Tag: ueshiba

Ueshiba-ha Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu
Morihei Ueshiba in Ayabe, 1922
in front of a placard reading “Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu”

In 1922 Sokaku Takeda moved to the Omoto compound in Ayabe to live with Morihei Ueshiba and give him intensive instruction for five months. Ueshiba first met Takeda in 1915 at the Hisada Inn in Engaru, Hokkaido, and trained intensively with him for a number of years before moving to Ayabe. Sokaku Takeda’s son Tokimune once commented:
He trained extensively and was enthusiastic. He was Sokaku’s favorite student.
In 1922, at the conclusion of his stay in Ayabe, Sokaku Takeda awarded a Kyoju Dairi (assistant instructor) certificate in Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu to Morihei Ueshiba, making him a certified instructor in the art.
Morihei Ueshiba’s Kyoju Dairi in Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu
This relationship between teacher and student, Sokaku Takeda and Morihei Ueshiba, would last for more then twenty years:
Let me begin by stating categorically that the major technical influence on the development of aikido is Daito-ryu jujutsu. This art, which is said to be the continuation of a martial tradition of the Aizu Clan dating back several hundred years, was propagated in many areas of Japan during the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods by the famous martial artist, Sokaku Takeda. Known equally for his martial prowess and severity of character, Takeda had used his skills in life-and-death encounters on more than one occasion. Takeda was fifty-four years old when Morihei Ueshiba first met him at the Hisada Inn in Engaru, Hokkaido in late February 1915. This encounter marked the beginning of a long, stormy yet ultimately productive association between the two, which lasted for more than twenty years.
Aikido Journal Editor Stan Pranin – “Morihei Ueshiba and Sokaku Takeda“
But what happened next?
Kisshomaru Ueshiba and Post-war Aikido
On October 27, 1985 in Sendai, I attended a lecture on the history of aikido given by Second Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba. During his talk Kisshomaru Sensei made the following remark: “The Founder only studied Daito-ryu for three weeks or so.” My jaw dropped in disbelief when perhaps the most knowledgeable person in the world on the subject of aikido history made such a patently false statement!
Aikido Journal Editor Stan Pranin – “Beware the big lie!“
The picture of Morihei Ueshiba at the beginning of this article was taken in 1922 after receiving his Kyoju Dairi certification from Sokaku Takeda, which marks the beginning of his teaching career in the martial arts, and as an instructor in Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu under the authority of Sokaku Takeda.
However, there is a narrative in the modern Aikido world, one that is encouraged by the Aikikai, in which Aikido is the original and unique creation of Morihei Ueshiba. This narrative stipulates that Aikido is something that he created after studying a number of martial arts, and that it represented a radical phase change from his pre-war practices, and that it represented a new and original spiritual dimension.
But is that really the case?
To begin with, this narrative is complicated by Kisshomaru Ueshiba’s representation that the key spiritual revelation, that of “the great spirit of mutual loving protection” (万有愛護の大精神) – occurred in 1925. Rather than after occurring after the war, this was towards the very start of his career as an instructor of Daito-ryu.
Kisshomaru Ueshiba with his father at Ueshiba Juku, Ayabe in 1925
Going back from there to Daito-ryu itself we see the roots of Morihei Ueshiba’s philosophy…already in existence.
Masao Hayashima – a direct student of Sokaku Takeda
“Aiki-jutsu is said to be the Budo of Harmony”.
In addition to Masao Hayashima (above) we also have Morihei Ueshiba’s contemporary, and a fellow student of Sokaku Takeda, Yukiyoshi Sagawa and “Aiki Budo is the Way of Human Development“.
Then, we have Sokaku Takeda’s son Tokimune Takeda discussing his father’s instruction:
“The essential principles of Daito-ryu are Love and Harmony”
“The goal of spreading Daito-ryu is ‘Harmony and Love’, keeping this spirit is what preserves and realizes social justice. This was Sokaku Sensei’s dying wish”
But these concepts can be tracked all through the Japanese martial traditions, they are far from unique to either Morihei Ueshiba or Daito-ryu.
- 「武ハ弋止ノ義何ゾ好テ以テ殺戮センヤ」 “Bu is the abandoning of violence. One must not find pleasure in slaughter.”, Katayama-ryu Densho – 1647
- 「我モ勝ズ人モ勝ズ相得テ共ニ治ル」 “Oneself and another who cannot win are both unable to attain victory, so both mutually return to a state of peace.”, Katayama-ryu Densho – 1647
- 「兵法は平法なり」 “The methods of war are the methods of peace”, Iizasa Ienao of Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu – 1387-1488
This argument was expressed by Professor Karl Friday, a Japanese historian and a student of the Japanese martial traditions (having received full transmission in Kashima Shin-ryu) in this excerpt from an interview in 2009:
The conventional wisdom on Japanese martial art (ryūha bugei) ties its evolution closely to the history of warfare. It starts from the premise that systems and schools of martial art originally developed as tools for passing on workaday battlefield skills, in response to intensified demand for skilled fighting men spawned by the onset of the Sengoku age. Warriors hoping to survive and prosper on late medieval battlefields began to seek instruction from talented veterans, who in turn began to codify their knowledge and methodize its study. Thus bugei ryūha emerged more-or-less directly from the exigencies of medieval warfare. But-so goes the tale-the two-and-a-half-century Pax Tokugawa that began in 1600 brought fundamental changes to the practice of martial art. Instruction became professionalized, and in some cases, commercialized; training periods became longer, curricula were formalized; and elaborate systems of student ranks developed. Most significantly, however, the motives and goals underlying bugei practice were recast. Samurai, who no longer expected to spend time on the battlefield, sought and found a more relevant rationale for studying martial art, approaching it not simply as a means to proficiency in combat, as their ancestors had, but as a means to spiritual cultivation of the self.
This is basically the story I summarized in my Legacies of the Sword book. It begins from the logical assumption that ryūha bugei originated as an instrument for ordinary military training, and evolved from there into budō, a means to broader self-development and self-realization. But there are some problems with this picture that become clear if you juxtapose it against recent research on medieval warfare.
It‘s clear, first of all, that ryūha bugei couldn’t have accounted for more than a tiny portion of sixteenth-century military training. There were at most a few dozen ryūha around during the 16th century, but armies of that era regularly mobilized tens of thousands of men. In order for even a fraction of sengoku warriors to have learned their craft through one or more ryūha, each and every ryūha of the period would need to have trained at least several hundred students a year. Ryūha bugei must, therefore, have been a specialized activity, pursued by only a minute percentage of Sengoku warriors.
An even bigger issue, however, is the applicability of the skills that late medieval bugeisha concentrated on developing to sixteenth-century warfare. For one thing, strategy and tactics were shifting, from the 15th century onward-precisely the period in which bugei ryūha began to appear-from reliance on individual warriors and small group tactics to disciplined group tactical maneuver. Which means that ryūha bugei, focusing on developing prowess in personal combat, emerged and flourished in almost inverse proportion to the value of skilled individual fighters on the battlefield.
All of the recent scholarship on late medieval warfare, moreover, argues that swords never became a key battlefield armament in Japan-that they were, rather, supplementary weapons, analogous to the sidearms worn by modern soldiers. While swords were carried in combat, they were used far more often in street fights, robberies, assassinations and other (off-battlefield) civil disturbances. Missile weapons-arrows, rocks, and later bullets-dominated battles, throughout the medieval period.
On the other hand, almost all of the ryūha that date back to the sengoku period or earlier claim that swordsmanship played a central role in their training, right from the start. Tsukahara Bokuden, Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami, Iizasa Chōisai, Itō Ittōsai, Yagyū Muneyoshi, Miyamoto Musashi and other founders of martial art schools were (are) all best known for their prowess as swordsmen.
Initially, I wondered if the place of swordsmanship in medieval martial art represented a major piece of counter-evidence to the new consensus on late medieval warfare. After all, if bugei ryūha started out as systems to train warriors for the battlefield, and made swordsmanship central to their arts, wouldn’t that suggest that swords were more important to medieval warfare than the new scholarship would have us believe?
After wrestling with that question for quite a while, it finally struck me that the problem might lie in the first premise of this argument. All of the questions that were bothering me (why did bugei ryūha emerge at a time when generalship was rapidly coming to overshadow personal martial skills as the decisive element in battle, and the key to a successful military career? Why were there so few ryūha around during the Sengoku era, and why did they proliferate so rapidly during the early Tokugawa period, after the age of wars had passed? And why was swordsmanship so prominent in even the earliest bugei ryūha?) become much easier to answer if you just set aside the premise that bugei ryūha originated as instruments for teaching the workaday techniques of the battlefield. And the truth of the matter is that there’s little basis for that hoary assumption, beyond the fact that war was endemic in Japan when the first martial art schools appeared. The received wisdom rests, in other words, on what amounts to a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
It seems likely, then, that ryūha bugei and the pedagogical devices associated with it aimed from the start at conveying more abstract ideals of self-development and enlightenment. That is, that ryūha bugei was an abstraction of military science, not merely an application of it. It fostered character traits and tactical acumen that made those who practiced it better warriors, but its goals and ideals were more akin to those of liberal education than vocational training. In other words, bugeisha, even during the Sengoku era, had more in common with Olympic marksmanship competitors-training with specialized weapons to develop esoteric levels of skill under particularized conditions-than with Marine riflemen. They also had as much-perhaps more-in common with Tokugawa era and modern martial artists than with the ordinary warriors of their own day.
Basically, I’m arguing that there was no fundamental shift of purpose in martial art education between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Tokugawa era budō represented not a metamorphosis of late medieval martial art, but the maturation of it. Ryūha bugei itself constituted a new phenomenon-a derivative, not a linear improvement, of earlier, more prosaic military training.
(For the full argument, see my “Off the Warpath” piece, in Alex Bennett’s Budo Perspectives [Auckland, New Zealand: Kendo World Publications, 2005], 249-68.)
Far from being new and original, or unique to Morihei Ueshiba and modern Aikido, we see that the concept of a martial tradition for spiritual and personal development is something that is very old, and endemic to many arts.
Does that matter?
Certainly, Morihei Ueshiba was a spiritual person, and believed that he practiced and taught an art that enabled personal and spiritual development.
That the concepts he expressed were neither unique nor original doesn’t take away from that message.
In my opinion it is time to abandon the conceit of spiritual exceptionalism and uniqueness that often exists in modern Aikido, in the long run it is only destructive to the art as a whole.
Morihei Ueshiba and Daito-ryu
Now, what about Morihei Ueshiba’s involvement with Daito-ryu and Sokaku Takeda?
The base description on the Aikikai website reads:
Aikido is a modern Martial Art created by the Founder, Morihei Ueshiba.
A more detailed description contains the same narrative:
Aikido is a Japanese Martial Art created during the 1920s by Morihei Ueshiba (1883~1969), an expert who reached the highest level of mastery in the classical Japanese Martial Arts.
Neither contains any mention of Sokaku Takeda or Daito-ryu, but Takeda is mentioned once (and only once) on the biographical timeline of Morihei Ueshiba’s life:
The Founder meets Mr. Sokaku Takeda, the originator of Daito-ryu Jujutsu, at the Hisada Ryokan (inn) in Engaru, and asks for instruction.
And that’s it…
Similarly, in Kisshomaru Ueshiba’s books “The Spirit of Aikido” and “The Art of Aikido” there is virtually no mention of Daito-ryu in either one. Neither of them are historical works, but neither of them make any real mention of the only art that Morihei Ueshiba was ever licensed to teach, the only art (outside of his own) in which he ever issued certificates or licences.
In the more recent work, “Best Aikido“, written by Kisshomaru Ueshiba and Moriteru Ueshiba, there is a short mention of Daito-ryu as one of the many arts that Morihei Ueshiba studied, but no mention is made of the relative depth of study of those arts – the section entirely fails to note the fact that, with the exception of Daito-ryu, all of those arts were studied for very brief periods of time.
AW: O-sensei also reportedly studied a lot of other koryu arts outside of Daito-ryu.
SP: I would say that that’s not true.
If you look at it historically, he went up to Tokyo in 1901 and spent about a year there. During this stay in Tokyo when he was training to become a merchant, he did a little bit of Tenjin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu. It was probably a “machi” dojo, in other words a small dojo in the Asakusa area of Tokyo. He would go there at night, but it was probably about three or four months total since he got very ill with beriberi and had to leave Tokyo and return to Tanabe. He was doing it while working very hard during the day and it was a very brief period of only a few months. It would be difficult to imagine that that had a strong, technical influence.
By the same token when he was in the army, he also began studying Yagyu-ryu jujutsu. There are some questions about what the actual name of the art was. O-sensei referred to it as Yagyu-ryu jujutsu, while [Kisshomaru Ueshiba] Doshu did some research and said it was Goto-ha Yagyu Shingan-ryu or similar name.
He was in the army at the time and also was sent to Manchuria for a part of the time. It was hard for me to imagine him going regularly while being in the army, so I don’t know if his training was on the weekends or what. He apparently was enthusiastic about his training but there just weren’t the circumstances to allow a detailed study.
He did, however, continue to study a little bit of Yagyu-ryu after he got out of the army, but he was in Tanabe which was a couple of hundred miles away and he had to go up by ferry! Again, maybe he went up three, four, or a half a dozen times, but it wasn’t the sort of thing of an intensive study with someone year after year.
Now, he did have a makimono (scroll) as well — however, it bears no seal. One can only speculate what that meant. Sometimes what happens is that a person would be told to prepare a makimono or have someone prepare it and, for whatever circumstance or reason, the teacher never gets around to signing it. Therefore, the scroll cannot be considered official.
So, it would appear that he did study this Yagyu-ryu form more than the Tenjin Shinyo-ryu jujutsu, but probably at the most he did a year or two.
The other art that he studied, but again not in very much depth, would have been judo. The first description of the teacher who was sent down from the Kodokan to Tanabe by O-sensei’s father to teach Morihei and various relatives and friends gave the impression that this judo teacher was somewhat of an expert. It turns out he was 17 years old. I met his wife back in the 1980s and she told me this directly. He could have been a shodan, maximum. Also, O-sensei was involved with other things in this transition phase of his life trying to figure out what he was going to be doing as a career. One of the reasons, according to Doshu, that this judo person was brought in was to help him focus and channel his energies. But O-sensei ended up going to Hokkaido.
So, you have this very brief stint in Tenjin Shinyo Ryu, some training in Yagyu Ryu jujutsu while in the army, a smattering of judo, and then Daito-ryu. That’s it. The impression that he studied many different arts other than Daito-ryu and mastered them is completely false.
Aikiweb Interview with Stan Pranin – August, 2000
Now, let’s go back to the 1922 photo at the top of this article. In that photo Morihei Ueshiba is clearly sitting in front of a placard reading “Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu”.
Unfortunately, the Aikikai tinkered with the photo a bit at various times and in various publications – most likely in order to support the public narrative being promoted after the war.
Aikido Shimbun, issue 2 – May 1959
original scan by Stan Pranin
The second issue of the Aikikai Foundation’s newsletter the “Aikido Shimbun” (pictured above) featured a copy of the 1922 photo from Ayabe – with the placard reading “Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu” carefully edited out. Additionally, there is no mention, at all, of Daito-ryu, or the context of the photo, in the text of the article.
“Aikido Nymon,” by Kisshomaru Ueshiba – 1975
original scan by Stan Pranin

In this iteration, from a book published by Ni-Dai Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba in 1975, the characters for “Daito-ryu” have been edited out, leaving only the words “Aiki-jujutsu”.
“Aikido Shintei” by Kisshomaru Ueshiba – 1986
In this photo, from a 1986 publication called “Aikido Shintei”, the characters for “Daito-ryu” are also edited out – but very poorly, leaving part of the “ryu” character intact.
Invitation to summer training with Morihei Ueshiba
in Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu and Aiki-budo, 1931
Morihei Ueshiba and Daito-ryu – Continuity
in 1933 Morihei Ueshiba published a Daito-ryu technical instruction manual, Aikijujutsu Densho. which was stamped “Aikijujutsu”, and was distributed to students receiving certificates in Daito-ryu as a kind of transmission document. Jump ahead – he re-published the same manual, with the same techniques and explanations (minus the pre-war imperial language) in 1954 as Aikido Maki-no-ichi. Morihei Ueshiba used this manual as a textbook when teaching in the 1950’s.
Then in 1938 Morihei Ueshiba published the technical manual “Budo“. This book, re-discovered by Aikido Journal editor Stan Pranin, contais techniques that Morihiro Saito claimed were identical to the techniques taught by Morihei Ueshiba’s at Morihei Ueshiba’s home in Iwama, where he lived from 1942 until near the time of his death.
One day in July 1981, I was conducting an interview with Zenzaburo Akazawa, a prewar uchi deshi of Morihei Ueshiba from the Kobukan Dojo period. Mr. Akazawa proceeded to show me a technical manual published in 1938 titled Budo which I had never seen before. It contained photos of some fifty techniques demonstrated by the founder himself. As I slowly turned the pages of the manual, I was amazed to see in the photos that the execution of several basics techniques such as ikkyo, iriminage and shihonage were virtually identical to what I had learned in Iwama under Saito Sensei. Here was the founder himself demonstrating what I had up until then regarded as “Iwama-style” techniques. Mr. Akazawa, who lives only a few blocks away from the Iwama Dojo, kindly lent me the book and I hurried to show it to Saito Sensei.
I’ll always remember the scene as I called at Sensei’s door to share with him my new discovery. To my surprise, he had never seen or heard mention of the book before. He put on his reading glasses and leafed through the manual, his eyes scanning the technical sequences intently. I felt compelled then and there to apologize to him for having ever doubted his assertion that he was making every effort to faithfully preserve the founder’s techniques. Saito Sensei laughed and, obviously with great pleasure, bellowed, “See, Pranin, I told you so!” From that time on up through the end of his life, Saito Sensei always had along his copy of Budo in the Iwama Dojo and on his travels to use as proof to show that a particular technique originated in the founder’s teachings.
Aikido Journal editor Stan Pranin – “Remembering Morihiro Saito Sensei“
Moving on to 1940, Takuma Hisa – one of the only people to have received Menkyo Kaiden (“certificate of complete transmission”, showing that one has mastered the totality of a martial system) in Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu directly from Sokaku Takeda, published “Kannagara no Budo, Daito-ryu Aiki Budo Hiden“. This manual on Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu is almost an exact copy, in both technical explanation and the illustrated techniques, of the “Aikijujutsu Densho” manual published by Morihei Ueshiba in 1933…the manual that was used as a textbook for post-war students in the 1950’s as “Aikido Maki-no-Ichi”.
Sokaku Takeda at the Asahi Shimbun Dojo in Osaka – 1936
Takuma Hisa is also significant in that he was one of the few people who had a chance to directly compare Sokaku Takeda and Morihei Ueshiba in depth over an extended period of time:
Takeda’s instruction gave Hisa the chance to compare the techniques that he had been taught for the previous three years (1933-1936) by Ueshiba with those taught by Takeda. His conclusion was that they were the same—meaning that Ueshiba had not by that time significantly modified or evolved what he had been taught by Takeda. In later years, Hisa was adamant about Ueshiba’s and Takeda’s techniques being identical. He stated this clearly at a round table talk, “When Tomiki came to Osaka to teach aiki-bujutsu to the Asahi people, the techniques that both master Ueshiba and Takeda taught were the same. Definitely the same. Master Ueshiba should say that he was taught them by master Takeda. He should say that it was Daitoryu. But he never said that. Mr. Tomiki (who also traveled from Tokyo to Osaka to teach Ueshiba’s system at the Asahi dojo) knows this, doesn’t he. But Ueshiba never said it.” And Tomiki answered, “Definitely not. ‘I [Ueshiba] established everything…[smiling mysteriously]’. However old martial artists would often do that way.” [Shishida (Ed.), 1982, p.1]
“The Process of Forming Aikido and Japanese Imperial Navy Admiral Isamu Takeshita: Through the analysis of Takeshita’s diary from 1925 to 1931”
– Fumiaki Shishida (Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan)
Both Sokaku Takeda and Morihei Ueshiba kept a registry of their students. When one became a student their name would be entered into the book and the student would attach their seal. Mr. Kimura speaks a little about the registry, which he signed in 1942 in “Mr. Kimura’s Aikido Memories, Part 1“.
Mamoru Okada also remembers signing this registry – in this instance he signed the registry in 1949, after the war.
Hiroshi Isoyama also testifies that he signed this registry – again in 1949, after the war. Further, his testimony confirms that the registry was titled “Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu”:
And the title on my registration paper is “Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu registry”. This is what I signed. At the top of the students’ registry, there are also the names of people such as the Admiral Takeshita Isamu.
“Interview with Isoyama Hiroshi Shihan, the master of the Iwama Dojo“
That is to say – Morihei Ueshiba was enrolling people as students of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu as late as 1949.
Here are some photos of a Hiden Mokuroku scroll (thanks to Scott Burke for the photos) – the “catalog of secret teachings” that composes the first scroll in the Daito-ryu curriculum. This scroll was issued by Morihei (then using the name Moritaka) Ueshiba in 1925:
“Aiki-jujutsu Hiden Mokuroku”, 1925
The Aiki-jujutsu seal in the upper right hand corner is similar (but slightly different in shape) to the seal that appears in Morihei Ueshiba’s 1933 technical manual Aikijujutsu Densho – AKA Budo Renshu.
Here’s is another section of the same 1925 scroll:
Aiki-jujutsu umbrella techniques 1925
This section of the scroll covers techniques with an umbrella and is also stamped “Aiki-jujutsu”.
Hiden Mokuroku 118 Techniques
A continuation of the scroll – on the left is states that this scroll contains 118 techniques. The basic 118 techniques of the first scroll of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu.
Hiden Mokuroku signature page
Here is the signature page of the 1925 scroll. signed by the student of Sokaku Takeda Masayoshi Minamoto (武田惣角源正義), Moritaka Ueshiba Seigan Minamoto (源晴眼).
Clearly a Daito-ryu scroll, and clearly issued under the authority of his teacher, Sokaku Takeda. The same is the case in this scroll, also issued under the authority of Sokaku Takeda:
Hiden Mokuroku issued to Minoru Mochizuki in 1932
“Ueshiba Moritaka, student of Takeda Sokaku”
And here’s yet another scroll:
Aikido Hiden Mokuroku
The picture quality is not quite as good, but there are some interesting things that we can pick out here.
1. The scroll now reads “Aikido” rather than “Aiki-jujutsu”.
2. The structure of the scroll is identical to the Daito-ryu scroll.
3. The title of the scroll is “Hiden Mokuroku”, the same as the Daito-ryu scroll.
Aikido Hiden Mokuroku detail
Here is a portion of the scroll in greater detail. Like the Daito-ryu scroll, this scroll contains a section on umbrella techniques. This one also contains a section on Bo (staff) techniques.
On the left hand side it specifies that this scroll contains 118 techniques, the same as the 1925 Daito-ryu scroll.
Aikido Hiden Mokuroku signature page
Here is the signature section of the scroll. Sokaku Takeda’s name no longer appears on the scroll, instead it is signed by Aikido Doshu Tsunemori Ueshiba (a name that Morihei Ueshiba often used after the war).
The date that the scroll was issued reads March Showa year 35 – 1960.
So…here is some of what we have:
- 1922 – Morihei Ueshiba is certified as an instructor in Daito-ryu, he has little experience in other martial arts at the time.
- 1922-1936 – Morihei Ueshiba is documented as teaching Daito-ryu under the authority of Sokaku Takeda.
- 1933 – Morihei writes Aikijujutsu Densho, a Daito-ryu instructional manual.
- 1936 – Takuma Hisa compares what he was doing to Sokaku Takeda and finds that they are both doing Daito-ryu. Sokaku Takeda takes over the Asahi Shimbun dojo and Morihei Ueshiba goes off on his own.
- 1940 – Takuma Hisa publishes Morihei Ueshiba’s Aikijujutsu Densho as a Daito-ryu manual.
- 1949 – Morihei continues to enroll students as students of Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu after the war.
- 1954 – Morihei Ueshiba publishes Aikido Maki-no-Ichi, which duplicates the technical explanations and technique illustrations of Aikijujutsu Densho. He teaches post-war students from this manual.
- 1957 – Lee Price is told that there are 2,664 techniques in Aikido by Morihei Ueshiba for the American TV show “Rendezvous with Adventure” (this may have been a translation error from the usual number of 2,884 techniques cited by the Takumakai) rather than the greatly reduced number of techniques in the post-war Aikikai. Morihei Ueshiba states that the art was founded by Minamoto Yoshimitsu in 1120, that it was handed down through the Takeda family, and and is represented its legitimate heir – not the founder. When asked when Aikido began, Morihei Ueshiba says “about 50 years ago”. Remember that this is 1957, so that would make 50 years ago about the time that he met Sokaku Takeda, well before the war.
- Morihei Ueshiba teaches the same techniques in Iwama after the war in the 1950’s and 1960’s as were documented in the 1938 technical manual Budo.
- Morihei Ueshiba issues Daito-ryu certificates, with the name changed to Aikido but with all of the other particulars preserved, as late as 1960 – and actually much later, in scrolls that are privately held.
I’m sure you see where I’m going here:
1. Before the war Morihei Ueshiba was a Daito-ryu instructor under Sokaku Takeda, taught Daito-ryu for many years and issued licenses in Daito-ryu.
2. What Morihei Ueshiba was teaching and distributing after the war in the 1950’s and 1960’s was essentially the same material that he was teaching and distributing before the war – Daito-ryu, right down to the certificates and the name in the enrollment book.
3. There was no phase shift in core technology, or radical invention of new martial technology.
4. That there was a basic continuity in the thread of his training and teaching as a student and teacher of Daito-ryu from 1922 through to his death in 1969.
Comparing the continuity of Morihei Ueshiba’s technical legacy visually
As Masatake Fujita, who spent most of every day with Morihei Ueshiba during the last two years of his life, put it:
Q: In terms of technique, did you notice a change in the Founder while you were watching him?
A: No, there wasn’t really any change. That’s probably true even from before the war, because even when you watch the video tape from Showa year 12 (1937), the year I was born, that’s true (*Translator’s note: this is actually the Asahi News demonstration from 1935). However, there were some techniques from that period that are gone today. I am teaching those kinds of techniques now, but of course it’s difficult.
“Interview with Aikido Shihan Masatake Fujita, Part 2“
“No, there really wasn’t any change.”
In other words, Morihei Ueshiba’s legacy was, in actuality, what some people might call “Ueshiba-ha Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu”, Morihei Ueshiba’s own branch off the tree of Sokaku Takeda’s art.
For more on the what happened to the diverging legacies of Morihei Ueshiba and his son Kisshomaru, check out Mark Murray’s essay “The Ueshiba Legacy” – Part 1 and Part 2. You might also be interested in Aikido Journal Editor Stanley Pranin’s essay “Is O-Sensei Really the Father of Modern Aikido?“.
Published by: Christopher Li – Honolulu, HI
May 20, 2017
Kiichi Hogen und das Geheimnis des Aikido [German Version]
Sawamura Sojûrô V als Kiichi Hôgen (鬼一法眼)
aus dem Theaterstück Kiichi Hôgen Sanryaku no Maki (鬼一法眼三略巻)
*This is a German translation of the article “Kiichi Hogen and the Secret of Aikido“, provided courtesy of Ian Eisterer.
Geschichten aus dem Heike Monogatari
Auf Seite 40 der 2009 in Japan veröffentlichten Interview-Sammlung mit Schülern des Aikido Gründers Morihei Ueshiba „Profiles of the Founder” (開祖の横顔), befindet sich ein interessantes Zitat (soweit bekannt, ist diese Veröfentlichung nur auf Japanisch verfügbar).
Dieses Zitat findet man auch in zahlreichen anderen Publikationen, aber dieses Mal bin ich darauf aufmerksam geworden. Das Zitat kommt in einem Interview mit Morito Suganuma vor, welcher 1967, kurz vor dem Tod des Gründers 1969, Uchi-deshi wurde. Suganuma hat im September 2011 Hawaii und das Dojo Aikido of Hilo besucht.
Zum ersten Mal hörte ich dieses Zitat jedoch von Seishiro Endo vor einigen Jahren, aber wie bereits gesagt, kommt es auch an vielen anderen Stellen vor. Morihei Ueshiba sagte, dass dieses Zitat eines der Geheimnisse (極意 / Gokui) des Aikido sei. Der folgende Text des Zitats is dem Interview mit Suganuma entnommen.
(more…)
May 19, 2017
The Ueshiba Legacy – Part 2, by Mark Murray
I think you can see Doshu’s dilemma. He has to continue to teach the ‘essence’ of the art, but without knowing very much about what his grandfather actually did. He is a few years younger than I am and all he knows has been filtered via Kisshomaru and those deshi of Kisshomaru’s generation. Doshu’s son Mitsuteru will have an even bigger problem. Apart from a few exceptions like Tomiki and Tohei, Kisshomaru allowed the old deshi like Tada, Yamaguchi, Arikawa to get on and teach what they had learned from Morihei Ueshiba directly, in so far as they understood this. The variety was allowed to flourish, but with the passage of time there has been an inevitable dumbing down and an increasingly frantic insistence that what the Hombu is doing is the only means of aikido salvation. I think if the Aikikai could make the eight basic waza into sacraments, they would leap at the chance.
Former International Aikido Federation Chairman Peter Goldsbury
on “The Future of Aikido“
Some time ago, in 2015, Mark Murray allowed us to post the first part of his essay on the evolution and transmission of Aikido, “The Ueshiba Legacy“. In this essay he discussed the two legacies of Aikido – the legacy of the father, Morihei Ueshiba, and the legacy of the son, Kisshomaru Ueshiba. In Part 2 he now follows up that essay with a further discussion of these issues and how they have affected the art of Aikido as it exists today.
Mark is an “IT Specialist by trade and a writer by choice” (check out the Mark Murray Books website, and the Mark Murray author page on Amazon), but when he’s not doing either of those things he is usually training in the martial arts, and that is the context in which most of us are probably familiar with him.
The Ueshiba Legacy – Part 2
by Mark Murray
The Diverging Legacies of Ueshiba
Introduction: As I noted in a previous article, there are two Ueshiba legacies: Morihei Ueshiba and his son Kisshomaru Ueshiba. That article introduced some research into the fact that there are two different legacies. It did not go into any kind of detail on what those actual legacies were, nor did it go into any kind of peer-reviewed academic detail. I am not an academic. It is up to the reader to decide whether or not he/she finds the articles useful.
A: The Words
In the previous article, references were given from both pre-war and post war that what Ueshiba talked about was both mostly unintelligible and also not what was passed on via Kisshomaru Ueshiba. Father and son lived in two different worlds. Morihei Ueshiba lived the highlight of his life prior to World War II. Kisshomaru was greatly influenced by World War II.
1. Kisshomaru Ueshiba
Imagine living during World War II. The people of two islands, half a world apart, experienced the same nightmare. In the United Kingdom between 1940 and 1941, Germany raided 16 British cities. London was bombed every night for 57 nights. Picture yourself in your home as night falls and the air raid sirens go off. The ground shakes, fire lights the sky. You run for an underground shelter, heart pounding. Screams echo in your ears from somewhere to your right. It takes forever to get to the shelter, your head down eyes focused on the ground as glimpses of your feet come into view from your outright run. Your chest starts burning and all your gasping for breath isn’t helping. But you make it. An eternity later, the sun rises and you emerge from darkened safety only to see entire blocks of the city have been flattened and some of the rest are still burning.
“Devastation from the Fires of the Shinjuku Commercial District,” 1945 photo by Kageyama Koyo of the aftermath of a
March 9-10 firebombing of Tokyo by the U.S. Air Force
Located around the world in Tokyo similar bombings were occurring. On March 9th 1945, the United States launched another firebombing attack. Kisshomaru Ueshiba, who is only 23 years old and barely out of university, is hardly an experienced, mature adult in this war-torn world. To make matters worse, Morihei Ueshiba turned over complete control of the Tokyo dojo to his son when Kisshomaru was 21 (*1). It is a miracle that the Tokyo dojo is still standing amidst the fires and ruins of the city. Five months later, all of Japan was brought to her knees when the United States dropped two atomic bombs. The unimaginable happened. Japan was defeated and surrendered. That was the fractured and ruined world of Kisshomaru.
Japanese bow in front of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo
as they listen to Emperor Hirohito’s radio broadcast
announcing Japan’s surrender in World War II
Kyodo News Photo – August 15th, 1945
It was inevitable that Kisshomaru would strip most of his father’s words out of the aikido being created at Tokyo. From the ban on martial arts after the war to just having to survive, Kisshomaru strained to keep the Tokyo dojo going. Families were living in the building. Most students were just trying to make ends meet, let alone devote time to training. From this rubble, Kisshomaru created a new direction for aikido. He took out most of his father’s references to Omoto theology and introduced a training for spirituality, peace, and love. And why not? Most of the students had no clue what the old man was talking about anyway. The world had changed after the end of World War II. Japan was rebuilding. Kisshomaru started looking to the future.
Aikikai Hombu Dojo around 1957
In back behind the doorway there were still war refugees living in the dojo,
after they left that area became the men’s dressing room.
Yasuo Kobayashi Sensei’s sister Fumiko standing at the far left.
With regards to words, the legacy Kisshomaru built was taken up by the entire world. People from all over started training in the aikido that was disseminated from Tokyo hombu. Millions of people flocked to this. The ideals that were transmitted were built upon changing the world for the better. The ideal of using an attacker’s attack against him/her in a loving, protective manner while there not being a winner/loser with the martial ability to carry it off was like going after the Holy Grail.
Seminar participants
12th International Aikido Federation (IAF) Congress in Takasaki
September 27th – October 2nd 2016
Unfortunately, it was based upon Morihei Ueshiba’s martial abilities, which were not part of the legacy passed on by Kisshomaru, but this will be further detailed in another section. Make no mistake, Kisshomaru’s impact upon the world of aikido was huge. It brought together people from all over to train together in harmony, that probably would never have trained together. Almost fifty years after the death of Morihei Ueshiba, millions of people worldwide still train in aikido thanks to the words and ideals of Kisshomaru. It is a legacy that has fluidly changed and adapted over time yet, for the most part, still retains the look and feel of Kisshomaru’s vision. Many people will flock to Modern Aikido in the upcoming years as it has a legacy to thrive in a world desperately looking for peace and love.
1. Morihei Ueshiba
Morihei Ueshiba used Omoto terminology to pass on his view of training aiki. But the secret, aiki, was never about the Omoto religion at all.
From André Nocquet:
No, Aikido is not a religion. One day I asked my master, Master Ueshiba, “You always say that Aikido is Love then, isn’t there a very narrow link with Christianity?” He told me, “Yes, there is a very narrow link with Christianity but if you go to Europe, never say that Aikido is a religion. If you practice Aikido well, you may become a better Christian but if a good Buddhist practices Aikido, he will also become a better Buddhist.” Aikido is a way, a path, it helps to better understand religions and philosophies, but it is not a religion, this is what he told me. (*2)
When we look at spiritual misogi, Seiseki Abe is a good example. Around 1952, Seiseki Abe says this about talking to Ueshiba:
“How did you ever learn such a wonderful budo”, and he answered, “Through misogi.” Now I had been doing misogi since 1941 and when I heard that Aikido came from misogi, suddenly “snap”, the two came together. (*3)
Seiseki Abe had been doing misogi for at least 10 years prior to training in aikido and wasn’t at all near Ueshiba’s skills or abilities, nor did he even see misogi and aikido as being similar. We can see from this that something that Ueshiba knew and had trained was the underlying basis for powering his misogi exercises.
To view the legacy of Morihei Ueshiba’s words, we have to go beyond looking at the Omoto religion. Omoto was not part of Morihei Ueshiba’s legacy. He used Omoto merely as a vessel for aiki training. What, then, did Morihei Ueshiba’s words mean?
Morihei Ueshiba lecturing
the text behind him reads “Ichirei Shikon Sangen Hachiriki”
From the translation on the Aikido Sangenkai website:
Aikido is the way of harmony, that is to say the living form of Ichirei Shikon Sangen Hachiriki, the form of the fabric of the universe, specifically the form of the High Plain of Heaven. (*4)
Ueshiba explained Hachiriki as The 8 powers are opposing forces:
Movement – Stillness, Melting – Congealing, Pulling – Loosening, Combining – Splitting / 9-1, 8-2, 7-3, 6-4 (*4).
These are 4 pairs of opposites.
To understand just how important “opposites” are, when Henry Kono asked O-Sensei “Why can we not do what you do, Sensei?” the answer was quite simply “Because you don’t understand In and Yo.” (*5) Opposing forces.
As a bit of a sidetrack, Ueshiba was an avid reader of the Chinese classics. If we look at a portion of the Chinese Martial Arts, we find that opposing forces is the foundation of many. Taiji itself is about opposing forces.
“In the declining years of the Yuan Dynasty, there was a retired scholar called Zhang Sanfeng who took the basic Confucian principle of taiji and mixed it together with the major principles of the other schools of thought, putting the five elements and eight trigrams into his boxing techniques and footwork, using taiji’s passive and active, hardness and softness, movement and stillness, as metaphors for its function. With these as its main points, it became known as the internal school, distinct as a result from the external school.” (*6)
As noted from Brennan’s translation, there are opposing forces in passive/active, hardness/softness, and movement/stillness.
Chris Li notes the similarities between what Morihei Ueshiba says and the Chinese classics:
“So now we see that Morihei Ueshiba’s cosmology for the physical structure of the Universe is identical to the Chinese cosmology. Further, we see that Morihei Ueshiba’s structure for the physical manifestation of his art is identical to that used in the Chinese internal martial arts – right down to the terminology.” (*4)
Morihei Ueshiba talked about Izanami and Izanagi. He talked about kami, which was often written as ka (fire) and mi (water). He transposed deities for opposing forces. We can see that these opposing forces meant a lot to Ueshiba as he talked about them all the time. It is exactly this concept of opposing forces that is one of the foundations for aiki.
The In-Yo / Yin-Yang Trigrams showing
Morihei Ueshiba’s “Cross of Aiki“
We can tie in/yo or yin/yang or ka/mi or Izanami/Izanagi back to Daito ryu. There are various mentions of in/yo throughout Daito ryu. The concept can be traced back to Sokaku Takeda’s grandfather, Soemon:
“Soemon studied the arts of yin-yang divination (ommyodo) in Kyoto under the Tsuchimikado family, who were descendants of renowned diviner Abe no Seimei (921-1005), eventually receiving a menkyo (license of mastery) certificate and obtaining the title of Takumi no Kami. After returning to Oike in the Aizu domain he served as the chief priest of Aizu Ise Shrine and was known both as an expert in the Shinto religion and yin-yang divination and a master of Daito-ryu. He taught these arts in different places, and also transmitted secret teachings to the Aizu domain councilor Saigo Tanomo.” (*7)
The Heian Era practitioner of Onmyodo (“The way of Yin and Yang”)
Abe no Seimei, 921 – 1005
Portrait by Kikuchi Yosai, 1781 -1878
From Tokimune Takeda – son of Sokaku Takeda, and Soke of Daito-ryu Aiki Budo:
“In-yo Aiki-ho” fills the Seika Tanden with Ki through Kokyu-ho and strives to concentrate Ki-ryoku through mental concentration. Closing the five-fingers, inhaling quietly is called “In” (“Yin”), opening the five fingers strongly and exhaling is called “Yo” (“Yang”). Through the continuation of this breathing method the mind becomes clear, the vision becomes sharp, the “spirit”, “ki” and “power” are unified, a courageous spirit is developed, and especially – the various practical applications of the ten fingers of both hands gives rise to superhuman powers. (*8)
From Invincible Warrior by John Stevens:
Regarding Takeda, “His extraordinary ability was due to mind control, technical perfection honed in countless battles, and mastery of aiki, the blending of positive and negative energy.”
Letter from Jigoro Kano to Moritaka (Morihei) Ueshiba
introducing Minoru Mochizuki and Jiro Takeda,
sent by the Kodokan to train at the Kobukan – October 28 1930
From “Aikido Kaiso Ueshiba Morihei-den” (合気道開祖植芝盛平伝)
According to Kisshomaru Ueshiba,
after meeting Morihei Ueshiba Jigoro Kano said:
これこそ私が理想していた武道、すなわち正真正銘の柔道である。
“This is my ideal budo, that is, genuine Judo.”
Finally, even Kano knew that the secret to budo was in/yo. Jigoro Kano visited Morihei Ueshiba to watch a demonstration of aikido. Kano was so impressed that he remarked that what he saw was what he considered an ideal budo. What did Kano view as an ideal budo?
Kano’s concept of Ju no Ri, was based upon the Taoist precept, “reversing is the movement of the Tao,” also described by the statement “the most yielding things in the world overcome the most unyielding.” Kano combined Ju no Ri with the interplay of forces as defined by the precept of in-yo (yin and yang, hardness and softness, negative and positive, receptiveness and resistance), and used the following to explain his concept of Kuzushi founded on Ju no Ri. (*9)
Like the Japanese changing yin/yang to in/yo, Morihei Ueshiba changed his Daito ryu roots of in/yo to many various other phrases, such as ka/mi, Izanami/Izanagi, etc. Ueshiba’s legacy of words was using Omoto terminology to talk about aiki training that he received from Sokaku Takeda. Aiki is the body changing method which allowed all the greats like Takeda, Ueshiba, Sagawa, Horikawa, etc to stand out. Morihei Ueshiba talked about in/yo, ka/mi, heaven/earth/man, standing on the bridge, etc and all of these ideals point to internal martial training methodologies.
This was Morihei Ueshiba’s legacy of words that Modern Aikido from Kisshomaru Ueshiba did not transmit. Those reading Morihei Ueshiba’s words and who have the understanding of those internal concepts to implement them in physical training have the basis to keep his legacy alive and thriving.
(1) http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25175
(2) http://www.guillaumeerard.com/aikido/interviews/interview-with-andre-nocquet-8th-dan-pioneer-of-aikido-in-europe
(3) Aiki News Issue 045
(4) https://www.aikidosangenkai.org/blog/aikido-structure-universe/
(5) “Aikido Memoirs” by Alan Ruddock
(6) https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-taiji-manual-of-xu-yusheng/
(7) http://www.daito-ryu.org/en/prior-to-the-19th-century.html
(8) https://www.aikidosangenkai.org/blog/sagawa-yukiyoshi-masaru-takahashi-breath-training-daito-ryu/
(9) http://www.aikidojournal.com/?id=2138
Morihei Ueshiba and Kisshomaru Ueshiba
at the old Aikikai Hombu Dojo around 1957
B: Weapons
Weapons in Modern Aikido are a mess. Koryu people smile, are polite, but they, too, think Modern Aikido weapons are, well, not really using weapons. This is a very important divergence from Morihei Ueshiba’s reputation.
Meik Skoss eloquently states about Modern Aikido weapons:
That’s because they know squat about weapons. Sorry to be a little heavy again, but I’ve done an awful lot of aikido (sigh… wish now that I’d done more judo and/or classical jujutsu — *that* is real “aiki”) and trained a lot of places (North America, Southeast Asia, and Japan). I have got to say that there’re very, VERY few aikido teachers, in any of these places, who have half a clue about using weapons. It is pretty hard to believe, but they don’t even know the TGIF Principle (in relation to the kissaki), when doing tsuki waza. That seems to be an awfully basic concept to me, but, noooo-o-o-o… (*1)
1. Kisshomaru Ueshiba
Peter Goldsbury notes:
I think the influence of Koichi Tohei in the early postwar years of the Aikikai Hombu should not be underestimated. I have it from shihans who were not smitten with Watergate-style amnesia that many of the sword and jo kata originally practised by postwar deshi came via Tohei Sensei. (*2)
Most of the weapons katas from Modern Aikido were created by post war shihan from various experiences outside of training with Morihei Ueshiba. There are many sources to uphold this. (*3) (*4) (*5) (*6)
Tamura Nobuyoshi was asked, “Did O’Sensei also practice tanto dori?”
He answered:
I never saw him do it. Back in the day the Yakuza always fought with a knife. One day a fighter asked what one could do against these types of attacks. It was the sempais who developed this work. It was very spectacular for the demonstrations.”(*7)
Tanto work was created entirely by Modern Aikido.
Tamura Nobuyoshi was also asked, “Was it O’Sensei who created the katas such as Ichi no Tachi?” He answered, “These are the creations of Saito Sensei. O’Sensei showed the shochikubai ken but did not teach katas as such.” (7)
Meik Skoss notes this:
After WWII, Hikitsuchi and Saito stand out as well-grounded in weapons training. Other teachers, such as Tamura, Chiba, Kanai, and Saotome appear to have gotten most of their buki waza from other sources. (*4)
The aikido ken, jo, and tanto kata are creations of those shihan from Modern Aikido. Most of them created their weapons kata outside of any of Morihei Ueshiba’s teachings. The legacy of Modern Aikido has been to create weapons kata from various sources to add to the curriculum. Unfortunately, this is the weakest spot in Modern Aikido. Those in koryu think very little of aikido’s weapon work and they have very valid points. One can certainly understand Kisshomaru’s hesitancy to train weapons in Tokyo.
1. Morihei Ueshiba
From Meik Skoss:
Did Ueshiba Morihei formally study a lot of the koryu? No, not too much. A little Tenjin Shinyo-ryu, a bit of Yagyu Shingan-ryu, a fair amount of Daito-ryu. That’s all that people’ve been able to document with any degree of certainty. (*1)
Meik Skoss also made this comment:
To the best of my knowledge, Ueshiba’s work with weapons drew on a number of technical sources, but was primarily a rather idiosyncratic style that he employed for personal training rather than an organized system. He’d demonstrate a number of applications from time to time, but that was to illustrate the principles of the art rather than to “teach” buki waza per se. For the most part, by all accounts, most of Ueshiba’s post-war students did not receive systematic instruction in sword, staff, or stick. Amongst his students of pre-WWII vintage, probably Shirata Rinjiro (sword) and Iwata Hajime (staff) are probably the premier examples. (*4)
Tamura Nobuyoshi was asked, “What was the shochikubai no ken?” He answered, “Shochikubai no ken is not a specific form. The movements of O’Sensei varied according to his mood.” Nobuyoshi was also asked, “Did O’Sensei not teach paired katas, whether at Iwama or Hombu dojo?” He answered, “No.”
Diane Skoss notes this about jo kata from Tomiki aikido:
I’ve done the solo jo kata in Tomiki aikido (when in Japan–hm, maybe I did it in the States too?) and it is indeed closely related to one of the Ueshiba jo kata (can’t remember which one though). We all did it in Tokyo, so I wonder if the source might not have been Tomiki S. or Ohba S, rather than Nariyama S. I also have experience in both jukendo (5th dan) and JAA aikido (4th dan). There’s no question, in my opinion, that the yari/jo techniques are derived from bayonet. In fact, I asked Shishida S. about it one time and he confirmed that he had been told that (by Ohba S.? by Tomiki S?–it’s undoubtedly in my notes somewhere). I was also told that the choice of yari, for the Tomiki kata, was due to the fact that a spear (or jo) was more politically correct than a mokuju/bayonet. If you’ve got access to a mokuju, just try the techniques and see how much more sense the distancing makes. (*5)
I think we can see that both legacies, Morihei Ueshiba and Kisshomaru’s Tokyo hombu never really had the solid background in weapons that one would see in a koryu. What is known about Morihei Ueshiba is that he used a bayonet, a spear, a shortened spear, and a bokken. Even when he had a jo in his hands, it was used more like a spear or bayonet than a jo. Modern Aikido does not have kata for spear or bayonet. Two diverging legacies.
“The jo he used was the length of a regular jo,
but it was sharpened at one end.”
A Day in the Life of the Founder Morihei Ueshiba, April 1968
by Gaku Homma
Because Ueshiba’s training in weapons was eclectic and his teaching was eclectic, the main legacy he left for those following his footsteps was just to use aiki when wielding a weapon. He would watch kata and say, With aiki, we’d do it this way. The divergence with Kisshomaru Ueshiba’s Modern Aikido was that aiki, more specifically Daito ryu aiki, was left out.
The legacy of Morihei Ueshiba was to use weapons as an extension of his aiki body. Daito ryu aiki must be present for anyone wanting to follow in Ueshiba’s footsteps.
(1) The old fa.iaido Google group dated 2/12/99
(2) http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15066&page=4
(3) http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15066&page=5
(4) http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?773-origins-of-aiki-jo
(5) http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthread.php?773-origins-of-aiki-jo/page3
(6) The old iaido-l archives
(7) Interview with Tamura Nobuyoshi, by Leo Tamaki
(8) https://www.aikidosangenkai.org/blog/aiki-is-love-isnt-it/
C: Aiki
1. Kisshomaru Ueshiba
Kisshomaru had an extremely hard decision to make regarding Tokyo. His father had left him in charge. He was living in the shadow of a famous man. He couldn’t do what his father did. He didn’t have the skill and he didn’t have the love of martial arts. At least in the beginning, he didn’t want to do aikido. The burden placed on him by his father forced him to take an active role in aikido.
Kisshomaru Ueshiba at Aikikai Hombu Dojo in 1967
After the war, there were families living in the dojo, the roof was leaking, and many people were barely surviving. Kisshomaru’s strength throughout these tough days cannot be underestimated. Not only did he survive, but he repaired the dojo, brought in students, and the families were relocated. Of course, post war Modern Aikido was not a creation by just Kisshomaru. There were many people who helped him keep Tokyo going. As a famous example, Koichi Tohei was also in Tokyo and contributed greatly to the training there. Kisshomaru was the center that held them all together. He was the son of Morihei Ueshiba. For many, the chance to train with Morihei only came through Kisshomaru.
Kisshomaru knew that he couldn’t spread aikido to the world using his father’s words. He took most of the unintelligible babble out. He knew that if one wasn’t famous or technically “strong”, one had to replace it with something. A codified system of techniques was created. Public demonstrations were introduced, even though Kisshomaru was frightened of his father’s rage initially. However, Morihei allowed his son to change things. This is important to note. Morihei gave Tokyo to his son and allowed his son to make changes. In Tokyo, Kisshomaru also had many different personalities to deal with, so a sort of “hands off” approach to training outside Tokyo was taken. This allowed a specified training to occur in Tokyo but yet give people enough room to grow so as not to stifle them.
Frank Doran mentions that Tohei created many energy games and practices. (*1) Patrick Augé states:
Mochizuki Minoru Sensei said that when he was studying with Ueshiba Sensei (late 1920’s), robuse was the name given to the technique that later became Ikkajo, then Ikkyo after the war. The present ikkyo as taught by most Aikikai (and Aikikai related) teachers is the result of the modifications made by Tohei and Kisshomaru Sensei in order to simplify Aikido and make it available to more people…. (*2)
Stan Pranin notes that Kisshomaru Ueshiba gradually changed the technical syllabus and created a flowing style technique based system. (*3) Koichi Tohei was head instructor for many years and his teaching was influenced by the Tempukai. (*4) Morihiro Saito also makes note of some of the things that Koichi Tohei introduced into Modern Aikido training. (*5)
Peter Goldsbury touches upon these things in an Aikiweb post:
There are many subjective accounts of how Morihei Ueshiba trained and what he taught, but I do not think that these accounts allow us to state categorically that this or that was how Ueshiba taught or trained. Apart from Doshu, who I think is in a special category, the Hombu instructor with whom I have discussed these issues the most is Hiroshi Tada. Like Tohei, H Tada was a student of Tempu Nakamura, but he seems to have been very careful as to what he taught in the Hombu and what he taught in his own dojo and in Italy. In other words, he seems to have accepted the idea that only certain things were to be taught or practiced in the Hombu, but also that the other things were to be practiced elsewhere. He teaches weapons in Italy, but never in the Hombu, and when I mentioned some details of a certain jo kata that I practiced in Italy to another Hombu instructor, he was very curious and wondered where Tada had learned it. Like other older Hombu instructors, Tada sets great store by solo training exercises and these seem to consist mainly of kokyu exercises of increasing sophistication and complexity. But he has never taught anything like pushing hands etc and I suspect that the occasion for seeing the results of all this kokyu training would be in basic aikido waza, like shoumen-uchi 1-kyou. This issue for me is which bit of Tada’s training comes from Nakamura and which bit from Ueshiba — and whether he could make such a distinction. Add to this Ellis Amdur’s theory of Ueshiba’s use of his students as ‘crash-test dummies’ and you also have to entertain the possibility that he showed different things to different students — and he showed this by having them take ukemi. You also have to entertain the possibility that the skills that Ueshiba possessed which could be interpreted as IP skills could be acquired by Ueshiba’s students in various ways, but not necessarily from Ueshiba himself by a direct transmission.
and
I am not sure that acceptance is the right word here. Sufferance might be more appropriate. One of the yudansha who trains with the group I look after in the Netherlands attends the workshops of Dan Harden and Minoru Akuzawa when they come to Europe. His aikido comes from another source, of course, but on one occasion a senior Hombu instructor stopped and asked him, “Why are you so strong?” The question was not meant in a negative sense at all and he was not talking about physical strength. The instructor knew exactly what he was seeing and I believe the older generation of instructors in Japan also know this. But, as you say, this knowledge is clandestine and limited to individuals. These individuals are in the Aikikai, but are dwindling in number. Yamaguchi, Tada and Arikawa used to visit our dojo regularly and I once asked an instructor why Doshu (the present Doshu, not Kisshomaru) was never invited. This was a few years ago and the answer was quite blunt: “He’s too young and does not know enough.
I think Doshu is an active exponent of a certain interpretation of iemoto, but the great danger here is that aikido is not a koryu and does not have kata in the sense understood in a koryu. There is a sense that the waza can be seen as vehicles for the expression of creativity and this, to my mind, is what Morihei Ueshiba meant by Takemusu Aiki. He always showed waza, as did Takeda Sokaku, but seems to have presented them slightly differently to different deshi. So creativity can be understood in many ways. Unlike the present generation of Japanese martial arts exponents, Morihei Ueshiba also read the Chinese classics and was familiar with all the texts that are the foundation of Chinese internal arts. Recently I came across a scholarly work on yin-yang and its place in Chinese thought and culture. Even a quick read was enough to show that this is a complex and multi-faceted concept. We all know the question that a student asked Morihei Ueshiba and his answer, citing the knowledge of yin and yang. Ueshiba did not give any further explanation and left it to the students to grasp what he meant. The point is that he was probably familiar with the whole breadth and depth of the concept, but his students did not share this familiarity. (*22)
In the end, Tokyo became a technique driven center of aikido. Kata was emphasized where Morihei Ueshiba said his aikido was formless. Ranks were inflated to send newly created shihan out into the world to spread Modern Aikido. A worldwide message that aiki was harmony, peace, and love spread. While some of this was misconceptions from foreign students who clamped onto the whole spiritual love everyone idea, Kisshomaru knew that to hold the center, some of the fringes had to be given a bit of leeway. The definition of aiki started to become a living, morphing identity which swirled around the peace and harmony message. In/yo, or as Ueshiba would write ka/mi, was solidly pushed to the side. This then, was where the two legacies diverged. Spiritual harmony became prominent with a focus on techniques. Daito ryu was removed as much as possible, including the secret of aiki from Daito ryu. Given the state of Japan after the war, the state of the entire world after the war, and Kisshomaru’s onus put upon him by his father to hold Tokyo with his life, it is certainly an extremely worthy legacy that Kisshomaru created. While it was never the same as his father, Morihei Ueshiba was proud of what his son had accomplished.
1. Morihei Ueshiba
Morihei Ueshiba tested his aiki body by using push tests. These tests were outside of using techniques allowing Ueshiba to demonstrate the secret of aiki. When Tenryu met Ueshiba, Morihei talked about how he watched Tenryu waste his strength trying to unsuccessfully push him over as he was seated. Ueshiba even lets Tenryu try to push him over by pushing on his forehead. Tenryu can not. Ueshiba pushes his legs outward but Tenryu still can not push him over. (*6) From another article, Ueshiba explains that the reason Tenryu couldn’t push him over is because he knew the secret of aiki. (*7) In an interview with Tenryu, Ueshiba gave Tenryu his left wrist and allowed Tenryu to do anything with it. Tenryu could do nothing and mentions that grabbing Ueshiba’s hand felt like grabbing an iron bar. Even when Tenryu lunged at Ueshiba, Tenryu could not get the better of him. (*8) Tenryu tried to push or pull Ueshiba, but could not budge him. (*9) (*10) Tenryu was over six feet tall and weighed over 240 pounds. (*11) Remember, Ueshiba states that he could not be moved because he knew the secret of aiki.
Morihei Ueshiba demonstrating a push-test in Hawaii, 1961
with Yukiso Yamamoto and Nobuyoshi Tamura
In an interview with Hidetaro Nishimura (who introduced Kenji Tomiki to Morihei Ueshiba), Nishimura remembers Tenryu’s words about trying to push Ueshiba from behind and it was Tenryu who slid backwards. (*12) Notice that Tenryu is not a small man. He was a sumo wrestler who was tall, muscular and heavy. Yet, his training, his physical strength, and his solid build failed him in trying to push Ueshiba over. Aiki is not about physical strength, nor timing, nor body placement. Ueshiba was sitting and not moving. There was no timing or body placement involved.
“However hard we pushed the staff would not move.” – Yasuo Kobayashi
In an article in Aikido Journal, Stan Pranin mentions Ueshiba having people push on a jo and also having people push on him while he’s sitting on the mat. (*13) Shirata talks about a time when he and about nine others pushed on Ueshiba. Instead of Ueshiba moving, those pushing slid backwards. (*14) Takafumi Takeno talks about starting his aikido training and Ueshiba was having his students push and pull him. Ueshiba remained unmoved. (*15) Seishiro Endo recounts a time when Ueshiba had Endo push on his knees from the side. Endo mentions that Ueshiba felt soft and like a void that sucked up the efforts to push. (*16) Kazuaki Tanahashi is on video talking about trying to push Ueshiba. It was a common occurrence. Tanahashi mentions that Ueshiba even had Saito trying to push him over. (*17) Gaku Homma talks about how near the end of his life, Ueshiba would still have students push against him. Homma also states that they could not push Ueshiba over. (*18) Robert Frager recounts his time with Ueshiba. Ueshiba had Frager put his hands together and then Ueshiba placed one of his hands on Frager’s top wrist. Frager tried to push Ueshiba’s hand but could not. (*19) When an interviewer asked Kenji Shimizu about what left an impression while training with Ueshiba, he replied:
Well…there were so many things that left an impression on me…I don’t know where to start. One day he said “Shimizu, are you free?”, and when I answered “Yes” he sat down in a backless chair and said “My back is tight, could you massage it a little?”. At the beginning, when I pushed on his back lightly, he said “What’s this? You don’t have any strength – push harder!”, so I put more strength into it and pushed on his back strongly but O-Sensei didn’t move at all. He just said “Push harder!” so I added even more strength and pushed on his back, but he didn’t move, not an inch. He was the same during training – O-Sensei would hold up his te-gatana (手刀) in kamae and say “OK, try pushing me!”. In any case, no matter how much of a master one is, he was of such an advanced age that one would think that he would fall over if pushed strongly. However, since he would become angry if we pushed lightly we would push with all of our strength. Even so, he wouldn’t move, not an inch. (*20)
Modern Aikido removed push tests as they required an aiki body to successfully accomplish them.
Something else to consider regarding Ueshiba’s legacy of aiki is that Morhei Ueshiba would twirl a short stick, sometimes a shortened spear, around and around. This was Kagura-mai, or Dance of the Gods. (*8) Ueshiba was showing a very important aspect of an aiki body in his movements. So important that he used it as an explanation at the 1955 shihan training session:
The 1955 shihan training sessions in Tokyo began with O-Sensei wielding a Jo in “Kagura Mae” (神楽舞 / “Dance of the Gods”). When questioned about technique during the training sessions O-Sensei would just repeat the “Kagura Mae” without saying a word.” (*21)
Ueshiba’s Kagura-mai is not found in Modern Aikido even though Ueshiba commonly showed this movement. This cannot be stated with enough emphasis, the Kagura-mai was an extremely important aspect for Ueshiba. Anyone wanting to follow Morihei Ueshiba’s legacy of aiki must understand it. Aiki was about changing the body. Ueshiba twirling the stick was showing an internal concept from an aiki body.
Kagura-mai, the Dance of the Gods
Peter Rehse notes:
Just be coincidence there was a biography of Hideao Ohba written by Shishida posted by Eddy Wolput as part of his study group today. Maybe he will repost it here but there were several interesting statements. “Ueshiba’s teaching method, which required students to learn with their bodies, obviously would not appeal to educators or to the world of predecessor arts like Judo and Kendo which employed rational, systematic teaching methods.” (*23)
There are pictures and descriptions of Ueshiba stabbing a tree with a spear. Interviews talking of nightly training sessions. Ueshiba had his students push him up steps, stating it was a valuable training method. There are many such examples Ueshiba used which were not kept by Kisshomaru. Modern Aikido did not follow the same training methodology that Morihei Ueshiba used. Kenji Shimizu noted this diverging training when he stated about Morihei Ueshiba:
When I was actively practicing there he often came and went. When he showed up everyone immediately sat down. At first, I thought that people were being courteous toward him. However, it wasn’t only that. It was also that the practices we were doing were different from what O-Sensei expected us to do. Once he lost his temper at us. No one realized that he had come and he shouted: “What you people are doing is not aikido.” (*20)
For those who think that Morihei Ueshiba only talked of spiritual mumbo jumbo that confused his students, it’s known that Ueshiba did teach internal training methods in a clear and concise manner. No ka/mi, no Izanagi/Izanami, but clear and concise on a specific exercise for what one needed to do to train aiki. It was something not found in Modern Aikido. But, as Peter Goldsbury has noted, “this knowledge is clandestine and limited to individuals.”
(1) Aiki News Issue 010
(2) Yoseikan NA website
(3) http://www.aikidojournal.com/encyclopedia?entryID=720
(4) Aikido Journal Issue 112
(5) Aiki News Issue 088
(6) Aiki News Issue 019
(7) Aiki News Issue 019
(8) Aiki News Issue 023
(9) Aiki News Issue 025
(10) Aiki News Issue 049
(11) Aiki News Issue 076
(12) AikiNews Issue 087
(13) Aiki News Issue 044
(14) Aiki News Issue 063
(15) Aiki News Issue 099
(16) Aikido Journal Issue 106
(17) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpWY58LWaRE
(18) http://www.nippon-kan.org/abroad/scotland/sensei_ki_scotland.html
(19) Yoga Journal March 1982
(20) https://www.aikidosangenkai.org/blog/interview-aikido-shihan-kenji-shimizu-part-1/
(21) https://www.aikidosangenkai.org/blog/sadao-takaoka-meeting-osensei/
(22) http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=336927&postcount=87
(23) http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showpost.php?p=346204&postcount=21
D: Morihei Ueshiba’s legacy detailed.
Ueshiba left a legacy. He stated that you didn’t have to be in a specific religion, but that aiki would complete it. When asked what aiki was, he answered, “I am aiki”. When he used spiritual terms, they were references to in/yo, which is the foundation for aiki. It was his vision to pass on aiki also known as Daito ryu aiki. There were a few students that he gave direct transmission to, most of them are known as the pre-war greats. Some of those students were around after the war.
Rinjiro Shirata (back right) at the Kobukan, 1931
How does one recognize that legacy of aiki? As just one example, a student of Rinjiro Shirata kept true to Shirata’s vision and from that, Ueshiba’s legacy. This student, Allen Beebe, was always searching for the meaning to what he had learned from Shirata. He recently started a website devoted to his years of hard work and effort. One specific article is worth reading to start the journey:
When I did take a peek I began to notice that the things that Dan was talking about, were things that I recognized. This happened often enough that I had the strong suspicion that Dan’s background relating to the topics discussed was almost definitely Daito Ryu. What he talked about and how he talked about were simply to “close to home” to be a fluke. (*1)
He goes on to state:
In the mean time, in the “early days,” it seems that most individuals were not coming to the same conclusions that I was. This, however, did not surprise me in the least. How could they? The majority of Aikidoshi, and even Daito Ryu practitioners for that matter, were completely unaware of most of what he was talking about. They had no frame of reference for comparison. It was as if Dan was speaking about infrared before it was commonly known. (*1)
Allen has started posting some of Shirata’s writings, ideas, and words. Ueshiba to Shirata to Beebe. Beebe then had his training methodology reinforced via a lineage of Daito ryu. The legacy of aiki. Ueshiba’s Daito ryu aiki.
(1) https://trueaiki.com/2017/02/20/how-i/
Published by: Christopher Li – Honolulu, HI
May 6, 2017
Aikido Shihan Seiseki Abe – Meeting Morihei Ueshiba O-Sensei
Seiseki Abe (阿部醒石), 1915- 2011
Amenotakemusu Juku Aikido Dojo (天之武産塾合気道道場)
Seiseki Abe was born in Osaka, Japan. A teacher of Japanese calligraphy, he was also a student of Misogi under Dr. Kenzo Futaki, who had trained under Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba. He began training in Aikido after encountering the Founder in Osaka in 1952 and then began teaching him calligraphy a few years later, thereby occupying a unique position as both a student and a teacher of Morihei Ueshiba. He was one of a small number of people to be awarded tenth dan directly by O-Sensei, although the Aikikai only officially recognizes him as an eighth dan.
In this short essay, published in the Rikuryo Alumni Association “Visiting our Teachers” series in 1988, Abe Sensei recalls his first encounter with Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba.
Seiseki Abe, standing far left, with Morihei Ueshiba
Kumano Juku, 1954
Meeting Morihei Ueshiba O-Sensei
by Seiseki Abe
In Showa year 27 (1952), when I had just started working in Kitano, Bansen Tanaka-san (田中万川 – first chairman of the Osaka Aikikai, passed away in 1988) established his dojo, saying “I want to spread Aikido in Osaka”. I knew nothing about that, but the day after the opening I happened to be passing by the front of the dojo and noticed a nameplate saying “Morihei Ueshiba”.
When I opened the entranceway and asked “Is Ueshiba Sensei here?” Bansen-san was there and said “Yes, we had the dojo opening yesterday”. I knew Tanaka-san, but I didn’t know that he did Aikido.
After a short time O-Sensei came out and we met for the first time. He said “You’re a student of Futaki Sensei (*1)”, and then right away he said “come in, come in”. The things that O-Sensei talked about at that time were difficult to understand. He spoke of things far and above “Chinkon Kishin” (*2). I listened to what he said respectfully…and then he said “You, come starting tomorrow!”.
(*1) Translator’s note (Kenzo Futaki): Dr. Kenzo Futaki was a medical doctor and a pre-war student of Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba, an advocate of a diet of unrefined brown rice, and the founder of the Misogi Renseikei (禊の練成会 – Misogi Training Society) whose practices would influence Morihei Ueshiba’s own training.
Dr. Kenzo Futaki’s Ten more and Ten Less Rules for Health
1. Eat less, chew more.
2. Right less, walk more.
3. Wear less, wash more.
4. Worry less, work more.
5. Idle less, learn more.
6. Speak less, listen more.
7. Get angry less, laugh more.
8. Say less, do more.
9. Take less, give more.
10. Blame less, praise more.
二木謙三博士の十少十多の健康訓
1. 食うこと少なくして、噛むことを多くせよ。
2. 乗ること少なくして、歩くことを多くせよ。
3. 着ること少なくして、浴びることを多くせよ。
4. 悶ゆること少なくして、働くことを多くせよ。
5. 怠けること少なくして、学ぶことを多くせよ。
6. 語ること少なくして、聞くことを多くせよ。
7. 怒ること少なくして、笑うことを多くせよ。
8. 言うこと少なくして、行うことを多くせよ。
9. 取ること少なくして、与えることを多くせよ。
10. 責めること少なくして、誉めることを多くせよ。
Dr. Kenzo Futaki
(*2) Translator’s note (“Chinkon Kishin”): 鎮魂帰神 – “calm the spirit and return to the source”, a kind of ritual spirit possession practiced by Morihei Ueshiba.
From Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 25, by Peter Goldsbury
Onisaburo Deguchi’s Kamigakari:
From Chinkon [鎮魂] and Kishin [帰神] to Chinkon Kishin [鎮魂帰神]
As stated above, Kamigakari is usually translated as spirit possession, possession by a tsukimono [憑き物], which need not necessarily be a deity. However, Deguchi Onisaburo never used this term, preferring instead expressions like yuusai [幽斎] and, especially, chinkon kishin. Onisaburo Deguchi almost certainly borrowed the practice of chinkon kishin from his teachers, Honda Chikaatsu and Nagasawa Katsutate. Honda regarded chinkon and kishin as two distinct activities, but Onisaburo Deguchi combined them into one practice. We need to discuss the provenance of chinkon and kishin in some detail and the following account is based on Birgit Staemmler’s detailed analysis in her doctoral research. A clear advantage of considering Staemmler’s account is that she has no discussion either of Morihei Ueshiba or of aikido and so there is no trace of the ‘washback’ thinking that tends to occur in biographies of Ueshiba. Her only reference to Morihei Ueshiba is to state that he, too, practiced chinkon kishin, along with members of the armed forces and intellectuals, when he moved to Ayabe in 1920.
Omoto Priest Masumi Matsumura and Morihei Ueshiba
Chinkon Kishin practice in Mongolia, 1924
I was really in a bind. I was a student of Futaki Sensei, and Ueshiba O-Sensei, who I should say was the Founder of Aikido, had given me permission to become a student. In those days one was not able to become a student in multiple schools. And this was a person who wouldn’t teach you unless you had two introductions! (laughing)
During the war Ueshiba Sensei taught Aikido at the Military Police School (the Rikugun Nakano Gakko) and couldn’t come out of it as a civilian. I don’t know if he was Class A or Class B, but he was named as a war criminal after the war was lost and the M.P.’s came in a jeep to arrest him.
*Translator’s Note: the Military Police (Kempeitai / 憲兵隊) were the secret police for the Imperial Japanese Army, the Japanese equivalent of the German Gestapo. The Rikugun Nakano Gakko (陸軍中野学校), the “Nakano Spy School” was the primary training center for the Imperial Japanese Army’s intelligence division.
It happened that at the time Ueshiba Sensei had a high fever and was in bed sleeping…but the foreigners were wonderful – instead of taking the stance “no matter what, he will be taken into custody immediately” they said “well, he’s sick and I guess that there’s no way that he can run away”, and they started with a search of the house (if it had been the Japanese army…no matter how sick he was I think that they would have taken him off to Sugamo Prison).
Guards at attention at Sugamo Prison, 1948
When they did that, all of his writings turned out to be on pacifism (平和主義). Whatever writings they looked at they were all about advocating for peace. Then they understood “certainly he was employed as a budo instructor by the military, but Ueshiba is the very epitome of a pacifist”…and there he became the first of the war criminals to be released. In the end, he was never put into Sugamo Prison and was able to live life as a farmer.
Signed photographs taken at Sugamo Prison
this group includes a number of the Morihei Ueshiba’s associates
Morihei Ueshiba’s close friend Shumei Okawa declined to be photographed
(top row, left to right): “Ex-Premier General Hideki Tojo” (hanged 1948), “General Seishiro Itagaki” (hanged 1948), “General Kenji Doihara” (hanged 1948), “Ex-Premier K. Hirota” (hanged 1948), “General Heitaro Kimura” (hanged 1948), (2nd row) “General Iwane Matsui” (hanged 1948), “General Yoshijiro Umezu” (life; died in prison 1949), “Ex Minister of State Naoki Hoshino” (life; paroled 1958), “Admiral Shigetaro Shimada” (life; paroled 1955), “Lt. General Akira Muto” (hanged 1948), (3rd row) “Ex-Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo” (20 years, died in prison 1950), “Ex-Ambassador Hiroshi Oshima” (life; paroled 1955), “Ex-Minister of State Teiichi Suzuki” (life; paroled 1955), “Ex-Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Koichi Kido” (life; paroled 1953), “Lt. Gen. Kenryo Sato” (life; paroled 1956), (4th row) “Ex-Finance Minister Okinori Kaya” (20 years; paroled 1955), “Ex-Colonel Kingoro Hashimoto” (life; paroled 1955), “General Jiro Minami [also signed in Japanese]” (life; paroled 1954), “General Sadao Araki” (life; paroled 1955), “General Kuniaki Koiso” (life; died in prison 1950), (bottom row) “Ex-Foreign Minister of Japan Mamoru Shigemitsu” (sentenced to seven years; paroled 1950), “Ex-Ambassador T. Shiratori” (sentenced to life; died in prison 1949), “General Shunroku Hata” (life; paroled 1955), “Ex-President of Privy Council Kiichiro Hiranuma (life; paroled 1952), and “Vice Admiral Takazumi Oka” (life; paroled 1954).
*Translator’s Note – on Morihei Ueshiba and war crimes:
from Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 6, by Peter Goldsbury
O Sensei as a War Criminal
The principal evidence for this from the world of aikido is to be found in Aikido Jinsei by Gozo Shioda. The statement appears on p. 166, in a section recounting his meeting with O Sensei in Iwama in Showa 21 (1946). For those who can read Japanese, here is the text:
Sensei wa touji Ibaragi-ken no Iwama ni insei shi, moppara noukou ni shitashinde oraremashita. Senji-chuu Sensei wa Kyoto no Butokukai no koumon wo sarete ita kankei ue, MacArthur no jirei ni yori G-go wo tekiyou sarete, koushoku tsuihou ni nari, Zaidan Houjin Aikikai mo kaisan no ukime atte oraremashita. Sono tame Aiki-en to iu namae no nouen wo hiraite mainichi noukou wo sareru katawara, doukou no mono wo atsume aikidou wo shidou sarete imashita.
A similar statement can be found in an interview with Gozo Shioda conducted by Stanley Pranin. The latest version of this interview can be found on pp. 185-186 of Vol I of Morihei Ueshiba to Aikido, published in 2006. Here is an English translation:
Pranin: After the war O Sensei also had a very difficult time.
Shioda: The fact that Ueshiba Sensei was an adviser to the Butokukai in Kyoto was not good. Sensei was implicated in Class G war crimes / as a Class G war criminal. Ueshiba Sensei’s foundation was cancelled and his activities were forbidden. Thus Sensei confined himself in Iwama and since he could no longer practice budo, he created the Aiki-Farm and engaged in farming. It was a precarious existence.
There has been some discussion on the Internet about such war crimes and questions raised about the truth of Shioda’s statements. First, a description of Class G ‘war crimes’ is in order.
The source is SCAPIN (Supreme Commander Allied Powers Index) 550, of January 4, 1946, which ordered the removal and exclusion from public office of Japan’s wartime leaders. Broad categories delineated those who were to be purged. (A) Indicted war criminals; (B) All career military officers; (C) Leaders of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association and affiliated organizations; (D) Leaders and influential members of ultranationalist, secret and terrorist organizations; (E) Executives of companies involved in Japanese expansion; (F) Governors of occupied territories; (G) Initially broadly based and unspecified “additional militarists and ultranationalists”.
The above classification can be found in Hans Baerwald’s “The Occupation of Japan as an Exercise in ‘Regime Change’: Reflections after Fifty Years by a Participant”, JPRI (Japan Policy Research Institute) Occasional Papers 29, p. 3. Baerwold adds the rueful comment that:
Moreover, all SCAP staff sections had to rely on their counterparts in the Japanese bureaucracy for basic data and assistance in drafting reforms. This necessity allowed the Japanese officials to protect themselves and promote their own agenda by influencing SCAP officials. It was an early variant of using gaiatsu (foreign pressure) to their own advantage. I was an unwitting participant in the game while drafting purge criteria involving members of the Dai Nippon Butokukai, the Great Japan Military Virtue Society.
It is interesting that Baerwold was involved in drafting purge criteria for the Dai Nippon Butokukai, which included aikido from 1942 onwards. The categories listed in SCAPIN 550 need to be read in conjunction with SCAPIN 548, which added the Dai Nippon Butokukai, with all its affiliated organizations, to the list of organizations proscribed by SCAP.
Shioda’s allegations are strongly denied by Kisshomaru Ueshiba on pp. 83-84 of Aikido Ichiro. Kisshomaru also quotes the relevant passage from Aikido Jinsei (quoted in Japanese above) and rebuts the allegations one by one. Thus, O Sensei was not an adviser to the Butokukai during the war; he was not subject to any banning order from SCAP; and the Aikikai was never proscribed.
I have not found any evidence outside aikido to support Gozo Shioda’s statements, but it is possible that Ueshiba is listed somewhere in the SCAP archives. However, the SCAP order issued in January 1946 initiated a search process that took a year to complete and the actual purge orders were not issued until 1947, when Shioda had already visited O Sensei in Iwama (in July 1946: see the interview, above). Nevertheless, given the influential people he knew, including a number of ultranationalist military officers who also trained at the Kobukan Dojo in the 1930s, it is possible that Shioda had such information and that O Sensei also knew he was under suspicion. However, even if he had come to the attention of SCAP, the only content of O Sensei’s ‘criminal’ activity is that he practiced a Japanese martial art. This might explain why he kept quiet in Iwama at least until around 1950, when the purge orders were lifted. SCAP had already turned its attention to the Korean War and liberated all the war criminals. Moreover, it was as early as 1948 that the Zaidan Houjin Aikikai, with its headquarters in Iwama, was approved by the Japanese education ministry as the postwar version of the Zaidan Houjin Kobukai. This appears to have been done by Kisshomaru Ueshiba, with the support of people like Kinya Fujita and Katsuzo Nishi, but appears to have been done very quietly, to avoid annoying SCAP.
(NOTE. I have benefited very much by a recent discussion about Class G war criminals on the Aikido Journal website and from private correspondence with some of the participants in this discussion.)
Ueshiba Sensei’s calligraphy will remain in perpetuity,
forever a shining treasure of the world.
From Showa year 30 until he passed away in Showa year 44 (1955-1969), this Ueshiba Sensei stayed in my home for one week to ten days of each month. That is to say, the relationship between master and student was joined. The severe bushido type teacher student relationship of past times. This strictness was not forced upon me, it was the “way” of an uchi-deshi serving their master…that was how I regarded it. Without going that far one cannot grasp the essence of their master. Twenty-four hours per day, every day, under the same roof, what I learned was not just technique, it was that person’s way of living…that is “kokyu-ho”.
By his side for twenty-four hours per day training my Ki. O-sensei’s moods, they were all communicated through his living. That is to say, I was connected to O-Sensei’s life. This was incredible.
For example, when I made tea, I would have to judge how thirsty Sensei was and adjust the temperature accordingly, and when I heated his bath I would have to check the water temperature by scooping water out of the bathtub with a dipper rather than putting my hand directly into the water. If I were to put my hand directly in the water then a small amount of the oils on my hand would spread into the water. Sensei would know that. That’s why they say “The way of the disciple is harsh”.
Stone monument at the Aiki Jinja in Iwama
The inscribed Doka is by Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba
calligraphy by Seiseki Abe
(more in “Three Doka and the Aiki O-Kami“)
「美しき
この天地の御姿は
主の作りし
一家なりけり」
“So beautiful,
the form of this Heaven and Earth
created by Su-
to be a member of the one family”
And then I trained that thing called “Ki”. That “kokyu” is shared exactly with calligraphy,
One day Ueshiba Sensei said “That looks interesting, I’ll try it too.” and started drawing calligraphy. I’m sure that he wrote “Aiki”. From that day the comical reverse drama of “the disciple teaches the master…” began. Normally, something like this would be unthinkable…it made me extremely nervous.
“Aiki” calligraphy by Morihei Ueshiba
from the Waialae Avenue dojo in Honolulu, Hawaii
First, without giving him a pattern, I would draw an example and show it to him. Sensei would stare at it and then say something like “so that’s how you draw it”, and then draw it himself.
Intently…concentrating the entirety of himself in the tip of the brush, “Ki” would enter through the ink. For that reason, one can feel an incredible amount of “Ki” in Ueshiba Sensei’s works. Just turning one’s face to the calligraphy and putting palms together, the “Ki” leaps off at you. Foreigners who can’t read the characters seem to be even better at directly receiving that Ki.
And then, when he drew he would draw in a single burst. He would not think of things like his breathing. For that reason, the most difficult thing was for him to write his name on the work at the end…clearly marking that place and position. There was only one place, pointing to that place…there is a place in the “Ki” of this single moment that leads to the “Ki” in Aiki, that is where the Ki of A-un (阿吽) exists.
*Translator’s Note: “A-un” is the Japanese transliteration of the first and last letters of the sanskrit alphabet and represent, in Japanese Shingon Mikkyo, the beginning and end of the universe, Yin and Yang.
The A-un statues at Todaiji in Nara, Japan
More in “Aiki, Iki, Kokyu, Heng-Ha and Aun” – Part 1 | Part 2
From the Rikuryo Alumni Association “Visiting our Teachers” series, 1998
Published by: Christopher Li – Honolulu, HI
February 28, 2017
Interview with Aikido Shihan Yasuo Kobayashi – Part 2
Yasuo Kobayashi in Hawaii in 2008
the late Robert Kubo – Aikikai 8th Dan, Aikido Hawaii International, on the left
“At that point in time, I was caught up in some of the political nonsense amongst various teachers residing in the States, and held forth on this one drunken night at one of the regular parties the dojo had, and Kobayashi sensei said, “X-sensei is my friend, Y-sensei is my friend, Z-sensei is my friend. It all seems simple to me.” In his happy air, in his unpretentious practice and refusal to mystify aikido as either the ultimate combat or a means of establishing world peace, it would have been easy to regard him as an unexceptional man, one who simply liked pleasure, be it jovial laughter, enough beers to make him wobble when he bicycled home, and a regular routine of thumping his students and being thumped in turn. Rather, he always seemed to me to be a man of sublime common sense. As theoretical physicists strive for elegance and simplicity in their equations, Kobayashi sensei appeared to me to do with his life. Such simplicity is far from easy, and all too rare.”
It Had to Be Felt #30: Kobayashi Yasuo – A Living Axle, by Ellis Amdur
Yasuo Kobayashi was born in Tokyo in 1936 and started training in Judo in his fifth year of elementary school. He enrolled at Aikido Hombu Dojo in 1954, the same year that he entered Meiji University, becoming one of the early post-war students of Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba. Now an eighth dan, he is the head of Aikido Kobayashi Dojo, which has more than 120 affiliated dojo around the world
A round table discussion with Kobayashi Sensei appeared previously on the Aikido Sangenkai blog as “Yasuo Kobayashi and Fumiko Nakayama – Living Aikido” (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3).
The current interview is the second part of a two part interview with Kobayashi Sensei that originally appeared in the May 2005 issue of Gekkan Hiden (月刊秘伝 / “Secret Teachings Monthly”), a well known martial arts magazine in Japan. You may wish to read Part 1 of the interview before reading this section.
This interview was also published in a collection of interviews with students of the Founder published in Japanese as 開祖の横顔 (“Profiles of the Founder”) in 2009. There was a short introduction to this work in the article “Morihei Ueshiba – Profiles of the Founder“. A number of English translations of interviews from that collection appeared have appeared previously – Nobuyoshi Tamura Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Hiroshi Isoyama Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Shigenobu Okumura Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Nobuyuki Watanabe Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Masatake Fujita Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2) , Yoshimitsu Yamada Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Kanshu Sunadomari Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Hiroshi Kato Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Yoshio Kuroiwa Sensei (Part 1 | Part 2), Morito Suganuma (Part 1 | Part 2) and Kenji Shimizu (Part 1 | Part 2).
“However hard we pushed the staff would not move.” – Yasuo Kobayashi
Interview with Aikido Shihan Yasuo Kobayashi – Part 2
Q: I see. Do the jiyu-waza (“freee-style techniques”) that are often seen at demonstrations date from that time?
A: No, that began to be done after a system of examinations was established. After the number of members began to increase a system of Dan and Kyu examinations was established, and the uchi-deshi took ukemi at the time. However, there were only about five uchi-deshi then, so they weren’t able to partner with everybody as the numbers increased and so it came to be that those taking examinations would alternate taking ukemi for each other. It was then that jiyu-waza was added as an item on the examinations. Demonstrations began to be held from the time that I enrolled, but kihon-waza (“basic techniques”) alone weren’t interesting, so as the result of much thought it was decided to show kokyu-nage. Until that time kokyu-nage was not really done in the dojo.
Q: Why was that?
A: O-Sensei wasn’t very fond of kokyu-nage. Because “It’s just impossible to throw somebody flying that simply!” was his thinking. However, it’s excellent for conditioning so it was introduced into the curriculum. Something similar happened with aiki-nage, against the same background that accompanied the beginning of jiyu-waza. Speaking of that, as far as I know koshi-nage was not practiced at first either, it was after Shoji Nishio Sensei and Yoshio Kuroiwa Sensei researched it themselves that it became popular with other instructors.
“When we went to Hawaii for a seminar wearing our student uniforms
the customs officer asked me if we were in the army.”
Great individuality among the Shihan
Q: Did you often go to Iwama?
A: When there was something happening, like the Aiki Taisai, I was often called there. But it might be better to say that I was dispatched there rather than called. Sometimes a phone call would come from O-Sensei “I’m sick!”, but when I hurried to Iwama he would be doing farmwork in good health. (laughing) I understood later that when O-Sensei became lonely he would use illness as an excuse to summon the young students. Certainly, they didn’t have training every day in Iwama, and since Morihiro Saito Sensei was employed by the National Railway there were times that nobody was there and he must have suddenly become lonely. When that happened I would be made to go and be someone for him to talk with. I would work the farm with him in Iwama, and we would eat together. Normally he was very mild-mannered and even if he only had a single steamed bun there were times that he would divide it with the students. However, when it came to taking care of him he was like a normal selfish old grandfather. (laughing) In any case, his mood would make 180 degree changes very quickly, often going this way and that. For that reason, if one could look ahead and begin to read his habits then one would gradually begin to understand what O-Sensei wanted, but if one couldn’t do that they would have a really difficult time working as an uchi-deshi. There were more than a few people who, although having ability as Budoka, failed through a lack of this kind of sensitivity. However, the experiences from that time were useful later when opening a dojo, so I think that the shugyo of the uchi-deshi was by no means wasted.
Nobuyoshi Tamura (left), Koichi Tohei (center), Yasuo Kobayashi (right)
Q: I’ve heard that you interacted with Morihiro Saito Sensei, Sadateru Arikawa Sensei and Shoji Nishio Sensei, what were your impressions of them?
A: I think that Saito Sensei was attempting to faithfully hand down the techniques that O-Sensei taught in his sixties. As O-Sensei moved from his sixties to his seventies and eighties he inevitably lost physical strength, which caused the movements of his techniques to become softer and more circular. Kisshomaru Sensei changed the techniques at Hombu in accordance with that, but to the last Saito Sensei was fixed on what had been transmitted to him. I think that Gozo Shioda Sensei’s Yoshinkan was the same. On the other hand, since Kisshomaru Sensei mostly didn’t interfere with the details of other’s techniques each of the Shihan at Hombu dojo were a little bit different. Depending upon the instructor, the impression left by even the same technique could be completely different. However, it could be said that it is this depth and breadth that created today’s Aikikai.
Q: Certainly, when one watches Aikikai demonstrations there is a lot of variation. You had many chances to be taught directly by Arikawa Sensei and Tada Sensei, what were your impressions of them?
A: Arikawa Sensei came from Karate, and his training was intense. For that reason, there were a relatively large number of young people among those who followed Arikawa Sensei, even among the regular students, and he would mainly specialize in teaching at universities. Perhaps because of that he did not teach very much outside of Hombu Dojo, and he himself rarely spoke to people of personal matters, so although he was very popular not very many people know much about him in detail. Tada Sensei was a person who never neglected his personal training, so he accumulated an unusual amount of damage from techniques. Depending upon the shihan there were some cases in which they could not apply techniques unless the uke followed them, but that was absolutely never the case when it came to Tada Sensei.
Q: Is there an instructor who influenced you the most?
A: I started with O-Sensei and then attended training with a variety of instructors at Hombu, but each of their techniques were different and I would adjust to each of them, so it felt as if I built my own style from there. Apart from O-Sensei, I was influenced by Kisshomaru Sensei. He had the fewest idiosyncrasies, and felt the most straightforward.
Suppressing protesters at Tokyo University – January 1969
Moving among the common people, I spread Aikido
Q: When did you open the current Kobayashi Dojo?
A: April of Showa year 44 (1969). That was right in the middle of the university protests – universities had been locked out across the board and studies had been halted. Many of the students had fallen into a lifestyle of self-indulgent drinking and massages. It was then that I thought that there may be something that I could do. Well, the only thing that I was capable of was teaching Aikido, but even so I wasn’t able to just go ahead and use Hombu Dojo for my own purposes, so I thought about establishing my own dojo. I didn’t have any money, so I tore down the parking lot next to my house and build a hand-made eighteen tatami mat dojo (*Translator’s note: each tatami mat is approximately three feet wide and six feet long), and I would teach there when I didn’t have to teach at Hombu.
Hiroaki Kobayashi Sensei, now a professional instructor
Q: In other words, you built a dojo for the sake of the students?
A: That’s right. In any case, students don’t eat and drink in small amounts, so those expenses were a real burden. Therefore, when I began recruiting new members I had to make the monthly fees fit their budgets. When my son Hiroaki was three years old, passersby would see me teaching students and my son and ask me “Please teach my children too”, so the number of members began to increase gradually.
Aikido Founder Morihei Ueshiba and Morihiro Saito in Iwama
Q: It seems that you place importance on sword and staff at your dojo?
A: The sword and staff that I teach is that which was organized by Saito Sensei. O-Sensei would do something different every day, so Saito Sensei, who was taught in Iwama for many years, organized them so that they would be easy to understand and that it would be easy to understand the extension of the technical principles of the sword and staff into the body arts. I think that collecting O-Sensei’s techniques like this was a great achievement. During a day of training in my dojo we always practice with both the sword and the staff, the thirteen step jo kata, the twenty-two step jo kata, the thirty-one step jo kata, we practice them just like that. I also place importance on training in the sword and the staff when I am overseas.
Q: What are your thoughts concerning Aikido as a budo?
A: Truthfully, this is a problem. There are some who criticize Aikido practice as being watered down, and even I don’t deny that. However, if we put that aside, I think that the fact that it has been able to attract those who had no previous interest in budo is an achievement. I myself trained intensely when I was young, so I understand that the evaluation of a budo is connected to its power to handle the strength of a budo’s attacks, but I feel that perhaps we should turn our eyes to the achievement of “the budo that was opened to 10,000 people – Aikido”.
Q: When I hear you speak this way I understand that the narrow and inaccessible path of Aikido has become the broad path that it is today through the efforts of many teachers. So, what are your objectives for the future?
A: I love Aikido and have trained hard for many years so that now I have opened a dojo and am teaching, and I would like to continue in the same way to, as it were, move among the common people and spread Aikido. For that reason, even now I take ukemi for the beginners! In the end, I like to move around when I teach. (laughing) Also, if the locations and the teachers are available then I would like to move forward with opening more dojos. I have more than one-hundred students raised in my dojo that have opened up their own dojos around the country, and I would like to continue to develop capable people.
Gekkan Hiden – May, 2005
Published by: Christopher Li – Honolulu, HI
January 14, 2017