Quote:
Joshua Reyer wrote:
In his book "Budo", Ueshiba wrote "If he comes with ki, strike with ki; if he comes with water, strike with water; if he comes with fire, strike with fire." (Translation by John Stevens). Of course, I'd like to actually see the original Japanese, but this translation by itself perfectly indicates a native, idiomatic conception of "ai". It may seem rather confrontational or paradoxical to someone used to thinking of "aiki" as blending and harmonizing, but from a Japanese language standpoint, it matches-up fine (or, as they Japanese would say, ‚‚‚‚‡‚).
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Josh,
I spent some considerable time transcribing the text from the Japanese copy I possess, only to have the kanji appear as squiggles in the forum. And, yes, I know about the text encoding & forum options and I tried them all. To no avail.
If you want to see the Japanese text of what Stevens translated, send me a PM with your e-mail address.
Best wishes,