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Old 05-01-2008, 04:30 AM   #46
Paul Sanderson-Cimino
Dojo: Yoshokai; looking into judo
Join Date: Mar 2003
Posts: 434
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Re: Functional Origins of Aikido/Daito-Ryu Techniques

Quote:
Dan Harden wrote: View Post
DR is frequently criticized for many of the same reasons as Aikido in the Koryu community. And for some very good reasons.

( ... )

Functional origins of techniques
The power of DR is in its body method, not in the pretzel logic. The functional "origins" are unknown, and explanations for "them" (since "they" are all over the place) are as varied as the five DR schools waza are. It is probably wiser to consider the explanations for these incredibly inconsistent techniques as unsupported legend, rather than unchanged and cohesive, waza transmitted down through time.
Of the many theories I'm entertaining about aikido, this is perhaps my "null hypothesis" or default assumption. It's also kind of my worst nightmare. (My worst -aikido- nightmare, that is; nightmares broadly considered, that one with the weasels and the pokers wins out. All those little eyes...) To wit: aikido has no rhyme or reason to it. It's -complete- nonsense; a martial art that, due to a lack of "live" practice, has degenerated into stylized absurdity. (Or perhaps: due to a lack of "live" practice, was born in absurdity as a random creation and never was meaningful.) In short, it can no longer really be called a martial art (in the literal sense of "military/fighting skill".) There are no functional origins; even if they have some vague resemblance to, say, sword movements, they might as well have been made up out of thin air as, "Okay, uh, rotate this way, and then make an upwards motion like that. Okay, sure, anything's fine."

It's an unpalatable theory, but objectively, not an unbelievable one. Even if one accepts the attitude that Takeda and Ueshiba were top-notch martial artists, there's nothing preventing a great martial artist from teaching absurdity for their own reasons. E.g., a Gracie could get up there and teach Bujinkan wristlock jumpkick defenses to a gym full of people. Furthermore, it's not like we all learned from Ueshiba; most of us studied several generations down the line from the source. Maybe even if there were some meaningful skills implicit in the absurd techniques (if one buys the contested theory of "principle-based" martial arts), they've mostly been lost over time.

However, I say this is my null hypothesis because I'd really like to entertain all alternatives before reluctantly accepting it.

Quote:
Matt Sloan wrote: View Post
How long have you been training?
About four years. Well. Four years, followed by a fifth year of semi-training due to relocation, busy-ness, and being occupied with the quandry detailed in this thread. (You mentioned randori; one of my defining martial arts experiences during that year was going to a free-form grappling club and finding that aikido seemed totally irrelevant. Like, it's not that everyone was speaking Spanish and I was speaking bad Spanish; everyone was speaking Spanish and I was vocalizing a series of totally different sounds. The question is whether those sounds amount to a different but equally legit language, or if they're babble.)

Last edited by Paul Sanderson-Cimino : 05-01-2008 at 04:40 AM.
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