My first experience of Kanai Sensei was in my first day of classes. During kokyu ho, he came by and seated himself to practice with me. He grasped my wrists and I tried to move him, and it was hopeless. I struggled for a minute or so, and started to relax, and he said, “Don’t give up! Don’t give up!” So I resumed struggling fruitlessly, and after another minute or so I started to relax again, and again he said, “Don’t give up! Don’t give up!” I started again, and after a little time he graciously rolled over. Then it was my turn to grasp his wrists. It was a strange sensation: he had these enormous thick wrists from decades of sword work and Aikido, starting in his early youth. They felt like iron bars wrapped in foam rubber. I grasped his wrists, rose into the air, and landed on my back a few feet away without feeling why. I was convinced! In my last (30th) year of practice, I finally was able to make people rise like that sometimes, but I never integrated it into that sort of throw. I’ve never felt that from anybody else, either.
I made it a point to not bother Kanai Sensei unless I had a medical problem or something that
might interest him. He was tired of people asking him what ki was and other foolish questions. When I had to drive him a couple of hours each way to Smith College one day, I was racking my brains for something to converse about that might be new to him. Finally, I asked him: “Sensei, what do you hate the most about teaching Aikido?” He got a big smile on his face and said (roughly), “I hate it when they ask a question, and they don’t understand me but won’t tell me that. They just say ‘Yes, Sensei’ and continue to misunderstand.”
Omar Rayyan, an artist and Aikidoist from Martha’s Vinyard, made a splendid painting of Kanai Sensei throwing a demon on a bridge in irimi nage. He very kindly provided me with a copy. As I was heading to the framing shop with the picture, I walked past a restaurant and saw Kanai Sensei and two other senseis eating there. I went in and said, “Guess what I’ve got here.” When I showed him the picture, he said, “Oh! That’s me throwing you!” Those were the last words he ever said to me; he died the next weekend in Canada.
