The Kagamibiraki ceremony was held on Sunday, January 13, 2019 at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo, and the names of the practitioners promoted to the next grade were made public.

The 56th edition of the All Japan Aikido Demonstration, the first one of the new Reiwa era, took place on Saturday, May 26th, 2018. As always, I tried to capture as many of the demonstrations as possible.

It is now somewhat of a tradition that I write a report on the occasion of the Kagamibiraki taking place at the beginning of January at the Hombu Dojo of the Aikikai. This time though, things are a little different, because in addition to the usual rejoicing about the promotion of my teachers and friends, it is my turn to move up the ranks.

The 55th edition of the All Japan Aikido Demonstration was held on May 27th at the Nippon Budokan. This year, I was kindly allowed by the Hombu Dojo to shoot my videos from the arena, providing a much better angle of view than usual. It was also my first real test of the new Panasonic GH5 camera, which allowed me to shoot in 60 frames per second for a much more realistic render than the usual 24 frames per second. In order to make up for the lack of light, I used a Metabones speed booster along with my Canon 24-105 mm lens. The difficulty when shooting from downstairs is that one cannot really move towards another tatami between demonstrations, which is why I chose to mostly stick to the white tatami this year. I am mostly satisfied with the result but I will certainly improve several things next year.

The ceremony of the Kagamibiraki took place on Sunday January 8, 2017 at the Hombu Dojo of the Aikikai of Tokyo. Like every year, the names of the practitioners promoted to the higher rank were made public during the ceremony.

On the last day of the 12th International Aikido Congres, a large demonstration took place, featuring delegations from all member countries, as well as some of the senior instructors involved with the IAF.

The 54th edition of the All Japan Aikido Demonstration took place on Saturday, May, 28th 2016 at the legendary Nippon Budokan. Like every year, I filmed a few of the demonstrations throughout the day. As a one man operation, I of course cannot film them all so I tried to film in priority the demonstrations that had been requested to me on my Facebook page and via email.

I just got back from the Hombu Dojo were I was in charge of filming the ceremony of the Kagamibiraki 2016 on behalf of the Aikikai and it is with great pleasure that I witnessed the appointment of Christian Tissier Shihan to the rank of 8th Dan Aikikai. His certificate was handed to him by long time friend, the Doshu Ueshiba Moriteru.

The 53rd edition of the All Japan Aikido Demonstration took place on the 23rd of May at the Nippon Budokan. As always, I shot a small number of videos in order to document the event. These are presented below. Please note that being a one-man operation, I was not able to film every single demonstration as several of them take place simultaneously. Also, I always tended to privilege shooting the tatami that offered me the best view and I may have missed the demonstrations of teachers I like because they took place too far from where I was seating.

The Kagamibiraki ceremony was held on Sunday, 11th of January at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo. The Kagamibiraki is the first official event of the year at the Aikikai schedule, and in addition to being a traditional way to celebrate the new year, it also marks the publishing and awarding of the new Dan grade promotions.

In my last article covering the Aiki Taisai in Iwama, I had made the promise to report on it, so here are the highlights of the 51st All Japan Aikido Demonstration that was recently held at the Nippon Budokan. There, more than 8,000 practitioners from all over Japan and from abroad succeeded to each other all the afternoon on five areas massive tatami of the Budokan, demonstrating their techniques and presenting their dojos to an audience of over 10,000 Aikido enthusiast. Like every year, I have been pretty busy helping out in the organization of the event, but I still managed to make a number of videos that I hope you will appreciate.

Like every year, I am meeting my colleagues and friends from the Hombu Dojo at Ueno station on a warm morning of April in order to take the train that will lead us to the town of Iwama in the Ibaraki prefecture. It is there that the annual celebration of the Aiki Jinja Tai Sai is taking place, which is the ceremony in memory of the founder of Aikido Morihei Ueshiba and his son, the second Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba.