Internal Martial Arts

the

TAIKIKEN

pages

2025

Without intelligence, a man can live up to a hundred years, but remains a child.

With intelligence, a child can do better than a man who has lived a hundred years. 

Discover the story of Akio Sawai, son of Kenichi Sawai, who started young with Taikiken. Known as a real Taikiken stylist, he was one of the first instructors to bring the art to Europe.

In the heart of Tokyo’s storied Meiji Jingu, beneath the watchful gaze of Shinto shrines and the towering cedars that whisper through the centuries, Akio Sawai forged a legacy in the martial arts that would resonate far beyond his homeland. The son of Taikiken icon Kenichi Sawai, Akio learned the discipline at an age when most youngsters are still mastering their shoelaces. There, in the hushed, early-morning air, he absorbed the essence of Taikiken—its balance, its power, its rooted simplicity—directly from the source. Before long, he was seen not just as a practitioner but as a living embodiment of the art’s original spirit.

In the pantheon of first-generation Taikiken devotees, Sawai’s name remains etched alongside an esteemed cast of pioneers who tested their mettle and honed their craft beneath the canopy of those venerable trees. The roster reads like a who’s who of martial arts evolution: Hatsuo Royama, Yoshimichi Sato, Mikio Goto, Kazuo Yoshida, Norimasa Iwama, Yukio Ito, Masashi Saito, Yasuo Matsumura, Mitsuo Nakamura, Jan Kallenbach, Roland Nansink—together they shaped Taikiken into something the world would come to recognize and respect. They pushed each other, sparred fiercely, and shared subtle wisdom, writing their own chapter in Japan’s martial narrative.

For Akio Sawai, the call of destiny would not be confined to the island nation of his birth. By the early 1970s, he was among the first wave of Taikiken instructors to cross continents, stepping into a brave new world of curious students and skeptical onlookers in Europe’s capitals. In Amsterdam’s Shin Bu Ken dojo, he taught side-by-side with Norimasa Iwama, introducing the Netherlands—and by extension, the West—to an art both strikingly modern and ancient at its core. Sawai’s influence would soon spread through gyms and training halls from one nation to the next, each encounter echoing a simple truth: Taikiken had arrived, and it was here to stay.

Perhaps just as significant was his role in the pioneering English-language text on Taikiken, published in 1976, a gesture that opened the martial art’s treasury of knowledge to the global community. Through those pages and through countless lessons on battered mats, Akio Sawai transformed from a promising son of a master into a leading figure—a stylized hero of the discipline. Decades later, as martial artists recount their lineage and celebrate their roots, his name still carries the weight of authenticity and the promise of transformation.

February 2025