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Ellis Amdur wrote:
Also, the whole selling point of DR, and thereafter, aikido, is different. It's all about being--or appearing invulnerable. Throwing people with a just a twitch of the body. God-like powers. Just like the comic book ad that first got me interested - "throw people with mystical energy!" DR and aikido, at least among it's founders and leading lights, was an exercise in grandiosity, in posturing and impressing both onlookers and one's own students.
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This thing that Chris Li quoted captures another important part of it:
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During training Sokaku Takeda sensei would never allow techniques to be applied to him. Because of that, in front of Takeda sensei I only practiced in applying techniques to others. I was told “Would a Bushi ever allow a technique to be applied to them?” by Takeda sensei.
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Chief among everything he had to offer, Takeda was selling a romantic notion of olden times to late-Meiji / Taisho / early Showa students. Because people wanted to be in touch with that and they also weren't widely knowldgeable in what it actually was.
I am betting that if you interviewed typical budoka in Japan from those periods, you would not find many of them (who were not actually involved with one of the old systems at the time) had any idea what the traditional training structure of a classical jujutsu dojo was. The idea that the teacher threw the students around most of the time would probably seem likely to them.