Quote:
Nathan Mishler wrote:
Was there a time when it wasn't common knowledge that O'Sensei studied Daito Ryu? I ask because when I started in 2001 (yup, young'n) it was EVERYWHERE I looked that Daito Ryu was in Aikido's past. Is this just because I came into things post-internet, as it were?
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Yup
Stan Started writing about it in the 80's.
More interesting was that no one really knew or understood that there really wasn't much by way of prewar aikido or even what Daito ryu was. Stan more or less discovered for the Western world that Ueshiba almost solely trained in DR for over twenty years and when he opened up shop he chose to teach DR.
This was simply not known in the west.
Most of those now famous Prewar deshi showed Stan their DR scrolls and he took photos. Recent expanded interviews are also showing that Takeda actually was showing up at the dojo every 3-6 months. With that I am also finding it peculiar that we hardly EVER read first hand accounts of the interactions between Ueshiba and Takeda ..by students...who most assuredly who were there. It's as if it never happened.
There is a history -best left out of this thread- of repeated obfuscations and down playing. I will see if I can find where Kisshomaru apologized for that at one point.
Anyway, as a capstone for me, I had a visiting Japanese Shihan tell me and a friend in 1992 that there was no more Daito ryu! This as both of us were training
in Aikido
and Daito ryu.
To be fair DR owes a debt to Aikido in that it's popularity and access to it grew from Aikido. Not the least of which is that an incredible number of students came to it from aikido. Also that Ueshiba continued to grow and made significant changes to his art. Some of which I think are pretty significant and original. Some, young and old find the history fascinating, others could care less as they don't think it helps advance their training.
Dan