I would appreciate that this Saku Aikidô News - Cosmos, which was launched three years ago looking forward to the day Aikidô Saku Dôjô come true, has accomplished successfully its initial role with the previous issue reporting the Dôjô's inauguration ceremony on April 30, 1995. I hope that Cosmos will now take the second step according to the Dôjô's founding ideas, by carrying more useful information and interesting topics. That is, to promote full use of Saku Dôjô and to serve Aikidô development from a global point of view.

"Once you are past forty, you have the face you deserve."

"Mind asks for a form and the form enhances the mind."

Thoughts and knowledge will go beyond the stage of only logical arguments, and gradually grow to intuitive ones, which enable them to be in realities. What we have thought and how we have learnt are all written in our faces, not in literature. It is to be desired that thoughts and knowledge will appear in every move we make. If one's look and nature, words and behavior, and thoughts and knowledge are separated with each other, then he had come yet only the halfway. Kong Futsi (Confucius) has described his process of perfection in personality as he grew older; "I aspired to be a scholar when I was fifteen, established myself at thirty, and had no doubts at forty. I realized my vocation at the age of fifty and could listen to anybody at sixty. At seventy, having my own way, I have never gone too far." Also in Huainan Tsi, a book of old China, we find expressions; "to know the faults for 49 years at the age of 50," and "make the sixtieth change of yourself at sixty." Getting as much old as sixty, we tend to stick to where we are, to become rigid physically, psychologically, and in personality as a whole. The book said those who learn the Tao should make progress in themselves as their ages do. I have always been practicing Aikidô as a way to establish and to realize myself. The way seems too far, so I think I need another strong and continuing effort more than ever. (January,1996)