http://www.aikidojournal.com/article...ghlight=tomiki
Stanley Pranin interview
"I mean the training before the war I don't think was that much more intense than it is perhaps perceived. It was just the society they were living in, with the military government and the whole society being geared up towards conscription and war. In that sense there was tension in the environment. In terms of dojo training, it might have been a little rougher but the people who we think of as being top people figures before the war such as; Tomiki, Shioda and Tohei and people like that, I don't think their training was in anyway particularly more intense, I mean they had direct contact with O'sensei in that time that's for sure.
The difference is that the post war society we live in is not tied with so much tension and also the number of activity's competing for our time and interests are so much more, with; T.V, dvd's, video games, computers and hundreds of different sports and hundreds of different martial arts. There is also the way martial arts is portrayed in the media with its' unrealistic qualities and impossible feats, one guy beating up forty guys all these impossible scenarios, and young people who tend to go to the martial arts are heavily influenced by images like that. It's the time we live in."
David