Shintaido Information

Shintaido was developed in Japan in the 1960s. Several students of karate master Shigeru Egami, the head of the Shotokai school, formed their own school not bound by the limitations of traditional martial arts. This group, called Rakutenkai ("meeting of optimists"), was organized by Mr. Hiroyuki Aoki. Trained as an actor and artist, he had attained a 5th-degree black belt in Shotokai Karate and was Egami's top student. His generation was marked by the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the Rakutenkai group aimed to transform the wisdom of ancient traditions into a contemporary idiom. The new movement discipline they developed was later named Shintaido, and many non-Japanese who studied it eventually brought it back to their home countries. Shintaido of America was founded in 1975 by Haruyoshi F. Ito and Michael Thompson.