Steven Seagal is a well known actor, producer, screenwriter, musician… Ukraine Bans Steven Seagal Over ‘National Security’, Steven Seagal asked to teach Aikido to Serbia’s special police forces, Steven Seagal granted Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin, Is Steven Seagal actually a police officer?, Is Steven Seagal actually a martial artist? Still, there are a lot of interesting and not much known facts about his life and especially from the aikido perspective.
Steven was born on 10th of april 1952. At the age of 13, Seagal lied about his age and got a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant where one of the cooks was a Karate Shotokan expert. This is when karate basics were learned by Steven. He then, being a teenager, started his aikido training under Harry Kiyoshi Ishisaka who was a Koichi Toheis student and a founder of the Orange County Aikido School (Aiki Kai). Steven was fully there on the mat and was influenced a lot by his teacher.
Being around 20 year old Steven moved to Japan with his father who decided to stay there. In japan he got a Shodan and continued his training under Koichi Tohei, Seiseki Abe, Hiroshi Isoyama, Kisshomaru Ueshiba, Kisaburo Osawa. Toheis proposal to join Ki Society Aikido was rejected by Steven so he remained under Aikikai.
In 1974 Steve went back to California where he met Miyako Fujitani, an aikido instructor from Los Angeles and in a year they got married in Japan. Her father was also an aikido instructor in Japan and after his retirement Steven became a head and a chief instructor in Tenshin Aikido in Juso, Osaka City. At the same time he became a first non-japanese to operate an aikido dojo in Japan. Steven left but the Tenshin Dojo is still there and Miyako cares to present days.
Steven Seagal hold a 7th Dan and is a Shihan in aikido Aikikai, has black belt in karate, judo, kendo. He opened several dojos around the world during his aikido career, gave seminars all over the world and is still demonstrating his skill occasionally. His aikido style looks very powerfull even for a big man he is and what he does like are the wrist locks and counter-directional moves which make his aikido look so angry.
In the name of love to wrist locks they say that Steven accidentally broke Sean Connery’s wrist during the “Never Say Never Again” movie production. Nice way to promote yourself as martial artist, don’t you think? But it was not that much comparing with the promotion of the aikido through the movies as an expert.
Aikido was not that popular back in those days and I bet most of you had a chance to know about the magical martial art and how it may look like through Seagals movies. That happened to me at least. Take a look at the moves in the fight scenes and you will see a lot of basic aikido techniques mixed with punches, kicks, cuts some of which may be considered as advanced atemi. All this done by Steven in his own unique way, cruel yet attractive to himself, his ways and his story which again, includes aikido and everybody involved.
Stevens aikido demonstration in 2015 in Russia. Ukes are: Dmitry Sapozhnikov and Ivan Egorov.
Here are some pages that will make you follow Steven Seagal on the web: IMDB page with filmography, facebook page and a website.
