by Régis Soavi

In our relationship with the dojo, we often deal with Reishiki (etiquette). From our first contact with martial arts, as soon as we enter a dojo, we see people bowing very respectfully at the entrance and then greeting each other, or sometimes heading towards the kamiza after picking up a weapon. Every school has its own rules of good conduct, just as it has its own savoir-faire. In the West, some of these rules are even posted next to the door, just waiting to be followed. However, this is not always the case, as many people are reluctant to follow them on the pretext of religiosity, modernity or even because they see an overly military or sectarian aspect to them. Nevertheless, our society has its own protocols and customs. Everyone stands up when the court enters the courtroom, actors and musicians bow to their audience, just as people stand up when the national anthem or the European anthem is played.

The respect that is demanded in a dojo is more than a custom of oriental origin, whether Japanese or Chinese. It is not a matter of playing a role, of “doing as they do in Japan”, of being strict and impeccable, even rigid in the scrupulous observance of the rules of good manners. Reishiki involves our whole being. Most of us have lost the habit of bowing to anyone or anything: the handshake, the good handshake, the kiss, or other more modern rituals have replaced what too often resembled a power relationship over inferiors, imposed by hierarchical superiors.

It took me a long time before I understood, as my master Tsuda Itsuo sensei taught me, that bowing between partners, whether standing or kneeling, is a way of uniting, coordinating the breath, and bowing to life in the other. If we accept it as a good practice, we are often far from understanding it through our senses. Reishiki, however, is the score of the marvellous piece of music that is the practice of aikido. The score gives us the rhythm, the tempo, the notes are written on the staff and are therefore easier to find, but everything remains to be played. Of course, you have to know the key: G? C? or F? And in what position? What instrument is it played on? How do we play it? Almost anything seems possible, but you cannot do just anything. An expert, a great master, is able to juggle with the notes, add improvisations, speed up the tempo in one part, slow it down in another. Insist on a cadence, delete one or shorten it. Just as an aikido master improvises in front of their partner, unifying the breath with them and moving in unconventional ways, creating a ballet that is both aesthetic and fearsome. Noro Masamichi sensei demonstrated this to us at every session in the 1970s, when I was still a very inexperienced young instructor.

Reishiki: just a ritual?

The ceremonial aspect gives us access to the sacred without condemning us to the religious, so that the profane itself is ennobled and becomes sacred as well.

A classical musician prepares before beginning to play by performing a certain number of times actions that could be described as rituals. They tune their instrument or simply check that it is in tune, do exercises to loosen up and memorize difficult passages, just as we take care of our posture and body, and check our outfit, keikogi, belt, hakama – all this attention is an integral part of the care we bring to the practice of our art.

Reishiki allows to structure the practice, through the various rituals and their repetition, so that attention can be focused thanks to the regular support they provide. Nowadays, at least in Europe, it is rare to find dojos where the practitioners take care of the daily housework, cleaning the toilets, tidying up the changing rooms, or the keikogi for lending to beginners, etc. In fact, they act like uchi deshi from another era. It has become difficult to convey this message to the younger generation, for whom learning has often become a chore that needs to be done away with as quickly as possible.

Reishiki: a moral code?

Reishiki is the gateway to a forgotten world, the world of inner sensation, a world that is immaterial and yet very real, very concrete. It is within everyone’s reach to find it, or to rediscover it when it is blocked by conventions or ideas inculcated by society to our detriment. Of course, the protocols that govern an art help us to avoid accidents through the order they require, but it is their fundamentally natural character that seems to me the most important. If this does not exist, or no longer exists, all that remains are customs deprived of their profound meaning. In a society in decline with respect to education, I believe it necessary to allow all those interested in martial arts to rediscover the basics, as indispensable as they are logical, of human functioning.

Reishiki obliges us to respect all human life and leads us to respect life has to other living beings. Through the moral code that will be applied to us too, if we apply it to others, we can rediscover a common ground between human beings. The values carried by Reishiki are also there to help us move forward in our daily lives. Women, for example, are respected by everyone for their quality as practitioners, not because they look good in the background, or out of condescension, or to respect parity – or they should be, because unfortunately this is not so often the case. A female musician who plays a wind instrument is not appreciated for her measurements or her lung capacity, but, like any other musician, for the quality of her playing, for the musicality of a piece that she is able to make us discover during a concert.

Reishiki: an impregnation

When we are able to feel the rituals, our everyday life takes on a different flavour. Reishiki is no longer a constraint, it is the path to our inner freedom and we are guided step by step by the ceremonial that has its origins in older rituals that are just waiting to be rediscovered. Modern sport¹concept developed by Pierre Bourdieu in « Comment peut-on être sportif ? » [‘How to Be Sporty?’], Questions de sociologie [Topics in Sociology], 1984, Les Éditions de Minuit (Paris), p. 174 (‘It seems to me we should, first, ponder the historical and social conditions that make possible this social phenomenon we take too easily for granted: “modern sport”.’ – trans. Itsuo Tsuda School) has its own rules and regulations, the roles of which seem identical a priori – safety, respect for others, respect for the referee, socialisation, etc. – and which we could easily confuse with reishiki, which is much older. It is easier for our Western view, we are used to it, we do not have to make any effort except to adapt to it, but as soon as we leave the tatami, the ring or the field, all these rules linked to the sport we practise disappear and other rules apply. These rules are often very different, sometimes simply good manners, sometimes the rulelessness of the street and its consequences. Reishiki remains in us like a presence, through a phenomenon that could be called imprinting, a kind of imprint, although not at the beginning, not in the first few years. Little by little, it shapes our mind and therefore our body, without deforming them; on the contrary, it allows them to develop harmoniously. The rules of sport are there to be respected for the time of the exercise, of the practice, Reishiki acts on the whole time of our life.

Reishiki: an artefact?

In my opinion, Reishiki should never be imposed; it is part of an understanding that must be developed by the most recent practitioners, while the older ones can help beginners to progress by their knowledge and example. Apart from the minimum good manners required everywhere, it is also, and above all, the atmosphere of the dojo that will guide newcomers. If we impose norms and conventions, we run the risk of everything becoming rigid and appearing as a new ideology to be applied and, yet, divorced from what is alive – as Matthew B. Crawford so aptly put it, ‘[l]ife then imitates theory: Ours is now a highly mediated existence in which, sure enough, we increasingly encounter the world through representations. These are manufactured for us. Human experience has become a highly engineered and therefore manipulable thing’²Matthew Bunker Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in the Age of Distraction, 2015, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York), Preface, pp. ix–x. That our experience and our teaching become an artificial product, when it is precisely the opposite that we seek, is perhaps what awaits us. There is also the danger that it will go in exactly the opposite direction to what our art teaches or should teach: freedom of mind, intuition, life force and all that goes with it – flexibility, mobility, resistance, the ability to re-centre oneself in order not to sink after a fall or in the face of difficulty.

Creating the conditions

The gyms are adapted for sports, there are grandstands, a variety of activities can be practised, maintenance is managed by the venue’s administration, and there is a caretaker responsible for maintaining order in the corridors, the changing rooms, and so on. Managing to communicate Reishiki in a space of this nature is a challenge. Unfortunately, nothing predisposes you to respect the place, either as a public place – very few are respected today – or as a place, a space that you could make your own. A sports hall is for sport, a dojo is a place to practise Budō, Bujutsu, an art – whether martial or not. The vibe and atmosphere are different. Would you not find it strange to see someone baking by a swimming pool or watching a heavyweight boxing match in a tea house? To create a space, a place that was found not on the basis of future income, but on the basis of parameters of a completely different nature, which it is impossible for me to describe in a few lines, but which are decisive for the future dojo and its perpetuation if it is a martial arts school. To create a place of this kind is already to apply the spirit of Reishiki, because it will bring together people who will be its managers, its housemates as it were, for an indefinite period of time, and it will be the cradle of students already present as well as of future practitioners. They will learn to respect Reishiki and to ensure that it is respected, for they will be both the originators and the transformers of Reishiki according to the needs. They will be the continuators of a tradition that they feel is necessary and even indispensable, for the teaching and the practise their art.

Reishiki is also about gratitude: knowing how to say thank you

How can I end an article on Reishiki without paying tribute to the masters I have been lucky enough to meet, sometimes to follow, always to respect. There are too many of them, and to list them all would be tedious for the reader, because it all began in my childhood, when I was barely twelve. But I would like to mention those who guided me at crucial moments, like my first Judo teacher, the Kawaishi method, who knew how to guide me and whose discipline as well as kindness marked me for life: Roland Maroteaux sensei, my initiator into aikido in the early seventies, thanks to whom I met Tsuda Itsuo sensei, that master in the shadows who was “my Master”. The same goes for Henry Plée sensei, who gave me my chance (“gave me a leg up” as they say) by allowing me to teach aikido in his dojo on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, when I was a brand-new black belt. I have not forgotten any of them (even those I do not mention here) because it was thanks to their firm simplicity and the guidance they were able to give me that I came to understand and appreciate Reishiki.

Régis Soavi

Article by Régis Soavi to be published in April 2025 in Self & Dragon Spécial Aikido n° 21.