Shintaido
Founded by Hiroyuki Aoki, an actor, painter, and master of Shotokai karate, Shintaido was born in Yokohama in 1965.
There Mr. Aoki formed “Rakutenkai”, or “Meeting of Optimists.“ This group of approximately 30 people, including some of Japan’s top martial arts instructors and a variety of artists, musicians, actors, and men and women young and old, set out to create a new art — they did not yet know what — from their own ideals and sense of optimism. They practiced together every day and many nights to test their physical limitations and discover what Aoki sensei called “the unknown world which begins at the end of our psychological strength.”