems that the real friend­ships we develop with Taidoka from other coun­tries almost hap­pens in spite of orga­ni­za­tional inter­ven­tion, rather than because of it.

Open-Door Policy

In my vision of Taido’s future, all Taido dojo and groups will wel­come any Taido stu­dent from any­where, with­out regard to what rank that per­son holds from what orga­ni­za­tion or dojo. I think we should open our doors and accept all Taido stu­dents to share their expe­ri­ences with us. In return, we will can give them the ben­e­fit of our own ideas. This should be a free exchange, and it should not be lim­ited to instruc­tors or tour­na­ment champions.

I think most dojo are fairly open to vis­i­tors, espe­cially from other coun­tries. We can also be open per­son­ally to receive Taido guests. If some­one vis­its your dojo, why not invite them out to eat or have a drink? Training together is fun, but get­ting to know that stu­dent as a per­son is much more reward­ing. It can be a great expe­ri­ence for both par­ties to share their thoughts and cul­ture. Even if the vis­it­ing stu­dent doesn’t speak your lan­guage well, it can be a lot of fun to try and communicate.

The Other Side of the Coin

Being open for vis­i­tors is great, but it’s only half the bat­tle. We also need to actively encour­age our stu­dents to visit other dojo. We need to give stu­dents incen­tive to travel to other Taido coun­tries and bring back their expe­ri­ences. This ben­e­fits every­one in a school.

For exam­ple, if a stu­dent in your dojo trav­els to another coun­try and learns a dif­fer­ent way to do a cer­tain tech­nique, he has expanded his own skills. If he comes back and shares what he learned with other stu­dents, they can ben­e­fit too. It’s not that any one way is bet­ter than another, but every vari­a­tion has the poten­tial to teach us more about Taido.

Make sure to ask your dojo­mates about their Taido expe­ri­ences abroad. You can learn a lot from their sto­ries. It also helps to build excite­ment about travel and inter­na­tional Taido friend­ship, which encour­ages every­one to get out and expe­ri­ence more.

The Email Experiment

I once sent out test emails to every Taido dojo on the inter­net, using a fake name. How many of them do you think returned my com­mu­ni­ca­tion? About half, but a few of those were “too busy to have any vis­i­tors right now,” or some other such excuse. If you are hold­ing prac­tices, how can you be too busy to prac­tice with me?

I have been doing this for years now — send­ing out ran­dom emails to var­i­ous Taido groups. The exper­i­ment has been pretty con­clu­sive that some instruc­tors don’t want to have too much con­tact with ran­dom Taidoka from other coun­tries. Most don’t reply to the mail at all. Why is that? The major excep­tion is Japan, where I have always been very well received. Actually, it’s very com­mon for Japanese Taido stu­dents to visit other dojo when they travel.

I Love Politics!

Part of the prob­lem may be that we have some neg­a­tive polit­i­cal his­tory between var­i­ous Taido orga­ni­za­tions. Some of these prob­lems go back to (and I am not even slightly exag­ger­at­ing here) thirty-year-old rival­ries between for­mer col­lege class­mates that are now instruc­tors. I don’t see any good rea­son that this should have any effect on stu­dents in Taido. I feel that we should value the desire of stu­dents to cre­ate con­nec­tions and friend­ships with stu­dents in other schools and other coun­tries. The bet­ter we pro­mote this kind of con­nec­tion, the more we can be sure of bet­ter and more wide­spread Taido in the future.

Global / Local

We have an inter­na­tional net­work of Taido orga­ni­za­tions. Let’s lever­age that net­work to cre­ate an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity of indi­vid­ual Taido stu­dents. We are all prac­tic­ing the same art, even if we prac­tice it in dif­fer­ent ways and for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. This vari­ety is rich with oppor­tu­nity for the future of Taido. We have much to learn from each other if we can get together.

This is already hap­pen­ing on a small scale with cer­tain indi­vid­u­als. I know that sev­eral Japanese Taidoka taught at dojo in France and Australia. A few instruc­tors are known to travel when­ever they have the oppor­tu­nity. However, I’d like to make this inter­na­tional com­mu­nity acces­si­ble to all Taido stu­dents on a wider scale. This need not be lim­ited to instruc­tors or even large dojo.

Chances are, some­one in your dojo has some con­tacts in another coun­try. Seek them out and ask for advice. Make the effort to invite stu­dents from other dojo to visit and prac­tice with you. Then make sure to go see them too.

Making Contact

Since mov­ing to Japan, I have been able to cement stronger friend­ships with Japanese Taidoka than I had in the past. These are not just con­nec­tions through my instruc­tor — they are per­sonal rela­tion­ships built through shared prac­tice and dis­cus­sion. I’ve also made friends with sev­eral of the stu­dents in Australia and in Europe.

Through this web­site, I have made con­tact with Taidoka from every­where in the world, and they mostly seem very cool. I want to visit all of these peo­ple at their home dojo, and I plan to invite each of them to my own.

You don’t have to relo­cate or start a web­site to make friends in Taido. Visit the Australian Taido Forum and intro­duce your­self. Start a dis­cus­sion or ask a ques­tion. Everyone will be excited to get to know you.

Also, keep up to date with tour­na­ments and train­ing camps. Besides the World Championships, we have reg­u­lar International Friendship Games, European Championships, Australia’s Asia Pacific Games, and American International Tournaments. Clubs in Europe often host train­ing camps — get in touch and ask if you can attend. American Taido sum­mer camp is a great event for any­one who wants to visit the US and hang out at the beach.

Make a plan to attend a Taido event in another coun­try. You will not regret it. The first step is to get in touch. Send an email and intro­duce your­self. Then ask about any events dur­ing the next few months. It really is just that simple.

The Invitation

I pre­vi­ously posted an open invi­ta­tion to all Taidoka to visit my dojo at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, USA. In 2007 and 2008, we hosted vis­i­tors from India and Japan.

I will repeat that invi­ta­tion now for any Taido prac­ti­tioner who is inter­ested in vis­it­ing Osaka. Osaka is a very dif­fer­ent Japan from Tokyo, and Taido here is less tour­na­ment ori­ented. I will make a com­mit­ment to pro­vide lodg­ing, prac­tice, and plenty of hang­ing out to any Taido stu­dent who can make it to Osaka. I’m pretty sure that other dojo mem­bers would offer to host vis­i­tors as well.

The Challenge

I chal­lenge every Taido club world­wide to take this step toward a cre­at­ing real com­mu­nity of Taido stu­dents. Lots of clubs are doing this, and the ben­e­fits are very tangible.

American Taido has had Japanese guest instruc­tors for peri­ods of up to five years. Maya Tabata spent a good bit of time in America and France. Masa Ohashi is back and forth between Japan and Australia con­stantly, it seems. Now there are a hand­ful of French Taidoka liv­ing in Japan. I know there is fairly fre­quent exchange between the major dojo in EuTai. Lots of us from var­i­ous coun­tries have come to live in Japan for extended peri­ods. Every time a Taido stu­dent prac­tices at a for­eign dojo, for one night or for a few years, every­one learns something.

Simple arrange­ments will do more for the future of inter­na­tional Taido than all the polit­i­cal nice-talk in the world and also allow the World Taido Federation to devote their offi­cial ener­gies to devel­op­ing Taido, sup­port­ing instruc­tors, and cre­at­ing edu­ca­tional materials.

Indeed, if indi­vid­ual stu­dents take the ini­tia­tive to build their own com­mu­nity, the instruc­tors can bet­ter focus on teach­ing, and the orga­ni­za­tions can bet­ter focus on orga­niz­ing. Perhaps then, instead of wast­ing time and money with mar­ginal legal issues, Taido Honin can actu­ally begin work­ing to spread Taido. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Let’s all take the ini­tia­tive together for cre­at­ing an inter­na­tional com­mu­nity of Taido stu­dents. Get in touch, make friends, and meet up.