Interview with André Nocquet 1988

From the beginnings of Aikido

André Nocquet

André Nocquet (30 July 1914 – 12 March 1999) was a French Aikido teacher holding the rank of 8th dan. He was Morihei Ueshiba's first foreign uchideshi in the years 1955 to 1958.
In an interview on the occasion of the publication of his book "Maître Morihei Uyeshiba, présence et message" from 1988, he reported interesting details from the early days of Aikido.
The interview was conducted by the radio station France Culture in French. The interviewer seems very well prepared.
Guilleaume Erard made a video out of it and published it on youtube in 2012.
The writer of these lines attended seminars with Nocquet in the 1980s.

Transscript:


Interviewer:
You just published a new book "Morihei Ueshiba - Presence and Message". Before you started Aikido, you were already interested in other practices, including Judo. How did you get from one to the other?
NOCQUET:
My journey was quite lengthy. I started at the age of 17. In the attic of my father, I found a book on the Sandow bodybuilding method. And since I was not very big, I thought that having muscles would avoid me getting beaten by the kids at school. So, I bulked up. Later I opened a fitness club and a physiotherapy cabinet in Angoulême. I then met the master Kawaishi, founder of French Judo, and I immediately started Judo.
Interviewer:
How did you get from Judo to Aikido?
NOCQUET:
I had developed Judo throughout the whole South West of France when a Japanese instructor called Minoru Mochizuki arrived in France.
In what he was doing, there were no more grabs and no prearranged stances. You know that in Judo, there are prearranged moves, and that we hold each other. I thought that if someone attacked you in the street and that you were grabbed, it would not be very good. I therefore considered that Judo an Aikido practiced together could lead to something very complete.
Interviewer:
Where did you hear about Aikido first, from your readings or from a demonstration?
NOCQUET:
At the arrival in France of Minoru Mochizuki, who had been invited by the founder of French Judo, master Kawaishi. When I saw this man at work I immediately enrolled in his classes.
Interviewer:
Did this discipline look like it was the right thing for you?
NOCQUET:
I found it really remarkable. Movements were very round, very beautiful, and the falls were not slapped on the ground. I consider that Judo is a great sport but Aikido is something different. But both fit well together. Professor Jigoro Kano, the creator of Judo was a friend of Ueshiba. When he saw Ueshiba at work he said: "That is my ideal Budo". He greatly admired him.
Interviewer:
What is Budo?
NOCQUET:
I actually asked a monk in Kamakura what Budo meant. DO is the way and BU means stopping the sword, which means to make peace. I read books in English that spoke of the aggressive spirit of the Japanese. That is not true at all. There is no aggression, we seek peace in martial arts, we try not to fight.
Interviewer:
You went to Japan in the 1950s, right?
NOCQUET:
I went to Japan under the advice of Tadashi Abe, the second Aikido master who came to Europe. He told me "You are so fond of Aikido that you should see the founder Master Ueshiba". I said: "Hang on, I have a club at Bordeaux with 300 students, I cannot leave like that". I thought about it for months wondering what to do.
Interviewer:
At this time, you were still teaching physical education?
NOCQUET:
No, only Judo. I have taught all the teachers in Southwest, from Poitiers to Biarritz.
Interviewer:
You spent three years in Japan, right?
NOCQUET:
I went for three years under the guidance of Mr. Duhamel of the French Academy, who was a friend of my family. He told me "You must not take the plane. Asia must be earned in small steps."
Interviewer:
You took the maritime mail boat.
NOCQUET:
Yes, the ship was the "Laos". I was in fourth class.
Interviewer:
Were you alone?
NOCQUET:
Yes, I was alone, in fourth class. But I taught some Ju-Jutsu techniques to the officers. And in return, when it was too hot, they gave me a first-class cabin, which was very nice of them. I took a month to get to Japan.
Interviewer:
How was your arrival in Japan? You did not speak Japanese, did you?
NOCQUET:
I did not speak Japanese. English is the language of business and most Japanese speak English. So, I did ok with the English I had learned at school. There was no problem.
Interviewer:
Master Ueshiba did not speak English. How did you communicate with him?
NOCQUET:
He spoke only Japanese. But with such a master there is no need to speak. The teaching is from mind to mind (de mental à mental).

ishin deshin

Interviewer:
That is what you call Ishin-Denshin? (以心伝心)*
NOCQUET:
Yes, Ishin-Denshin, that is it. You did not need to speak with Ueshiba. He said once: "It is not easy to get Aikido into the head of Nocquet".
Interviewer:
How did you understand what he said?
NOCQUET:
Via my interpreter. So, he asked how I should learn Aikido.
He replied: "I'll teach him when he sleeps, because then he cannot say anything and I can more easily penetrate his mind".
Interviewer:
When you got to Master Ueshiba's dojo in Tokyo, were you the only foreigner?
NOCQUET:
Yes, I can say that I was the first in the world to have been invited directly by Master Ueshiba in his own family.
Interviewer:
You lived with his family?
NOCQUET:
I was eating with the master and sleeping on the floor. The food was frugal, a lot of rice and fish.
I sometimes got giant urticaria because of the fish. The master would blow in my face and the next day it was gone. Funny, isn't it?
Interviewer:
How did he behave in intimacy? Was he someone who knows intimacy or was he always the same, regardless of the circumstances?
NOCQUET:
In private, Ueshiba considered all men, all his students, as his sons.
Interviewer:
Were there other students who stayed with him?
NOCQUET:
There were many Americans who came, but they did not sleep at the dojo. They came every now and then, sporadically. I was sleeping on the floor, waking up at 5 a.m. to clean the dojo with master Tamura.
Interviewer:
He now also teaches in France.
NOCQUET:
Yes, Masamichi Noro too. They were my favorite partners.
We were in the dojo for one hour in the morning and then the master would arrive and begin the lesson. We trained 5 hours a day. It was a bit of a hell for a Westerner like me. It was really hard.
Interviewer:
The pace was different?
NOCQUET:
The pace was different because the Japanese practice Aikido in a manner that is different from Europeans, because we are influenced by Descartes. We are Cartesians.
Interviewer:
We want to understand before doing something.
NOCQUET:
The Japanese do not. They have a global mind. We practiced the same movements for hours and hours. It frees the mind and it is transmitted to the body. It is the Zen aspect of Aikido. The Japanese practices, and when he has practiced a movement a thousand times, the mind is completely gone, it's over, and the body takes over. Whereas in Europe, we show a movement that the students practice. And all of the sudden they want to see another movement, and then another. They do not understand much that way.
Interviewer:
You mentioned the Zen in Aikido. Can you summarize the personal and spiritual journey of Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido?
NOCQUET:
Master Ueshiba was a man who could not walk until he was seven years old. He was very frail. So, he wanted to become strong, because he was also quite small. I am not a very tall man, but he was ten centimeters shorter than me, about 155 cm, no more. Gradually, through certain movements, he became stronger and stronger. In order to learn dodging, some students used to throw stones or beets at him, and he was trying to avoid all that. This is how Tai Sabaki was born. But the way of Ueshiba, not the spiritual route, but the physical one, was that he met many masters in all Japan.
Interviewer:
In Hokkaido, for example?
NOCQUET:
Yes, in Hokkaido too. But before that he went to many dojos. He wandered around. And when he saw a master at work, he immediately challenged him to see if he could beat him. He beat a lot of them and used to say: "I have nothing to learn from people I beat". One day in Hokkaido, he met a teacher named Takeda. It was behind an inn, in a small room.
He was surprised, that Takeda was doing a lot of dodging.
Interviewer:
How could he know that it was a master?
NOCQUET:
He had been told that he was a master from a certain school. Ueshiba saw him working and asked him immediately if he could fight against him. Then, something extraordinary happened. The small body of Ueshiba was thrown around sixty times in a few minutes. He had found his master and wanted to work with him. Takeda took him as student, but he taught him less than 5 minutes per day. The rest of the day he had to wash his master and prepare his meals. This is Japan. You do not pay, but you have to give yourself to the master. It does not happen in Europe.
Interviewer:
Today, even though you are yourself a master of Aikido, you do not convey the same education system, right?
NOCQUET:
I have been taught in the traditional Japanese way, but I try to transcend that, to do what is called ecumenism in religion. I try to merge the Japanese teaching with Cartesianism. But it is not easy.
Interviewer:
Going back to Ueshiba's journey, I think that he met someone from the Omoto sect.
NOCQUET:
Yes, he did many things. He went to Manchuria, he fought at war, he might even have killed. There were a lot of things. He was too short to do his military service. But he wrote letters in blood to the emperor and was able to do it after that. Ueshiba was an extraordinary man. Then he met at the Omoto-kyo a man named Deguchi who spoke of the principle of love between humans. That surprised a lot and delighted him.
His Aikido is a bit of that, but not completely. During a snowstorm in Hokkaido, his master Takeda became a little mad. He said: "Ueshiba, go out in the storm, there is an enemy waiting for me". Ueshiba went out, but saw nothing, there was no enemy. Takeda said: "I know, he is there". This is because Takeda had killed men. It was still the age of chivalry, almost medieval.
Ueshiba said: "If the Budo created by my master requires to kill, it is not true Budo". For him, a true Budo is the love of all people. Not to kill anyone, but to control men, that's all. Aikido is born this day through that feeling in that snowstorm in Hokkaido. I have a very important article that I could publish one day. It is by another Japanese master, but I have the permission to publish it.

Winter in Hokkaido

Interviewer:
Ueshiba created Aikido in 1923, didn't he?
NOCQUET:
He created Aikido through different stages. One cannot create something like Aikido in one step. It is impossible. It is a journey. There are French masters who prefer the Aikido practiced by Ueshiba when it was very hard, square techniques. Even though the master was working in a very round way at the end of his life. There is a path that the master took. There is always a path in everything we do.
Interviewer:
So it may be that in fact, Aikido was born at the death of Ueshiba.
NOCQUET:
Aikido was born, not at his death, but when he was about 75 years old.
Interviewer:
It was at about the same time, in 1959 I believe, that Aikido began to spread outside of Japan.
NOCQUET:
Yes, Aikido developed, because the Japanese sent many teachers to different parts of the world. I arrived in France in early 1959, after having taught in the United States for a while, to the police. I got here, I was alone. Master Tamura came in 1964.
Another Japanese expert, called Masamichi Noro, also very strong in Aikido, came. But he has since developed a slightly different approach called “Ki no michi”. It has very beautiful movements, but this is not the real teaching of Ueshiba.
We can say that it is Tamura, who I work with. We are friends and he was my partner in Tokyo. Master Tamura made me suffer a lot when I was in Tokyo. We repeated the same movement for an whole hour and sometimes, my shoulders would hurt a bit as a result.
Interviewer:
How can we define exactly Aikido? Going back to Japanese Kanji, DO is the way and AIKI is the search for harmony?
NOCQUET:
The Japanese master during his youth practiced many Japanese and extreme oriental martial arts. This allowed him to realize that most of them were aimed at destroying the enemy's aggression by destroying the enemy himself. This finding led him to think that there was a deficiency: the mental basis of these martial arts was violence. The big idea of the master was to destroy the aggressiveness of the opponent via making him fell that it was useless.
Interviewer:
This whole idea of non-aggression towards each other is part of an overall perspective of the universe itself, the origin of which happens to be explained in Aikido, when he explains the origin of matter and Ki, but yet you are telling in your book "Morihei Ueshiba, Presence and Message" that Aikido is not a religion.
NOCQUET:
No. Aikido is not a religion. One day I asked master Ueshiba: "You always say that Aikido is Love, isn't there a narrow link with Christianity?" He told me: "Yes, there is. But if you go to Europe, never say that Aikido is a religion". "If you practice Aikido well, you may become a better Christian." "But if a good Buddhist practices Aikido, he will also become a better Buddhist." Aikido is a way. It helps to better understand religions and philosophies, but it is in no case a religion.
Interviewer:
What is the influence of Zen in the foundation and the spirit of Aikido?
NOCQUET:
It is very simple. Ueshiba has always said that Aikido is Zen in action. It is obvious, that this is true, because we work in the moment, in the instant. So, there is an economy of gesture, while in a sport such as Judo, we are working in time, there is an effort in time. For us Aikidoka, there is an effort in the moment, and in the moment we do not get tired.
Interviewer:
Besides, you also say in your book that Aikido can help the warrior to wield his sword, but also the musician his bow, the architect his compass, the poet his pen, painter his brush.
NOCQUET:
Yes, I wrote that. But it did not come to me spontaneously. I wrote it and rewrote it, with time.

Books

Interviewer:
You talk about spiritual alertness. Is the goal of Aikido to reach refine this vigilance?
NOCQUET:
At the beginning, we should not really practice to much philosophy. Do not make it spiritual research. We must watch the body and perform many movements without thinking of this spiritual quest. Master Ueshiba said: "Aikido is 95% perspiration and 5% philosophy. By saying that, I have said everything. It means, that it takes a lot of practice. And once you have reached a third or fourth Dan grade in Aikido, you begin to address the spiritual aspect. I was often reading at Ueshiba's dojo. But the master told me: "No, Mr. Nocquet. Do not read. You have to practice more with your body. You do not practice enough." I told him that I was tired and he said: "It is meaningless for an Aikidoka to talk about being tired, tiredness does not exist." It took me a lot of time to write this book "Presence and Message".
Interviewer:
You were in Japan in the years 1955-59. And this book is now out in 1988. So, this is really the result of a lifetime of study, isn't it?
NOCQUET:
Yes, it is the fruit of a lifetime. And the next book I'll write, I'll call it the "Heart and Sword". Because when I left Japan, my teacher told me: "Project your heart rather than your sword." It is obvious that it is very important to project the heart. And we know that there is mediation between the heart, the organ, and the mind. I discussed with doctors and they told me "What you say is very symbolic". But I told them that it was from Claude Bernard, the great 19th century physiologist, who showed strong evidence, that the heart, the mind and the brain are together. This is why Aikido is a matter of the heart. But as soon as the heart does meditation, works with him, the man becomes good.
Interviewer:
You say that Aikido training is not only psychological, but it is a training of the whole person.
NOCQUET:
For me, the psychology of Aikido is to defeat the other before the other defeats us, to anticipate movements.
Interviewer:
Besides the opponent in Aikido is simply a relative strength, it is not an absolute opponent.
NOCQUET:
There is no opponent. If a man attacks, I consider that the man is inscribed in a sphere, as represented by Leonardo da Vinci. When the two spheres collide, it is Judo, because we hold each other. It does not happen in Aikido, because we do not hold each other. So, both my sphere and my partner's sphere are tangential. So, Aikido is the art of tangential action.
There is a beautiful picture to understand Aikido: Imagine a spider's web. This web is a circle and the spider stands in the center, waiting. Me too, in my circle, I wait. And when someone walks into it, I can act. I must wait until another attacks and gets into my circle.
Interviewer:
This is an individual practice.
NOCQUET:
Yes, it is an individual practice. Then, I turn around the opponent and in the principle of non-opposition, Yin and Yang become complementary. This is what people should understand.
Interviewer:
You say, that in France and the United States, in particular, there are some mistakes in the approach of Aikido as it is seen a self-defense, while for you, it is that not at all.
NOCQUET:
Aikido is an excellent self-defense. But it is not only that. But it is clear that in the street, if we are attacked, we can defend ourselves. There are still some atemi, which are strikes that can be used. It is not easy to make love with a man who has a weapon. Aikido is Love, but if a man attacks with a knife, he can kill you. So, you must disarm him. Then it is ok to strike a blow in vital areas that do not result in death. I love training with weapons. If a man has a weapon, a knife or a sword, I still consider weapons as an extension of the arm. I do not set my mind on the weapon. I see the whole man. I do not look at what he has in his hand.
Interviewer:
The movement.
NOCQUET:
Yes, the whole movement. Aikido is very beautiful. Young boys and women can practice it, because the falls are not brutal. More and more people practice Aikido, even if it does not grow as fast as Judo or Karate, because there is no competition. There is no competition possible in Aikido.
Interviewer:
How is this teaching of Aikido being transmitted? By disciples?
NOCQUET:
I have a lot of followers in France and Western Europe. I formed the European Aikido Union. There were about eleven nations. And amongst my best students, there are French people of course. But the most faithful, and those I love most, are the Germans. It is funny my dear lady. I am a former prisoner of war, I escaped. I fought against the Germans. And now I teach them Aikido. It is beautiful. I teach men where there was war and now there is no more war.
The other day I said to a German student: "If there was another war between us, what would you do?" I said it to Rolf Brand, who is the president. "I have a gun and you have gun, and we meet, there is a war between the two nations". He answered: "We put down our guns and we will do the movements of Aikido". I was very happy. It is great, don't you think? Love has no boundaries.

European Aikido Union

Interviewer:
In your book, you also talk of a hidden meaning of training. What do you mean?
NOCQUET:
Hidden meaning. It is not easy to explain. Aikido is practiced but not explained. It takes much practice of Aikido to understand the practice. But words do not work. They are useless. The hidden meaning is to overcome our aggressive nature, a lot of things in us that are bad.
Interviewer:
Is there a selection in the students who enter the dojo?
NOCQUET:
No, there is no selection. Students learn little by little. In general, people who are beginners are always taught by more advanced people, black belt, first or second Dan. We take care of beginners like that; they learn little by little. There is a path and it changes every ten year or so. A man, at the end of ten years, has realized something. I once asked Ueshiba: "Master, can I ask you a question?" He looked at me and said: "I cannot answer your question, because you are not ready to understand". I asked him when I would be ready and he said: "I will decide that myself." After two years, he taught me that thing I could not understand at first.
Interviewer:
To receive this teaching, you had to have an empty mind.
NOCQUET:
He said on day: "Your cup is full of coffee. Empty the coffee and let me pour my tea in it."
Interviewer:
I think he wanted a renewal of ideas, because there is another thing, he said: "If a cup is always full, the water stagnates. And for the water to be fresh, it must be emptied regularly". And "If your ears resound with the sound your own voice, how can you hear the divine harmonies?"
NOCQUET:
That is really a good quote that I did not even know.
Interviewer:
Do you think that the West can access this knowledge with no critical thinking?
NOCQUET:
Yes, I think that gradually Aikido could be united in the spirit that we are talking about now. And I hope that the world, and the world of Aikido will see a real unification. It's coming. The Doshu. who is the son of Master Ueshiba, is coming Europe, to France on March 31st to teach a seminar in Paris. I think he will make a speech on friendship, because the most important thing in Aikido is to develop friendship.

André Nocquet 1991