11/10/2026
Murashigei Sensei’s spirit is a big part of our dojo. Thank you Yahe Sensei for sharing these memories.
Murashigei Sensei
I remember M.”Mark”Murashigei Sensei teaching this exercise where you enter directly in and off line to a Shomenuchi cut with a Bokken in
noon class back at a time and a place where I was as young as my two students here who are just beginning their path.
It’s a little advanced for a beginner in a way as it involves a weapon, but not if you look at it from another angle, namely one of True Faith.
I recall sitting next to Norman Wight on multiple occasions before his class and him leaning over and saying to me “my right hip is aching,which means that we’re going to be doing Swari Waza Shomenuchi Ikkyo for 20 minutes, I can just tell”. Deadpan face and flat toned as Normas delivery always was.I can only assume Normans right hip always hurt him is Marks class always did begin with 20 minutes or so of Swari Waza Shomenuchi Ikkyo.
Something to know about both faith and the faithful would be that faith is not pure if expressed too purely, but to attain it’s crystalline essence needs be bathed in the quality and add mixture of the very human quality which is inhabited by all of us.
In this ilk,after the initial benediction of Swari Waza Shomenuchi Ikkyo,basically anything could happen. A couple memorable ones would be a rolled up newspaper to simulate being mugged with a gun or knife from behind, along with several possible techniques which could occur from either rotation. Another one was instructions to us all about how to prevail in a street fight when being attacked. “Don’t look at their eyes or their hands, look at the area around their Adam’s apple, it will tighten up right when they’re about to come at you”
Mark himself worked his whole life as a full-time sushi chef at his brother Victor‘s restaurant and had the easy-going fun social atmosphere that came with it. Even on the mat, it always felt like he was about to hand you another b**r as he did what ever off beat technique he did to you and mumbled some little incomprehensible advice to you out of the side of his mouth while turning away,half in English half in Japanese...or something. Not that it mattered,after all it was all just b**r talk over martial arts.Right?
I often felt the entire lack comprehension to his classes and presence as key to grasping the essence of what he was teaching,and It took something to do that.
The afternoon in question I was working with a beginner whose name escapes me now as do many things, but I remember that the guy kept forgetting which hand went forward on the Bokken left or right. I remember noticing that, but not bothering to correct him as I tended to just allow beginners to do things as they saw them which gave me the opportunity to adjust myself accordingly. Mark however failed to see the humor in that and along with correcting my partner over this detail shot me an offhanded disapproving glance as he turned away for not doing this earlier. If his faith had no limits apparently it did have some boundaries to which I was now being introduced.
The other thing I remember is that this one exercise went on for a while, like half the class or so, and I remember wondering to myself what utility it had and was it really necessary to do it for this long. Yet along with this came a remembrance of who he was, son of the famous martial artist and swordsman Aritoshi Murashigei, Who served in the Japanese Imperial Army as an executioner. Chiba sensei told us one time that when his dad walked into a room little babies stopped crying and barking dogs got real quiet and ran away. Mark told us one time that his dad used to take him out on the town and make him pick fights with whoever he selected.” In the beginning I didn’t win very much, but I got better as time went on to where eventually I stopped losing all together“This sense of his hid just under the jovial surface and even to the uninformed would easily inform anyone that if push did come to shove he would not lose, ever, in the real world against well… anything, it just would not happen. All of this balled up into an understanding I had of him which informed my faith in what he was teaching to quickly override my initial sentiment about the dogma of what we were doing.
He had this interesting position around the dojo that was part good cop,part big brother and part something else and we used to see it mostly at the times it was needed. Such times would include occasions where Chiba sensei would be at dinner and begin to grow a tail and horns while banging a soy sauce bottle on the table all the while building into losing his s**t at Ismail and I over some random misstep we had made. It rarely made much sense and was half for effect,but at any rate was a close cousin of that trait of his we called brilliance which was the very thing that kept us around the dinner table in the first place, or at any rate seated until we’ve had our fill of whatever admixture it was he was serving up in our lives at that time.
At times like this Mark would grab a hold of Chiba sensei and lead him out the door all the while admonishing him “OK, time for you to go to bed,I’m going to take care of these guys and set them straight.""Don’t worry about them I’ve got this, nighty night“ and physically lead him out the door, and up the stairs to his room literally tucking him in like a little kid who had just kind of had enough of the day and needed to sleep. It was funny as hell and a nice detergent to cut the absolute insane atmosphere which moments before threatened to roll into a volcano and do us all in.
The tone of his promise of assistance to Chiba Sensei was one that presented itself as a deep spiritual mentorship to us in the manner of say a Yoda or Socrates type of experience. This never happened. Instead his lectures to us centered on street fighting for the most part, and how to win one. “Put your back foot off to the side and wait, if they come fine, if they don’t fine, either way is OK, but if they do,just shift off to the side, see?“ It’s easy!”
It Absolutely never had anything to do with anything even remotely related to whatever had caused Chiba Sensei to start chomping on
a glass b**r bottle. It was just him telling us something about something he knew which was streetfighting and then being able to tell Chiba Sensei he had “Talked to us and set us straight”
There was one time however after one such occasion(yes they seemed to happen more than I’d like to admit). He’d been giving us the usual lecture about his practical take on martial arts and he stopped and got real quiet and I felt him shifting gears.” You know Yahe, Aikido is about two things technique and Alpha and Chiba sensei wants you to get both of these things and that’s why he does the things he does and acts this way.“ He really wants you to get something. Its not just technique, alpha has to be there.“ He didn’t explain alpha and I didn’t ask, it’s something that needs not be done and such questions are solved by other means.
One time during a particularly nasty such “learning occasion” Mrs. Chiba poignantly suggested I go and talk to him. It was the old routine and methodology of solving problems which couldn’t be solved, but at least allowed her to casually mention to her husband that “Yahe went and talked to Mark” and possibly put a somewhat mellowing agent upon the absolute tempest Chiba sensei was in the process of brewing up. One which would likely do the both of us in but was nonetheless something he was committed to on principle. Or something.
I remember Marks house as very clean and quiet and we just kind of hung out a while and talked about a little bit of nothing by way of taking a break from the world right then. I didn’t feel like the topic of street fighting even came up but I could be wrong.
At one point he looked at me and said; “You know, in my lifetime I feel very lucky that I got to work as a chef and serve people food as there as much love in this work, yet I sometimes wish I could be a farmer as it’s closer to nature, more original and has more love “I didn't know such things were in him, although this was more my own deal of just not thinking about it.Of course they were. Here was a man who was everyone’s friend and really did wish everyone well, try to help everyone and more than this enjoy them,all of them. This in spite of or possibly in concert with his ability to beat pretty much anyone’s asses if need be.
That was many years ago and he’s been gone for quite a time now but I had him in mind or felt him around when I was doing this exercises with my two young people just starting out.It was a cool night with only a slight breeze rippling through the pines around us, but I could feel him there smiling and wishing my young people well, on their path. True faith, his,all of ours that should keep us close to something original and basic and close to love.
