Jacques Payet

Jacques Payet (ジャック・パイエ, born August 24, 1957) is a practitioner of Yoshinkan-style aikido.

He was the longest-serving non-Japanese uchi-deshi of Yoshinkan founder Gozo Shioda and is ranked Hachidan (八段) in the Yoshinkan organization, with the honorific Shihan (師範).

He is the founder and head instructor of Mugenjuku dojo and the Mugenjuku Kenshusei program in Kyoto, Japan.

He is also the originator of the well-known Senshusei Course, a translator of several important works in aikido, and a guest instructor in demand around the world.

Payet was born and grew up in the commune of Saint-Leu in the French region of Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius.

As a boy, he became interested in Bruce Lee and studied karate.

In 1976 he was a teacher in the Saint-Leu neighborhood of Le Plate but decided to pursue his education further by attending the Université de Lyon, where he did an IUT, which he followed by conscription service in the French army in 1979–1980.

While finishing academic studies in France, Payet was practicing jujutsu and attended a seminar in 1978 at which he saw a film of Yoshinkan founder Gozo Shioda, whom he believed to be a jujutsu practitioner due to a language barrier.

Determined to meet Shioda, Payet traveled to Japan in September 1980.

He arrived without any information about Shioda's location but was able to find the Yoshinkan dojo with the assistance of a French speaking Japanese student at Tokyo University.

When Payet arrived at the Yoshinkan in 1980, most classes were taught by Takafumi Takeno.

Although regular students at the Yoshinkan did not have an opportunity to train with him, Payet was introduced to Gozo Shioda by his son, Yasuhisa Shioda.

Following the introduction, Payet was offered the opportunity to live and train in the dojo full-time for a few months.

He lived in Japan as a direct disciple of Shioda for two periods, 1980 - 1985 and 1989 - 1993.

As an uchi-deshi, Payet trained 6 hours per day plus time spent providing services for the dojo.

He also trained with the Kidotai (警視庁 機動隊) 2-3 times per week for 3 years and 5 days per week for 1 year.

At the time, the Senshusei Course did not exist, but the Yoshinkan dojo trained the Kidotai, and uchi-deshi filled in when any of the police were absent.

After moving to Europe in the 1980s, Payet represented several Japanese companies in France and England.

His stay was extended several times until the beginning of the dojo's next special police training course in April 1981, at which time Payet officially became an uchi-deshi in the Yoshinkan dojo.

After living as uchi-deshi to Gozo Shioda for 5 years, Payet returned to France in 1986 with the intention of teaching aikido.

However, the legal and political situation in France at the time made it prohibitively difficult to teach aikido.

As a result, when he had the opportunity in 1987, he moved to England, where he had been teaching for two years already.

He lived in London from 1987-1988 and was appointed technical director of the English Aikido Yoshinkan Federation.

However, in 1988, Payet decided he was unsatisfied with his own practice of aikido and requested that he be allowed to return to Japan to continue studying at the Yoshinkan dojo.

He was present at Gozo Shioda's last overseas demonstration in Germany in 1988.

He travels once every two months for about 1–2 weeks, and, in addition to the US, Europe and Russia, he has given seminars in Israel, Qatar, Canada, Poland, Germany, Italy, and the Ukraine.

In addition to travel seminars, Payet has developed relationships with dojos and individuals around the world, and people occasionally travel to Kyoto for special training or rank testing under his supervision.

In the 1990s, he worked in a government tourism office and opened his own company.

Payet was Shioda's deshi from that time until Shioda's death in 1994.

From 1997, he attended the Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherche Appliqués au Management (CERAM) in Sophia Antipolis, near Nice, majoring in Business Management.

While in Nice, he also worked for the Institute for Advanced Research Minoru (IMRA), a Japanese cold fusion research lab.

Eventually, he moved to the United States and began teaching in the University of California higher education system.

While teaching, he opened two dojos, in Orange County and near Hollywood.

From 2000–2005, Payet lived and taught in the United States.

On moving to the US, Payet made a tour of the country, visiting dojos and observing the state of aikido practice and aikido instruction throughout the country.

He initially settled in Minnesota but eventually moved to California, where he taught in the University of California system.

In 2001, with the assistance of Kevin Pickard, he founded Mugenjuku dojo in Los Angeles (now "Aikido on Ventura" dojo under David Fryberger, 5th-dan).

Payet is a popular seminar instructor and makes trips to dojos in the United States, England and Russia annually in addition to giving seminars at corporations and universities in Japan.

Payet's Studio City dojo on Ventura Boulevard near Hollywood opened in 2001 and was named Mugenjuku (無限塾).

The Japanese word juku (塾) has the connotation of a small, intimate school with a limited number of students and close contact with the teacher (as contrasted with, for example, a university lecture); it is typically used in Japan to describe specialized preparatory schools and is often translated into English as "cram school".