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Old 09-23-2008, 08:42 AM   #114
Ellis Amdur
 
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Location: Seattle
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Re: Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 10

Dan - small clarifications. Kuroiwa and Iimura were postwar - as was Saito (albeit, a special case).
I do not think anyone was drafted into doing weapons taking techniques, etc., against their will. All information that I have was that Ueshiba M. was laissez-faire about most things.
He did such techniques (could HE, or Takeda, Horikawa, Sagawa accomplish them against a skilled swordsman? - Were the deshi imitating, ineptly what their forebears COULD do? Or were they imitating what they, too, couldn't do? In Ueshiba's case - and perhaps the others, we do have some accounts from swordsmen suggesting that Ueshiba could - but soon, in this area, we leave even speculation and enter fantasy discussions. )
Anyway, aside from his own research at various centers (Iwama, Shingu, Wakayama, Kyoto, etc., where that particular deshi, who functioned, in my opinion, partly as a "crash test dummy" for Ueshiba to hone a particular aspect of his own studies), I think Ueshiba left each to do as they would. Yeah, there were the emotional storms of "that's not my aikido," and Saito's memories of Ueshiba expressing visible pleasure when the former, amidst all the circus acts, would do a simple demo of aikido basics, but otherwise, people did as they wished. And that included lots of sword taking demos.
And with the exception of challenges to the administration, or in Tomiki's case, the 2nd generations ideology of what aikido was to be, 2nd Doshu's attitude seems to have been that of the Zen proverb, "If you want to keep your cow, give it a huge pasture."
Finally, idealistic martial arts - of which aikido is one - suffer from the "frog in the well" syndrome - [A frog in a well gazed at the sky, and said, "I know what the universe is. It's a black tube ending in a small blue disc." In other words - if such explanation is needed, I think many of these people - even shihan - honestly believe they can bring this stuff off - they become as credulous in their weapons and taijutsu as their students, who are taking the dives for them.
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