Magma

[quote]akiy wrote:

Quote:

aikilouis wrote: Quote: For example, the dictatorship in power before WW2 could have made of him a perfect icon of traditional and martial values for propaganda purposes. Instead O-sensei stayed home. I seem to remember that in his younger days, he went out to Mongolia and such with the Omotokyo folks to incite rebellions and such.

Jun, I'm sorry for whatever bad day you were having when you posted that response, because that's how your post reads. You could have expressed the exact same disagreement in a post devoid of the "I seem to remember..." sarcasm, pointing out something that you obviously believe aikilouis - and the rest of this posting board - already knows, since you didn't take the time to explain it. But instead, you rolled it all into "rebellions and such." Regardless of the validity of your belief that many people reading this thread have already heard of the Mongolian expedition, your tone during that post seemed to you set you up as the guardian of the Golden Aikido Cookie Jar, slapping away the hands of those aikidoka who have come for their sweets.

In truth, I think you have taken aikilouis' quote out of context. AikiLoius didn't offer that example of o'sensei staying at home as an example of not taking action or being not hot-blooded. He offerred it as a comparison of a time when O'sensei could have gained propaganda for his aikido and chose not to. Therefore your reference to the Mongolian expedition to show that at one time O'sensei was hot-blooded misses the mark. The purpose of the Mongolian expedition was clearly not publicity for aikido. Morihei was also in the army for a time... but that is just as non-topical.

And, by the way....
Does anyone else see the irony in that?

As for what I believe, I think that a great many of the stories of O'sensei are exagerations of real events, or tales that grew with each retelling. However I don't buy the argument that we can look at modern athletes and plumb the depths of human ability. To say that we know everything that the human body is capable of because of our perceptions of our "test-subjects" is arrogance in the highest degree. We know that only about ten percent of the human brain potential is ever tapped within one person. So what do we not know about what the human body is capable of? I reject these stories of O'sensei because those closest to him during those days say they never witnessed these things, not because I think I know what the human body is and is not capable of.

Just my thoughts.

Tim