Extract taken from this original article

Guillaume Erard: So you owe your views on Aikido to Kisshomaru Ueshiba Sensei and Seigo Yamaguchi Sensei don’t you?

Olivier Gaurin: These two Sensei were indeed my humble basis of work but I tried to follow every teacher, particularly Osawa Kisaburo Sensei. Like many old Sensei, I think that very few people understood what he was doing. It was an interesting Aikido, very flexible, but in a rigid mentality, all of that behind a very sympathetic mask, as is often the case here in Japan. Osawa Kisaburo Sensei was a bit like a peach with a big stone in it (laughs)! Of course I also particularly liked the classes of Arikawa, Watanabe and Endo Sensei and I think that their influence on me is still visible today.

Basically, there are three ways to learn in Japan. The first one is to follow one particular Sensei and to become a sort of doppelganger. The second one, also called here the “way of disgrace” ["Fuhyô no Michi" (不評の道) : "the way of impopularity"] is about learning from everyone, without particular affiliation or allegiance, and of course without recognition. This is the way that I have chosen but it is a quite tedious and thankless task, you have to build yourself using all the conflicting information that you are exposed to. The third way is a mix of both, one choses a Sensei as main mentor but goes to put his knowledge into practice at other people’s classes.

For me, the “way of disgrace” is the most interesting, both in ethical and technical terms, because one has to follow contradictory teachings and therefore, it keeps one on the tangent of what I call the flow of appropriation. It prevents discourses that are in essence “I am right and the others are wrong”.