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Old 02-02-2010, 07:03 AM   #17
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Re: The "love" schtick

QUOTE: BTW - Mutoh Masao rather gleefully told me that he had a copy of Admiral Takeshita's diary and - here's a direct quote, "Everyone today talks about 'aikido is love, love, love.' But Takeshita Sensei quoted Ueshiba-san as saying, "Aiki is a means of achieving harmony with another person so that you can make them do what you want."

Well, the Japanese for harmony is wa 和 and Morihei Ueshiba also uses this term in his published writings. the Japanese word for Japan is 大和 (great harmony). Throughout Japanese history, the preservation of wa was regarded as paramount, and in the Tokugawa era, the practice of ryoseiba(tsu): punishing both sides, arose in order to preserve the tatemae (outward appearance) of wa. (Of course, wa was determined by social standing. Punishing two samurai for fighting was one example of preserving wa; crucifying commoners for protesting about high taxes was another.) If we take Takeshita's quote of Ueshiba as it stands, largely 'fascist' Japanese governments demonstrated aiki all the time: they went to great lengths in preserving wa, as they compelled generally willing subjects to do what they wanted. The supreme example of preserving wa for a samurai was 切腹/腹切り seppuku/harakiri (ritual suicide). There is no evidence that Ueshiba understood wa 和 or 合 as fundamentally different in concept, as applied to aiki. Of course, 愛 would be a 'wonderful' homonym for both concepts.

I think the 'aiki is love' theme is largely based on the fact that (1) the ai of aiki 合 and ai 愛 = love, are homonyms. So it was very easy for someone like M Ueshiba to make a new word aiki (愛気) without worrying too much about the precise meaning of the combination, for it sounds 'wonderful' in Japanese. It is a generally recognized principle that if If you can combine Chinese characters to increase the 'wow' factor of a concept or message, the meaning will follow as a matter of course. So, obviously ai-ki 愛気 has a meaning--a 'wonderful' meaning. However (2), there is no evidence of M Ueshiba using such homonyms before he met Onisaburo Deguchi and studied kotodama-gaku, under Deguchi's tutelage. Ueshiba's time with Deguchi, especially after the first suppression in 1921, largely determined how he presented his view of budo.

The irony is that Deguchi might well have borrowed Christian ideas of love to create the complete structure found in Reikai Monogatari. The problem is whether he, and Ueshiba also, understood the cultural background of the term, especially the tension between eros and agape in Christian theology (beginning with the letters of St Paul).

Best wishes to all,

PAG

Last edited by Peter Goldsbury : 02-02-2010 at 07:14 AM.

P A Goldsbury
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