Aikidoman

Thanks to the Finnish Aikido Association, Finland Aikikai r.y. ,which enabled translating the document into English
with the help of the translator Kati Karvonen.

Kari Pohjasniemi, 5th Dan Shidoin, worked as a teacher in Southern Finland. His roots, however, were in Southern Bothnia so after his retirement he bought an old village shop in the village of Kontiainen in Alavus and started to build an aikido hall there.

At the beginning of this documentary we travel around Alavus. Kari's and the director's fathers were shopkeepers who moved around almost every year. Eventually we end up in Seinäjoki where these two school boys became fast friends. Later they both ended up as school teachers. Here we have thoughts about their profession and about the advice Kari always kept on this classroom wall: do the right thing, not the wrong one.

Building an aikido hall was a big challenge. It required the neighbour's compressor to help with the demolition and some pig farm ventilation equipment for heating. Little by little the cold storage room of the old shop became a comfortable training space.
Whilst heating the sauna Kari ponders the philosophy of aikido and the mysterious concept of qi. He also tries to choose a good Finnish name for his dojo, Shoo-lin-kan (literally ”the training hall of the big pine tree”).
Kari teaches aikido all over Finland and has guided training sessions in his own dojo for several years, but only recently have the people in the surrounding area realised that there is such a nice hobby available locally. The film follows an enthusiastic group of beginners who started aikido two months earlier.

The film has received a grant from the Alfred Kordelin Foundation's Seinäjoki fund. The grant was meant for this film and a project called ”52 tanka poems from Seinäjoki”. The premiere featured a few videos from Pentti Syrjälä's online poetry book.
After the premiere the film is available on tankaman.weebly.com.