Cliff Judge

It is weird how the introduction section established Mr. Murray as someone who once met Dan Harden in a park. I think it might be more useful to either talk about Murray's Aikido training or teaching experience, or just let the essay stand on its own merits. I don't think it does a service to Mr. Murray or to the veracity of his essay to set him up under another person's shadow like that, particularly when the overshadowing person is not known to be associated with Ueshiba's lineage.

Mr. Murray does a good job arranging some of the quotes of and about Ueshiba's practice, and the thesis that the art of Aikido as disseminated by Tohei and the younger Ueshiba is different than what the Founder seemed to be doing when he was on the mat is well supported.

I find it interesting that to even dip a toe into the water here, we have to make a number of assumptions.

1) That the information we have about Ueshiba's martial prowess are not credulous, biased opinions. Murray's essay didn't even bother to establish that Ueshiba was skilled, and I don't mean this as a criticism of the essay, but just an observation that we've all drank a certain Kool-Aid. It is what it is, I think. There is no good way for us to cross-examine whether Osensei was truly as good as the quotes we have indicate. But at some point, you ought to play devil's advocate with yourself and say, of all of these accounts of how incredible Osensei was, maybe none of them came from people who didn't have some skin in the game and/or really could judge.

2) That there is an actual "legacy" left by Ueshiba that is different than the Aikido of his son, or Tohei, or Shioda, or Tomiki, or etc. This essay is interesting in that it hammers you with quotes about how Ueshiba never actually taught, he just demonstrated and lectured. Why is that? If he didn't teach people how to do what he was doing, why do we seem to believe that he had any desire for us to attempt to pursue his skills? Particularly now that we are a couple of generations removed from knowing much about them. There's the "that's not my aikido" quote, but aside from (certain interpretations of) that, why do we think Ueshiba didn't intend for the world to practice one of the lines of "Modern Aikido?" Isn't it a bit arrogant to just invite ourselves to ... whatever it is some of us are doing ... attempting to reconstruct an ideal Ueshiba-like practice from bits of other arts, I suppose.

In the end I don't think the essay makes a good argument that there actually is a "legacy" of Ueshiba that is different from "Modern Aikido."

3) I think the condemnation of "Modern Aikido" as being focused on technique may be oversimplifying things a little. Despite the quotes that Ueshiba practiced formlessly when he was teaching, one can see from the existing footage that when he told everyone to pair up and train, they sure look like they were working on techniques. I.e. the line between "technique-focused training" and "formless Ueshiba style training" is maybe not so bright.

4) Last but not least, for now....we really seem to assume that Ueshiba was a genius that was trying to teach, but nobody was listening or something. I've been reviewing footage lately and I'm wondering why we don't talk a little bit more about how he displayed behaviors that indicate he had some type of dissociative or other type of cognitive disorder. Perhaps we should regard the talented and dedicated students he surrounded himself with, who sought to create structured training systems inspired by his gyrations, as the real progenitors of our art.