Shoji Seki Shihan was born on 6 March 1950 in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. While he was a student in a Musashi Institute of Technology in Tokyo a group of the aikidokas was giving a demonstration and in 1969 Shoji joined.
Seki Shihan liked Aikido much and soon he became an uchi-deshi. He was allowed to train all days long and found his inspiration in the faces of Kisshomaru Ueshiba and Kisaburo Osawa.
He was a 2nd Dan already when, in 1973, he was admitted as an assistant instructor at Hombu Dojo. He has been dealing professionally with Aikido since then.
Today he has become one of the main instructors at Hombu Dojo. He leads general classes, classes for the beginners and is one of the closest partners of Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba. He also directs in the other Aikido clubs and universities, gives the seminars all over the world in the countries like Israel, Russia, USA, France, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Indonesia, Poland and others.
One of the clubs Shihan visits on a regular basis outside Japan in Koinobori Dojo in Moscow, Russia. The club is dedicated to Sensei and learn Aikido from Shoji Seki exclusively.
Shoji Seki Shihan has a rank of the 8 Dan from Aikikai and what he gets is totally a result of his hard work and development of his feelings into Aikido. His classes are intense with not much of the explanations but practice. He puts himself into details and moves slowly around the arsenal of the techniques just to be sure that important parts are not missed.
You can read some articles on Shoji Seki’s fan-site. Also, there’s a post-inspiration from one of the Shihans practitioners on the AikiWeb forum.