Masatomi Ikeda
Masatomi Ikeda was born in Tokyo, Japan on 8 April 1940. He is a Japanese aikido teacher who holds the rank of 7th dan Aikikai and a status of Shihan. He was already deeply interested in budo before he started his aikido way. He was able to achive a 4th dan in judo and a 5th dan in sumo through the course of life.
He started practicing aikido in 1958 and in 1960 he enlisted to a Hiroshi Tadas dojo. You already know Hiroshi Tada well from the post on the blog. Soon after in 1964 he successfully graduated at the Nippon Physical Education University and obtained a university degree in gymnastics and hygiene. But instead of moving in a direction of his education he was up to become an aikido professor so he moved to Italy to promote aikido in Naples city.
Nonetheless Masatome came back to Japan in 1971 for 7 years. He was working at Dokkyo High School as gymnastics teacher this time, collected more aikido teaching experience, got knowledge in Asian medicine named Seitai and learned Hojo no kata, the fundamental principals of Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryu which also contain a lot of breathing exercises. He practiced and teached Hojo during his aikido lessons.
On the request of the Swiss Cultural Association of Aikido (ACSA) sensei moved to Europe in 1977. From this time he was a delegated aikido teacher by the Aikikai Foundation and was fully concentrated on aikido development and promoting. He became a Technical Director for ACSA and in 1986 opened a Aikido Ikeda-Dojo Zurich.
He embraced all the Switzerland and was at the various dojos few times in a week despite his own dojo where he gave regular lessons. In addiction he led international seminars and maintained a friendship with the nearby countries. Next video was made in Sofia, Bulgaria during the European Aikido Federation General Meeting in 1995. Another “headliner” was a Masatake Fujita Shihan.
Hideki Hosokawa, Pasquale Aiello of the Italian Aikikai, his teacher Hiroshi Tada, Katsuaki Asai of the German Aikikai were his close aikido friends to share aikido events.
He got his 7th dan in 1989, while in 1994 he became a Technical Director of Czech Aikido Aikikai (CAA), 1996 Technical Director of Slovak Aikido Aikikai (SAA) and became a technical adviser of the International Aikido Federation (IAF) together with Hiroshi Isoyama. From 1997 a Technical Director for the Yugoslavian Aikido Federation in Serbia, from 1998 a Technical Director for the Turkish Aikido Association.
Masatomi Ikeda have a lot of foreign internships in the Europe countries like Croatia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Germany, Slovakia, Italy, Finland, France, Austria, Netherland and many more. He has a good list of high ranked students up to 6th dan all over the Europe. Despite his health condition he is still practicing in Japan. Here’s a facebook page dedicated to Masatomi Ikeda Shihan.