Edward Hagihara
Founder, 8th Dan Shihan
(1935–2023)
Edward Hagihara was born on March 29, 1935, in New York City to Japanese immigrant parents. His mother had been born in Hawaii and held American citizenship, which allowed the family to settle in the United States. When he was five years old, with war looming and fearing her children would be sent to a US internment camp, his mother brought him and his brother to live with their grandparents in Hiroshima. She then took the last boat back to the United States before the war broke out to rejoin their father. The brothers remained there through the war, surviving the atomic bomb, and returned to New York in 1948.
At seventeen, his father introduced him to Judo, which he practiced seriously, eventually reaching third dan. Searching for something that integrated more of the spiritual dimension, he discovered Aikido through a book by Koichi Tohei. In the late 1950s, he found Yasuo Ohara, a student of Tohei who was teaching Aikido informally while studying at Columbia University, and became his second student.
From that beginning, a group formed that would become the New York Aikikai—the first Aikido dojo in the continental United States. Hagihara was one of seven founding members, along with his wife at the time Virginia Mayhew, Barry Bernstein, Fred Krase, and Ralph Glanstein.
In 1963, Hagihara traveled to Japan to train at Hombu Dojo. He studied under O’Sensei, Tohei Sensei (then Head of the Instructors’ Staff), Kisshomaru Ueshiba, and instructors who would become legends—Yamaguchi, Tada, Osawa, Arikawa. The uchideshi of that era—Tamura, Yamada, Sugano, Chiba, Saotome—were his daily training partners. He often served as Tohei Sensei’s demonstration partner, both in Japan and later in America.
During his time in Japan, Hagihara received word that he was needed back in New York. When O’Sensei learned he was returning, he summoned him and said: “Go to New York, and teach my Aikido.”
He returned to find Yoshimitsu Yamada had established himself at the New York Aikikai. Hagihara stepped aside and founded the Long Island Aikikai—the second Aikido dojo in the continental United States. He taught there for nearly sixty years, until shortly before his death on October 13, 2023, at the age of eighty-eight. At the time of his passing, he was the longest-running Aikido instructor in the United States.
Hagihara was present at pivotal moments in Aikido’s development but never sought recognition for any of it. He minimized his accomplishments and highlighted those of others. His teaching emphasized love and compassion as the essential qualities of a good teacher. He believed Aikido could profoundly change someone—that it would take patience, but it was possible.
Over the decades, many of his students went on to become teachers themselves. Today, virtually every traditional Aikido dojo on Long Island can trace its roots back to him.
His successor is Adam Pilipshen, his last apprentice, who now leads the Long Island Aikikai.