Jan Hermansson

Who is Jan Hermansson?

Jan Hermansson is one of the very first aikido pioneers in Sweden, the only one from that generation of practitioners who still practices aikido, and a respected aikido practitioner in the country. His rank is 7th dan shihan in the aikido organisation Aikikai.

Hermansson's first experience in budo, Japanese martial arts, was in his home town Stockholm in 1959, when he started taking judo classes for Gerhard Gosen, an immigrant from the Netherlands who at the time was important in spreading budo training in Stockholm. Gosen found a book about aikido in France. Guided by the book and by French aikido tapes where Minoru Mochizuki showed his aikido, Gosen and Hermansson started experimenting with aikido techniques in 1961 which counts as the beginning of aikido in Sweden. Naturally, they got a couple of things wrong. For instance, they mistook the wide dark hakama, wide pleated trousers that often are worn in addition to the typical white budo keikogi, for a skirt. Hermansson asked his mother to make one for him, but it split during an aikido demonstration that Hermansson held. Gosen and Hermansson also went to France, to practise aikido for Tadashi Abe.