Yasuo Kobayashi is a Japanese 8 Dan Aikido Aikikai Shihan. He is chief of the Aikido Kobayashi Dojo organization with more than 100 Dojos around the world.
Yasuo Kobayashi was born on September 20, 1936, in Tokyo. He was training in the Judo as a child but in 1954 he added the Aikido also. At this year he entered the Meiji University and the Hombu Dojo as an uchi-deshi for the O-Sensei.
In the university, he founded an Aikido club while in Hombu he learned from the second Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba, Koichi Tohei, Kisaburo Osawa, Saito Shihan, Yamaguchi, Tada, Tamura and many others.
After graduation, Kobayashi Sensei became a part of the Hombu’s staff. In 1969 he established his own Dojo in Kodaira and got responsible for the Saitama and Tokyo Economics Universities. One more Dojo was opened in Saitama in 1972 and Sensei started to promote Aikido also in Kanagawa and Chiba.
At the same time, Yasuo Kobayashi put a lot of effort to train the instructors like Kazuo Igarashi, Kengo Hatayama, Haruyoshi Horikoshi, Haruo Ishigaki, Hiroyuki Hasegawa, Takuya Oiwake, Katsutoshi Shirakawa, etc. His skill and students made him travel all over the world. Students also teach abroad for the organization.
Take a look at the Youtube channel of Yasuo Kobayashi’s organization with a lot of videos and official website with the uchi-deshi program available. Small research also brings three nice articles on AikidoJournal.com, AikidoSangenkai.org and GuillaumeErard.com.