Why do you call what you do Michinoku Ryu Bugei when it is actually Shorinjin Ryu Saito Ninjitsu?
The name reflects and encompasses everything I teach, an umbrella if you will. Michinoku is the ancient name for Fukushima, Japan and means “the way furthest from the road”. I use it to honor all the arts that were developed in that northern region such as Saito Ninjitsu and Daito Ryu Aikijujutsu, etc. We teach Saito Ninjitsu as the core of our training and I still train directly under the new Soke (inheritor) Master Maui Saito. I also teach Kenjutsu and Aikijujutsu as well as Tai Chi. When students have acheived shodan they are eligible to start training in Won Hop Loong Chuan Gung Fu (Coordinated Dragon’s Fist as it is currently known), an art that I began training in over 30 years ago and is interestingly a forebearer to the Saito art. We can trace its coming to Japan to around 950 AD when it was introduced by a Taoist Chinese monk from Shaolin Prefecture named Peng Wan Fen.
