Quote:
Christopher Li wrote:
I'd point out that neither of them met Morihei Ueshiba until well after the war, in the 1950's, so their testimony is certainly not direct.
None of this is conclusive, of course, but the case for a radical change in direction specifically due to the war seems, to me, to be far from clear.
Best,
Chris
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The actual source for both Anno and Holiday's remembrances would, of course, be Hikitsuchi Michio, who trained with the founder both before and after the war.
The commercially available video series
The Essential Teachings of Aikido contains at least one sequence in which Hikitsuchi recounts his first meeting with Ueshiba after the war, in which he was told by Ueshiba of the new form that aikido would take in this new period.
My personal view is that Japan is a culture built around an excruciating sensitivity and responsiveness to context at the level of both the individual adapting to the group, and that of small groups adapting to the larger society, and the widely proclaimed transformation of aikido in the post-war period is much more a reflection of aikido finding a new image under the regime of the post-war Occupation than it is of anything else, however taken by the meme any of us may be at one point or another.
Best,
FL