With the exception of Yoichiro (Hoken) Inoue, Ueshiba's nephew, Gozo Shioda, the founder of Yoshinkan Aikido, and Tsutomu Yukawa, O-Sensei's prewar uchideshi studied a maximum of perhaps five to six years.

The same can be said of the postwar period. The initiates of that period include such well-known figures as Sadateru Arikawa, Hiroshi Tada, Seigo Yamaguchi, Shoji Nishio, Nobuyoshi Tamura, Yasuo Kobayashi, and later Yoshimitsu Yamada, Mitsunari Kanai, Kazuo Chiba, Seiichi Sugano, Mitsugi Saotome and various others. Shigenobu Okumura, Koichi Tohei, and Kisaburo Osawa form a somewhat unique group in that they practiced only briefly before the war, but achieved master status after World War II. None of these teachers spent any lengthy period studying directly under O-Sensei.