AKBAN

AKBAN (光番) is an international educational non-profit martial arts school. The school's name origins comes from the acronyms of Budo Ninjutsu Groups Association in Hebrew.

The AKBAN school was founded in Israel in 1986 as a school based around Bujinkan Ninjutsu. The syllabus has three interlaced areas: Martial art, fitness and Emotion Regulation. Its Ninjutsu syllabus has diversified into Historical European martial arts, MMA and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu systems but it is still koryu and Seishin Teki Kyoko oriented. It is informally identified as simply the organization or Irgun (translation: organization), and trains in Martial arts, emotion regulation, fitness and outdoor skills. Now having 12 dojos in Israel, three in Europe and one in the USA, the school's veterans instruct about several hundred practitioners. It is rated by the Israeli martial arts community as the institution having the longest time to accumulate syllabus for applying for a black belt exam (12 to 13 years) in Israel.

History
The school was founded in 1986 in Jerusalem by Yossi Sheriff, senior instructor of Doron Navon, the first non Japanese Shihan in Bujinkan Ninjutsu school. Navon started teaching as a Bujinkan Shidoshi in a rural area at 1977. In 1992, in conjunction with Bujinkan Israel, the school wrote and directed the first state sanctioned Ninjutsu instructor's course. In 1995 the AKBAN School parted ways from Bujinkan Israel while maintaining presence in Hatsumi's Bujinkan events.

Functions
The AKBAN Institute offers classes for those who want to master Martial arts. The program is authorized as a non-competitive martial arts school by the Israeli ministry of Science Culture and Sports. The AKBAN School also issues ranks. The relatively long time span for belt exams stems from the large syllabus learnt. In AKBAN, there are seven distinct grades that structure the progression of skills and responsibilities. The first five levels focus on skill acquisition, culminating in the black belt level, which is the final stage requiring a formal exam. The sixth level is characterized by consistent practice in a dojo, emphasizing the importance of ongoing training and dedication. The seventh and highest level represents a deeper commitment and responsibility towards the AKBAN community, typically involving roles such as participation in the AKBAN think tank or serving as an instructor.

General background
The AKBAN documentation project is a non commercial, creative commons, effort to collect, create and freely spread knowledge about martial arts and related fitness programs. Its main features reside in the main website of the school. The chief feature of the Akban project is a community online encyclopedia. The main lines explored in the encyclopedia are martial arts, emotion regulation and fitness.

Description of the AKBAN-wiki
The AKBAN-wiki has several thousands of articles and videos. It started in 1998 when two AKBAN veterans started organizing the vast Koryu syllabus into a computerized database. The methodical backbone of this project was a system for allocating different stages of learning in martial fields called The Methodical Pyramid. Many fields have benefited from the sharing and distribution of safe knowledge and training methods. The huge amount of material practiced in the necessitated means to organize and validate the techniques used. In 2005, the work on the database shifted toward a mash-up of user generated media.

The AKBAN project organized the materials in a semantic web in a Wikimedia platform. This was achieved by installing a Semantic wiki and starting to apply interrelations between the techniques of same and different martial arts. The focus of work now has moved toward using a self aligned LLM as a better way to gather insights and teaching methods.

International seminars and events
The AKBAN School organizes international seminars for veteran students. These seminars expand the Bujinkan syllabus practiced in the dojo and bring to Israel internationally acclaimed martial arts teachers in various disciplines. Notable teachers in AKBAN seminars are Renzo Gracie, De la Riva, Alexander Zhelezniak and Hernán Cortés.

Akban veterans and able students are involved in extreme fitness events where sparring is practiced for extended periods of time.