Re: Moriteru Ueshiba v Christian Tissier
 

In 03 a group of us Canucks went to Aikikai Hombu Dojo with Kawahara sensei as our "tour guide". Day 1 in Tokyo we attended Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba's morning class, and that evening the 15 of us went to dinner with him. We were fortunate that one of the group could act as a translator. Mr. Ueshiba told us that when he teaches he likes to demonstrate the basics. As it was nearly a decade ago I forget what else he said beyond that, but he wanted to make sure that people attending his sessions received consistent instruction.
W

Re: Moriteru Ueshiba v Christian Tissier
 

In the past there have been many threads adressing the issue of the so-called aikido "styles", and i have always said that there is only one aikido.
Now this thread comes to validate my point since it's obvious that teachers who happen to belong in one organization or another have very different "style" among each other.
No matter in what organization one starts learning the art there is a set of basic principles and a set of techniques that he will be taught. One's personal style of applying, executing or performing techniques in demos is mostly a matter of the personal polishing and forging he put himself through, after he had learned the basics and sometimes it reflects parts or sums of some of his teachers, sometimes it doesn't.
And that in my opinion is a healthy thing, we don't want simple copies of the teachers that came before us, or the art will slowly fade.
I have done a research for a certain high ranking master that belongs to the aikikai but his technique was always different, perhaps supperior than the second and third doshu, and i realised that his technique didn't look anything like his teachers'! He had developed a personal "style", sometimes better than some of his instructors' but that doesn't make it another ryu, so he never called it that.
So in my opinion, the same applies between the Doshu and Tissier, and it's not necessarily a matter of better or worse, they are just different approaches...

Re: Moriteru Ueshiba v Christian Tissier
 

Reading this thread I am reminded of something Okamura Sensei once said (I paraphrase)

"Up to 3rd Dan be technically correct, 3rd to 6th Dan develop your own style, after 6th Dan do what you like"

Aikido (like any physical sport) follows certain principles but each player/practitioner develops a style according to their personality and physical make-up (Think of Federer vs Nadal, Woods vs McIlroy etc. etc)

In this context better or worse becomes not only irrelevant but meaningless.