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Author: Bret Gordon  Crest of the Kokuryukai The story of Daito Ryu Aiki Jujutsu, one of Japan’s most influential martial traditions and our parent art, cannot be separated from the turbulent political and spiritual climate of the early 20th century. It was an age when the boundaries between religion, politics, and organized violence were porous. Military officers, secret societies, spiritual sects, and criminal networks all operated in overlapping worlds, bound by shared ideals of loyalty, discipline, and devotion to the Emperor. Daito Ryu was formalized by Takeda Sokaku during Japan’s transformation from feudal isolation to imperial power. Many of his students came from military or nationalist backgrounds. For them, martial arts training was not sport or self-improvement; it was the embodiment of national strength and spiritual destiny. This mindset found natural allies among the ultranationalist movements of the time. Groups such as the Gen’yosha (“Dark Ocean Society”) and Kokuryukai* (“Black Dragon Society”) blended patriotism, espionage, and criminal enterprise. They sought to expand Japan’s influence across Asia through covert operations, political violence, and street-level intimidation with ties to the yakuza. Their members included former samurai, military officers, and organized-crime figures who saw themselves as “patriotic outlaws.”  Yoshida Kotaro, a well-known Daito Ryu instructor and journalist, was an active member of both the Gen’yosha and Kokuryukai. These groups operated at the intersection of nationalist ideology and organized crime. Their leaders worked with yakuza bosses who provided manpower and funding for political causes, forming the roots of what would later become the uyoku dantai, the loudspeaker-blaring right-wing groups that still drive through Tokyo in black trucks adorned with imperial flags. In addition to Yoshida, the Kokuryukai boasted numerous prominent martial artists among its members, including Doshin So (founder of Shorinji Kempo) and Kano Jigoro (founder of Kodokan Judo). Yoshida was also the one who introduced Ueshiba Morihei to Takeda, beginning a relationship that would span decades. Despite Aikido's reputation for peace and harmony, Ueshiba's political leanings were anything but peaceful and harmonious. Through his deep association with Omoto-kyo, the spiritual sect led by Onisaburo Deguchi, Ueshiba came into contact with many of these right-wing circles. Omoto-kyo combined mysticism, emperor worship, and utopian visions of Japan’s divine mission, beliefs that resonated with nationalist radicals.  Deguchi (founder of Omoto Kyo), Toyama (founder of Gen'yosha) and Uchida (founder of Kokuryukai) In the early 1930s, the Sakurakai (“Cherry Blossom Society”), a secret group of young army officers led by Kingoro Hashimoto, held meetings at Ueshiba’s Kobukan Dojo in Tokyo, and he reportedly provided personal security for Hashimoto. The Sakurakai’s goal was direct action: to purge government corruption through a military coup and restore Japan’s imperial purity. Ueshiba himself even participated in one attempt to overthrow the Japanese government. Their goal was to install (after a number of assassinations) a military dictatorship under General Sadao Araki (a student of Ueshiba) that would more vigorously prosecute the war in China and the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Ueshiba continued with this ideology into the 1960's, when he would declare that the nations of the world ought to relinquish their sovereignty and gather around Japan and the Japanese Imperial family, which was his conception of world peace, harmony under the Japanese Empire. These feelings were not isolated to Ueshiba himself. After the war, he would appoint Hakuro Kohinata to the Aikikai board of directors. During his tenure, Hakuro would participate in many right wing ultra-nationalist activities, including the formation of the Nihon Seinensya, which remains today one of the largest radical right wing ultra-nationalist groups in Japan. The Nihon Seinensya was established under the umbrella of the Sumiyoshi-kai yakuza family, and was tied to the famous yakuza fixer Yoshio Kodama, another right wing ultra-nationalist active after the war (who was briefly imprisoned as a war criminal).
The ties of high-ranking Daito Ryu instructors to ultra-nationalist groups and secret societies don't end with Yoshida and Ueshiba. One of Daito Ryu's senior branches, the Kodokai, led by Horikawa Kodo, counted among its patrons Ishida Kazuto, founder of the Nihon wo Mamoru Kai (“Association to Protect Japan”), and the 5th Chief Justice of Japan.
Given the close relationship between Ishida and Horikawa, including their frequent travels together and Ishida’s formal position as honorary chairman of the Kodokai, it is almost certain that other senior Kodokai shihan, such as Okamoto Seigo (founder of the Roppokai), Inoue Yusuke (Horikawa's successor), and Nakamura Eiji (who would later serve as Secretary General of the Kodokai), were not only well-acquainted with him but also deeply connected to his network. Their proximity to both Horikawa and Ishida would have naturally placed them within the same ideological and social circles that bridged martial arts, nationalism, and political activism during that period.
Ishida's Nihon wo Mamoru Kai was not merely a patriotic society but part of a broader ideological network that would eventually evolve into Nippon Kaigi, today the most influential conservative lobby in Japan. Nippon Kaigi's membership includes high-ranking politicians, religious leaders, and business elites who advocate for constitutional revision, the restoration of traditional imperial values, and a revisionist view of Japan's wartime history. The ideological lineage of groups like the Nihon wo Mamoru Kai thus represents a continuous thread connecting the prewar and postwar nationalist movements, often with quiet support from martial arts circles seeking legitimacy and influence. Although Nippon Kaigi presents itself today as a respectable movement focused on cultural preservation and national pride, historians note that Japan's postwar right wing was rebuilt through the same overlapping networks that once linked politicians, business elites, and the yakuza. Even the assassination of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a member of Nippon Kaigi, grew out of connections to the yakuza. These connections were deliberate, quietly supported by Japanese and American intelligence during the early Cold War to counter communism. In this climate, former extremists were reframed as patriotic traditionalists, and organized crime groups became unofficial enforcers of political stability. Some individuals involved in these activities were later forced to flee Japan and adopt new identities, even into the 1980s. The convergence of these forces produced a peculiar ecosystem where patriotism, religion, and criminal enterprise overlapped with surprising ease. Martial arts organizations, many of which had strong nationalistic roots from the prewar era, became convenient cultural facades for ideological networking. Publicly, they promoted discipline, character, and cultural heritage. Privately, they offered access to political patrons and channels of funding. As a result, the world of budo was not immune to the undercurrents shaping Japan's postwar identity. It was, in many ways, a quiet participant in the rebuilding of the nation's right-wing infrastructure. The story of Daito Ryu's most prominent figures is inseparable from the turbulent undercurrents of Japan’s modern history, a web woven from ultra-nationalism, paramilitary networks, and secret societies that shaped the nation's identity before and after the war. What began as a martial tradition of refined technique and subtle internal power became, through its leaders and patrons, entangled with the machinery of ideology and influence that defined Japan's right-wing resurgence. Daito Ryu's history and legacy cannot be understood in isolation from these forces. Rather than diminishing the art, this context reveals its profound integration into Japan's social and political fabric, a reminder that martial arts have always been more than systems of combat. They are reflections of the times and people that shape them: vessels for ideals, instruments of power, and symbols of identity. To study Daito Ryu in its fullness is therefore to confront the complex intersection of budo and belief, discipline and ideology, loyalty and nationalism, a mirror of Japan itself in the 20th century. *The Kokuryukai founded by Uchida Ryohei is not to be confused with the Black Dragon Fighting Society made famous by people such as Count Dante, Frank Dux, and William Aguilar. The Kokuryukai was officially disbanded in 1946, and there are no verifiable links to the BDFS.
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