Fugakukai International Association - Aikido in Fugakukai

Aikido in Fugakukai

Aikido in Fugakukai began as a direct transmission of Tomiki’s style of aikido through Geis to his students in Houston Texas, but the system rapidly evolved in the new environment. Geis found his students to be typically older than Tomiki’s university students and he found those students to be generally uninterested in shiai (competition) even as a training tool. A group of Japanese instructors characterized Geis’ students as more concerned with developing the self-defense aspects of aikido than were Japanese students. Under these conditions, the tanto randori of the Shodokan was dropped and toshu (empty hand) randori developed into the primary randori method.

As Geis’ students became more experienced with the new randori system, their randori experiences began informing their practice of kata, leading to greater differences between the kata practiced in Fugakukai and Shodokan. In the late 1990s this mass of evolutionary changes in the randori and kata systems led to Geis renaming the Fugakukai aikido style Kihara Aikido or Karl Geis-Ryu.