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Hirokazu Kobayashi (1929 - 1998) was a Japanese aikido teacher and student of the founder of aikido Morihei Ueshiba. At 35 he became the youngest person awarded 8th dan rank by the founder. Already by the age of 7 years he was studying karate, kendo and Judo. At 16 he was stationed as a kamikaze pilot on an aircraft carrier. When it came to his deployment a technical defect prevented his airplane from joining his flight. The remaining members of his flight died. Before he could come to the next "last deployment", the aircraft carrier was torpedoed by a submarine and sank. Kobayashi was one of few survivors. After four days in the water badly injured he was saved. He had held fast during the entire time to wood planks and barrels. In 1946 his karate teacher gave him a recommendation letter for Morihei Ueshiba. With this letter he went to Tokyo, in order to learn the martial art aikido. Kobayashi was friendly with Morihiro Saito, with which he shared the role of uke to Ueshiba. During the aikido training if Saito was mostly requested as uke, then Kobayashi followed with the sword. For this reason Kobayashi felt always extremely connected to aikiken. Kobayashi described the long time at Ueshiba's side not only as uke, but also outside of the dojo as company of the impulsive aikido founder, as extremely hard. In Tokyo Kobayashi stayed altogether about nine years. In 1954 he moved to Osaka. Morihei Ueshiba was nearly each month in Osaka, in order to hold ten-daily training courses. According to Ueshiba 10 days at a time is the optimum in order to learn and understand aikido. From 1957 Kobayashi trained full-time in aikido. If he did not accompany Ueshiba, he taught at universities in Osaka and Kobe. In 1964 he was awarded 8th dan. In this year he was asked by Ueshiba for the first time to teach aikido in Europe. Until 1996 Kobayashi visited Europe each year for several weeks. He gave regular training courses in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands. In 1982, Kobayashi set up the Autonomous Academy of Aikido Kobayashi Hirokazu (3AKH) with his student Andre Cognard and set up several schools in France to propagate the Kobayashi aikido style. The Autonomous Academy of Aikido now belongs to Kokusai Aikido Kenshukai Kobayashi Hirokazu Ha, a school created in 1998 whose vocation is to diffuse and to develop Aikido of Kobayashi.
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