In an interview dedicated to children published in Kodomo magazine, Fujimoto thought on aikido:
“The name aikido is made up of three words: ai which means union, harmony; ki is the energy of the universe that according to us Japanese makes all things live: men, animals, plants, our planet; do instead means away, a path where you learn something.
So its translation could be the way of union with the energy of the universe. Aikido is not used to fight or to hurt someone but it teaches to create harmony with people, to try to get along with someone even if it wants to hurt us. Difficult. But interesting.”
At a time when Fujimoto’s teaching and dialectics seemed to have reached their peak, the teacher was diagnosed with a tumor with a poor prognosis.
From that moment, those who have been able to follow him closely can say with absolute certainty, his senses have sharpened, his determination has become inflexible: he felt the duty to leave as much of himself as he could, without omitting anything, putting whoever trusted him to continue on the path indicated by him without detours. To then leave this world, without regrets.
If perfection could be of this world we could say that in the fulfillment of this mission the master has achieved it. He left us on February 20, 2012, with the serene awareness that he had done what he had to do for us. His ashes returned to Japan shortly after, to rest in the family tomb in Yamaguchi.
He left with us his indelible memory and his teachings: the technical one, which will be kept alive and continued by his disciples. And then, more difficult but absolutely necessary to preserve them, the cultural one, the moral one. The human one.
Source: Facebook/Aikido
