Remembering Saito Sensei´s birthday

Saito sensei cutting cace at his 69:th birthday party inside the Iwama dojo

Today --31 March 2003 -- would have been Morihiro Saitos 75:th birthday. His spirit lives forever in our hearts and on this day we send him an extra thought. The best birthday gift we ever can give him is to keep on practice the Aikido he passed on to us from his teacher -- the founder of Aikido -- Morihei Ueshiba.

Saito sensei devoted his life to Aikido. For 28 years he served the founder. During the remainder of his life Saito sensei served and loved us: his students. Without Saito sensei our lives would not be the same. Some of us might be practising aikido today but all the happy moments at his seminars, in Iwama or at seminars and dojos of his students would have been omitted from our lives.

Some of these fantastic moments were frozen in my camera. One was senseis 69:th birthday in 1997 when he took out a shinken to cut the birthday cake.

It's our obligation to share his Aikido with every one who searches it. By preserving the techniques and training methods we learned from Saito sensei he will live in our hearts and in our Aikido.

Jöran Fagerlund, Gothenburg, Sweden

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