Ecosamurai

Ran out of popcorn watching the fight on the leather man thread so decided to waste some tea break time on this

The reason I mentioned this at all is because I was recently learning more about seme, lots of folks in the kendo community talk about it the same way that people here talk about Ueshiba's incredible void-like quality that I mentioned. The ability to - with little to no effort or movement - cause you to do something that results in your defeat (i.e. loss of a point in kendo or to fall or be immobilised in aikido, just for clarity)

So lately I'm thinking that if kendo doesn't have the internal aspects described so often here and if seme is the same sort of thing (perhaps even the exact same thing) as Ueshiba being a void in the mat when people attacked him in his later years then that aspect of this discussion is not about internal skill as being discussed here.

Ellis in his article mentions Ueshiba moving from lightening to void (quoting Henry Kono's experiences of ukemi with the founder). Essentially I'm questioning whether the void aspect is anything to do with all the discussion of internal skill, fascia, solo exercises at all or if it isn't the same thing as kendo people (who definitely do not train in internal skills, at least not intentionally in modern kendo though I'm willing to entertain the idea that they do it by accident perhaps, suburi/soloexercise breathing/kokyu and so on) talking abiut seme which can seem almost like a supernatural ability to bop you on the head with a shinai you never saw even move (sound familiar in the context of aikido & Ueshiba chit-chat?).

I'm also thinking of Roy Suenaka's book where he describes the difference between taking ukemi from Ueshiba (void-like) and from Tohei, in Tohei's case you felt physically tossed around like a rag doll apparently. All this would tie into the timing of Ueshiba's life and what has been observed about the early kobukan students. Ellis mention of the seminar in 1955. Physical conditioning and solo exercises and so on. Meaning essentially that old-man aikido is where you become like a ghost when people try to attack you but you need hard physical conditioning and training to achieve the prodigious power attributed to Ueshiba.

This brings me back to the question. If being void-like when being nage is the same thing as seme in kendo/kenjitsu and this is what you're aiming for. Do you need to train in internal skill in the first place. Or (the question that interests me most) do you need the hard physical training and conditioning for internal skills displayed by Ueshiba and other Takeda students to progress onto becoming void-like.

And here's the big question. Is the difference between DR and aikido tied up to being void-like? Is this the change that Ueshiba made and was aiming for? Ellis mentioned the idea that you need to be able to do DR before you can do aikido...

I'm genuinely curious to hear peoples opinions

Regards

Mike