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Aikido is a relatively young art, but has a huge broad base. Morihei Ueshiba had many contemporaries and many students. He had difficulty sharing his full vision of his art, and so many of his students developed their own methods of communicating what they learned and what they felt was important. Ueshiba had many influences: from the Koryu world of Sokaku Takeda; to the rational dissemination and preservation of skills of Jigoro Kano; to the military machines of his day that wanted methods to create/regurgitate entire battalions in the shortest possible time; to his religion that criticized his government, his emperor and the war; to the consequences of the Battle of the Pacific and Japan's surrender; to the opening of his legacy to the entire planet under multiple generations of students.
I started training in a small dojo, the only dojo for the entire province of Saskatchewan. Aikido did not exist until you reached Winnepeg to the east, or Calgary and Edmonton to the west. If there were schools in North Dakota and Montana, the Canadian and American economies were such that I seldom travelled south of the border. Going north, the nearest dojo I would have found was likely in the U.S.S.R.
There were two Shodan and two Ikkyu instructors, and a couple of fourth Kyu who trained me for my 5th Kyu test. They were everything Aikido to me. They had their disagreements and didn't perform their techniques all the same way. I ask many questions and I am a challenging
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08-04-2015 05:02 PM 
