Lee, the argument that Dan and others have made is not that teachers have failed to communicate what they knew but that modem Aikido is 1) no good, and 2) no one after O'Sensei (or maybe Saito Sensei) could do Aikido as O'Sensei wanted. It's not a straw man that I've set up. It is what they have said. They've made numerous claims. When I disproved their arguments they did not answer. They still haven't answered. Now Chris, and yourself, are pretending the bold claims weren't made.
Let me be clear. I do not accept that most students of Saotome can't do Aikido well. For that matter I don't see the lack of alleged Aikido ability in other post-war organizations either. I prefer some Aikido over other Aikido, but it's basically good most places that I've gone. That people accept the argument that it's so terrible says more about what they want Aikido to be than any problem with Aikido. Aikido is not good for cage fighting.
For the record, I have gone to many seminars with Saotome Sensei. He's no more or less understandable than he has been in the past. His books and videos are easy to understand with a small effort. His descriptions at seminars are also easily understood once you have an idea of where he's coming from and get used to his way of speaking. If there is a problem it is that people don't always do what Sensei says. If we follow the system O'sensei developed we will progress in our ability. This is not my opinion. This is what Saotome Sensei said. This is what O'Sensei told him.
It is noteworthy that Dan has said he doesn't think much of Ushiro Sensei. We can conclude then that what Dan does is quite different from what Ikeda Sensei does, or at least that Dan thinks so. I know exactly why Ikeda Sensei has engaged in friendship seminars because he told me. But I'm not going to discuss it here. He does not value Ushiro Sensei because he thinks we completely missed the boat after the war. It is not because he thinks his Aikido or Saotome's Aikido was deficient. At his level he wants to explore. It does not mean that he is against cooperative waza training. I know because I asked him to show the application of breaking inner balance to strikes at a seminar I hosted and he made quite clear the difference between exercises and the application of skills to movement training. He says it is necessary to break balance internally and externally. Internal is another way. It is not the only correct way, according to Ikeda Sensei. Your claims that both Ikeda and Saotome Sensei's see "the inadequacies" of their art is not what they have told me.
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Lee Salzman wrote:
Saotome Sensei is certainly one of the few people who can be said to have understood O'Sensei with respect to technical ability; I think anyone would have to be crazy to deny that, nor do I think anyone is denying that. But again, why do so few of his students display even an inkling of his ability? Why do Saotome Sensei and Ikeda Sensei bring outside martial artists like Kenji Ushiro, decidedly not an aikidoka, to the summer camps to better relate what they are doing to their students? As Ledyard Sensei has noted elsewhere, why is Saotome Sensei now trying harder to explain things he just earlier hoped students would, in essence, get by osmosis? They are exploring ways to improve the teaching of things, because there are inadequacies and they know their art is in danger of degradation and loss, if it is not already there. I say this as a member of the ASU.
What we are addressing with these things is exactly the teaching problem: how to describe what is going on and how best to teach it to others. We're not changing the end-product, we're not changing the message of the art, we're not changing the foundations; we're just trying to figure out if there is a better way to arrive at these things than what has been passed down to us through official channels. This has meant going back and looking at where O'Sensei got his influences and seeing how he used them to build himself as well as how they helped frame what he was saying. This is not subverting him, this is rather trying to better understand where he was coming from.
You are setting up and attacking straw-men here.
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