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Yoshinkan (養神館, Yōshinkan, lit. House for Cultivating the Spirit) is a style of Aikido founded by Gozo Shioda (1915-1994) after World War II. It is occasionally called a hard style because the training methods are a product of the grueling period that Shioda spent as a student of Morihei Ueshiba.
Yoshinkan Aikido has some 150 basic techniques which are practiced repeatedly: these enable the student to master the remaining ones, which total some 3000 overall. The syllabus contains no weapons training. Like many styles of Aikido, Yoshinkan eschews competition; instead, it emphasizes self defense applications. Yoshinkan aikido is one of the martial arts that has been taught to the Tokyo police.
Unlike other types of aikido, basic movements is trained in the form of solo kata. Other technical pecularities is the position of feet and hips. Most aikido practitioners place their body in a position called hanmi with the front foot pointing straight forward, the back foot at 90 degree angle to the front foot and the hips a bit to the side. The Yoshinkan stance has square hips and the feet angled to each side.
The book Angry white pyjamas is set at the Yoshinkan one-year intensive black belt program.
Yoshokai aikido is an offshoot of Yoshinkan aikido based in North America.
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