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Old 08-09-2011, 10:26 PM   #40
hughrbeyer
Dojo: Shobu Aikido of Boston
Location: Peterborough, NH
Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 653
United_States
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Re: The Descent of Aiki

Just a note on "descent" and "deterioration" -- In the OP I described aiki as we're discussing in on these forums as a collection of techniques mixed up with some odd stuff added and some important stuff left out.

I think it's worth noting that the same could be said of O-Sensei's aikido--that he took Daito-Ryu, left out a bunch of good stuff, added a bunch of mysticism, mucked up the techniques he did keep, and created an odd mongrel art inferior to the original. In fact, I believe something like that has been said by Daito-Ryo folks.

That's the natural dynamic whenever a genius arrives and transforms an art with their new vision. Whether you think this is a "degeneration" of the old art or a creative invention of something new depends on your attitude towards the art that was created. (I'm reminded of a story about a music critic hearing Beethoven for the first time and saying, "But- But- One must not make music like that!")

Given that in this case, the resulting arts produced some of the finest martial artists in Japan, I'm not too worried about "degeneration." To the contrary, I'm more interested in finding out if there are elements of the Chinese arts which did get left out, whether there was a reason for that, and whether going and learning about them would make my art stronger.

It's different from studying aiki--the case has been persuasively made that when I study aiki I'm studying the body of knowledge that O-Sensei himself based his art on. But it's still of potential value.

So let's not get bent out of shape about the words. We know the positions of the various players. I'm more interested in the content.

Oh, and when I used "descent" in the title--I was playing off Darwin's title, "The Descent of Man", of course. No value judgement implied.
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