On this occasion we met Doshu as Kisshomaru Sensei and not as Doshu. He always remembered me and talked about aikido friends we both knew. One of his great anxieties was the international development of aikido which he had done so much to promote, and on several occasions Doshu charged me with keeping the I.A.F. to the true Way, as taught by the Founder. Although the I.A.F. is a large organisation and I am sure that he did not intend to single me out alone, I felt this keenly, almost as a personal responsibility which he gave me, and one which it will be very difficult to discharge. I think he deeply felt the divisions and discord within the aikido world and grieved very much at the split between himself and Koichi Tohei, for example.
Aikido tends to be presented as a seamless garment, but the reality is somewhat different.
Divisions have been endemic in the martial arts and the splits within aikido began to appear even in O Sensei's own lifetime. However, I think that Doshu felt that discord somehow sullied the treasure which he had received from O Sensei and which he had made it his life's work to pass on. My last meeting with Doshu was in the summer of 1998 in Tokyo. We had an I.A.F. meeting and I went to pay a brief visit to his house. He invited me to sit down and wanted to have a conversation.