Mitsugi Saotome

Mitsugi Saotome (五月女貢, Saotome Mitsugi^?) (born March 7, 1937) is a Japanese aikido instructor currently living in the United States.

Mitsugi Saotome is a master in the martial art of aikido and was a direct disciple of the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba.

At the age of 16, Saotome began his martial arts training in judo. At the age of 18, he entered the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo in order to train under Ueshiba. He became an uchi-deshi in 1958 and trained there for a total of 15 years until his teacher's death in 1969.

Saotome began teaching at the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in 1960. He was very well respected as an instructor, receiving many honors. He obtained the title of shihan and ultimately was appointed a senior instructor. As a senior instructor in Aikido he was the Chief Weapons Instructor at Hombu. He held that position until 1975.

At this time Saotome began to give great thought and meditation as to his future purpose. After many days of consideration, he was said to have felt the hand of divine spiritual intervention. This was instrumental in his decision to relocate to the United States. He felt that the US was at a point of development that embraced new ideas, and that this would be an ideal environment to spread the message of peace and harmony implicit in the study of aikido.

When asked about his decision to move to the US, Saotome said "I meditated on Ōsensei's spirit for three days and three nights and I felt it was his wish that I should go. This country is a great experiment, a melting pot of people from many different cultural backgrounds living together, the world condensed into one nation. The goal of aikido and Ōsensei's dream is that all the peoples of the world live together as one family, in harmony with each other and with their environment. The United States has the opportunity to set a great example."

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