Steve Olsen
Bujinkan Daishihan
Steve Olsen has been living in Japan since the early 1990s and training in the Bujinkan since 2001. He trained with Hatsumi Soke in his Ayase Budokan and Bujinkan Hombu classes, and continues to attend classes with Nagato Sensei and Someya Sensei weekly in Japan.
Steve is also the photographer and publisher of "Masaaki Hatsumi: Dojo Art", an award-winning art book featuring Hatsumi Soke's calligraphy and paintings. Dojo Art is a body of publications that presents the paintings of Bujinkan Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi, whose work in brush and ink is documented alongside his teaching. Hatsumi displayed some of his paintings at his dojo in Noda, Japan, before February 2017, when he exhibited a selection at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo. He titled the exhibition Dojo Giga, after the 12th-century picture scroll Choju-jinbutsu-giga, which depicts anthropomorphized animals and is often credited as an early precursor of manga.
The principal publications of Dojo Art Books are Heaven and Earth, two bilingual Japanese–English art books of 224 and 240 pages. They are Swiss bound and Smyth sewn, printed in full color with metallic gold ink, and the set received the IPPY Most Outstanding Design award. Heaven was published in September 2018, and the FCCJ held a Book Break event on October 4 of that year at which Hatsumi discussed the paintings. Each volume pairs reproductions of the paintings with photographs of Hatsumi Soke teaching at the dojo and with an essay in which he comments on his work. A publisher’s section translates his calligraphy and supplies cultural notes.
Heaven takes martial virtue as its theme, meaning the proper use of military force to build civilization and maintain peace. Earth takes up bonno, the afflictions that Buddhism traces to misconceptions and identifies as causes of suffering, and addresses the paintings that depict the three poisons of ignorance, rage, and desire.
A set of 13 A1 prints, produced to commemorate the 2017 exhibition, was printed on acid-free archival paper rated for 100 years. It has since sold out.
A related book, My Way: Reflections on Training with Masaaki Hatsumi by Craig Olson, with a foreword by Steve Olsen, records training at the dojo from 1997 and describes that period as the stage before Hatsumi’s Soke more modern style of painting.
Steve has taught yearly seminars at the Dayton Bujinkan Dojo since 2010. He was instrumental in assisting and advising during the Dayton Bujinkan Dojo’s 2021 and 2025 Nagato Tai Kai’s in Dayton, Ohio.
When not training, his career focuses on professional recruiting (Zensho Co-Founder | Headhunter) in Japan.
Steve Olsen Photo Gallery
