Boston Shinkendo Toxic Sensei

When you first read the title of this post you initial reaction may be "Oh lord" not another internet rant about some a-hole Sensei with a serious bout of dojo derangement syndrome from some whiny student with an ax to grind...

Well the initial response to that thought would be YES, yes there are definitely some elements of that in this post.

However, rather than being a simple rant, the intention of this thread is more along the lines of understanding the warning signs from martial arts instructors who exhibit seriously bizarre behavioral issues, and what that does for studying martial arts in general.

Ok, ok... I fully get that perhaps that seems like a veiled way of ranting and raving from the vantage point of some "moral high ground" and I fully concede that would be a fair assumption for the reader without any first hand knowledge.

So rather than attempt to sell anyone on my sole view of this story, I leave it to each individual reader to assess my motivations based upon what you learn from this series of posts.

I can say that every situation described in what you are about to read, ACTUALLY happened and any area that can't be factually validated via witness statements, or other fact based material will be noted as speculative on my part.

The key to credibility is truth and honesty, there is no substitute.

So with said, let me also state with FULL DISCLOSURE, that I myself can be a bit of a drama queen in my own way, although my flair for drama tends more towards the sarcastic/humorous side, rather than any deranged megalomania.

But I will acknowledge that what may be humorous to me can also be viewed as antagonistic by others. So there is no way I can honestly say I don' share some level of culpability.

I most certainly do.

How much culpability.... you decide.

So strap yourself in, this is gonna be one helluva story!

Where it began

Boston Shinkendo is an ISF licensed dojo located in the Boston Chinatown district, and run by a man we will refer to in this post as "little shaffee". (no last names will be published out of respect for family).

The dojo itself is small, but clean and quaint, with an air of antiquity that has its own unique charm. The volume of students varies every few months, but the core base of students, who have been training for over a year is roughly seven, augmented by ancillary newbies that come and go.

Little shaffee is a man in his early 50's, a small framed guy, a bit frail to look at, who has been training in Shinkendo somewhere between 15-20 years. His personal Shinkendo skills are fairly decent, his cuts are fluid and clean, foot work and timing is good, and his overall technique while not perfect, is respectable.

His teaching and leadership skills on the other hand leave a lot to be desired, (more details on that later in the post).

Little shaffee likes to portray the Boston Dojo which he named "Soshinkan" as a traditional Japanese dojo, and he is quite adept at doing the "Dojo Dog & Pony Show" when new students come to watch, and to be fair there are some traditional culture aspects integrated into the dojo, but these are only surface level activities and nothing of any substance.

Little shaffee loves to tout the concept of "tanren" philosophy in the dojo but nothing could be further from the truth. Tanren is usually translated as training, but it is more than simple training; It is the process of making oneself malleable to instruction, and homogenizing all aspects of what a student learns and leading to a purer final result.

However, little shaffees version of Tanren, is basically this in a nutshell (my own paraphrasing):

I will be utterly inconsistent in training structure and curriculum, I will not follow through on anything I say I will do for more than a week or two, and you must understand that this chaos and confusion is all to help you become a better Shinkendo student, and this is how Kaiso believes you should be trained.

----WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!!!!

"Kaiso" being Toshishiro Obata the founder of International Shinkendo who's name is constantly invoked by little shaffee whenever he is trying to persuade or manipulate the student body into believing they need to do more to support Shinkendo.

*By the way, doing more for Shinkendo really means, some menial task to promote his own personal interests that he's to lazy to do himself.

Of course there is always some goofy new student, you know, the "Boot Licker" type, that is ready and willing to be the dojo mascot of the month, and that's fine but the rest of the class doesn't need to be belittled and guilt tripped by such manipulative machinations and behavior. (yet this happens weekly at Boston Shinkendo).

Little shaffees Shinkendo past is also a checkered one.

He began in the NY Dojo under Sensei Lou. Sensei Lou is a well respected Sensei and honorable member of the Shinkendo community.

Apparently the two had a falling out and since I won't speculate on aspects I have not personally validated, I won't attempt to describe the nature of the dispute.

We do know that at one point little shaffee was forced to take a leave of absence from Shinkendo and has in my opinion, been trying to ass-kiss his way back into the good graces of Shinkendo leadership ever since.

So what do I mean by "ass-kissing" his way back into good graces?

I'll explain... little shaffee likes to portray his relationship with the Obata family as if he is some long lost son, loved by the family and well respected.

Well based upon what was observed by the Boston students when we visited with Obata at a seminar in Los Angeles, nothing is further from the truth.

We saw Kaiso Obata barely gave him the time of day, rather he spent a lot of time communing with the other "actually respected" sensei's who attended the seminar.

So little shaffee being the political schemer that he is, turned his focus to Yukishiro Obata.

Kaiso's son and Soke of Shinkendo world wide.

But to what end? Why all the political ass kissing and games? What does he hope to gain?

Well, little shaffee has this dream of being the "east cost" leader of Shinkendo in the USA, basically the go-too guy on the east coast.

Currently his former teacher Sensei Lou who runs a serious dojo in NYC, and has a large body of students that play a strong role in promoting ISF. He is the one who is a viewed as the senior regional leader by most of the higher ranking Senseis

Cheesy Motivations

More than anything many feel, little shaffee wants to be that guy!

So with Yukishiro Obata now running the ISF operations, and leadership, little shaffee has been waging a constant butt kissing campaign designed to make Yuki see him as a valuable leader in Shinkendo.

Everything that little shaffee does in the dojo appears designed to butt kiss to Yuki, for example, with the recent corona pandemic, little shaffee staged this virtual training session using video conferencing, no real sword training occurred, just some foot work and basics, but you can bet your ass little shaffee took a screen shot of the video conf. and plastered it all over the Boston Shinkendo Facebook page, so he can show Yuki what a "thought leader" he is, and how Boston Shinkendo is doing its part to fight the pandemic

LMAO, this stunt was so cheesy it resembled one of those McDojo karate schools sending out happy meal posts to all the parents of his kids class so they can praise him for being so nice.

Cheesy beyond belief! -But that example is only one of a thousand!

I will say this, having met Yukishiro and spent a couple of days learning from him, I found him to be an extremely intelligent, witty, and genuine guy. I find it VERY hard to imagine he would be duped by such flagrant cheese-ball like ass kissing that comes his way from people like little shaffee.

Behavior in the dojo

Most martial artists have either heard of, or had some bad dojo experience if they have been training for some time. These usually take the form of some overly aggressive instructor berating or belittling his students, and the Boston Shinkendo dojo has not been immune from this, many of its students have experienced this very thing for years.

For years you may ask? So why would you stay there for years if the sensei was such a raving nutball?

Well the answer is simple, there is no other licensed Shinkendo dojo in the New England area. So if you have time and investment in learning Shinkendo and you live in Boston, you are either stuck with little shaffee or your shit out of luck.

This is a truly unfortunate reality for Shinkendo students and Yukishiro Obata and ISF should consider licensing other dojos so students can learn in a true TANREN way, and not the bullshit little shaffee version.

In addition to this unfortunate reality, the core group of serious students had developed close friendships, attending dinners and parties at each others homes, restaurants, and other get together's.

This friendship was clearly despised by little shaffee. A man who needs to control all aspects of his students lives.... for example:

As a way of extending dojo outside of the physical school, little shaffee setup a WHATSAPP chat group. It was supposed to be a way to keep each other informed of any class updates, or issues, but soon descended into nothing more than people posting they will be late, or silly fist bump emojis and posts like #BRING IT over and over.

When the students setup their own non-dojo WhatsApp chat group for their non-dojo related conversations, he had a fit saying we must include everyone in our private group... I guess the notion of private is lost on this guy.

Every now and then little shaffee would try to post some pro shinkendo bulletin in his dojo chat group, that would be met by a chorus of "boot licker" responses from the newbies, thanking him endlessly for being their new god. (Which of course he ate up).

However, the students who had been around little shaffee for a while, well they knew better. They have experienced him YELLING and SCREAMING at the top of his lungs as his own kids, for 20 minutes straight in the middle of class, while having to stand there and witness this in silence and discomfort.

They were the ones to intervene when he chose to verbally attack a female student, a respected member of the class whom for some reason he decided was being belligerent, and disrespectful just because her facial reactions didn't display fear and awe of him.

He berated her, verbally humiliated her and threatened to kick her out of the dojo, all for reasons he never truly articulated. (other than her facial expressions).

Well the rest of the student body intervened on her behalf and made the peace, he agreed to let her back, but then proceeded to sadistically subject this poor girl to a series of ongoing humiliations. Including forcing her to write a letter of apology, and attend class for a few weeks while sitting on the bench embarrassed and ashamed.

But being a true warrior she invoked her inner Samurai, sucked it up and persevered, however she is the first to admit the student/teacher relationship has never been the same.

There was another time, when little shaffee was abusing this same female student in his typical voracious way, that another student, a woman in her 70s, (Yes I did say 70s)...

She broke down in tears, yelling at little shaffee to stop it, that he couldn't treat people that way.

It was her outcry finally forced loony little shaffee to back off.

The rest of us wimpy Shinkendo students did nothing to stop him.... Something I will be ashamed of for the rest of my life!

But Jeeeeez! I mean talk about Napoleon complex and megalomania!

Is this what the International Shinkendo Federation promotes?

I think not, I hope not!

I can't imagine Kaiso, or Yuki tolerating such behavior, and certainly can't imagine the other Shinkendo Sensei's having any respect at all for little shaffee when they learn about this one.

They don't have to take my word or this blog post as gospel, they can simply ask the people involved directly.

No one is going to lie for little shaffee.

I hope for the sake of all Shinkendo students that they look into the matter.

...continued in Part 2. Horror at Honbu Dojo

Also, please read my Blog post on SHINKENDO HERE <- this is relevant to later chapters in the series

*This will be the end of Part 1, the upcoming posts in the series will include the following:

Part 2. Horror at Honbu (the insane events that happened when the Boston Shinkendo dojo attended a seminar in LA) I think Kaiso will be mortified!

Part 3. Don't be a Boot-Licker (What really lead me to share these truthful experiences at Boston Shinkendo, and the adverse affect they have on the art itself).