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Old 11-30-2011, 08:56 AM   #54
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: O'Sensei teaching Aikido at the Hombu Dojo after WWII

Also worthy of note in that interview is this fellow stating that Ueshiba stayed with him for a year and half in 51 with Ueshiba only returning to visit his wife, for a total of 8 months of Ueshiba living with him in Osaka!!Ellis noted accounts of Ueshiba also showing up later in life at the Kodokan to do Judo...well..to be Ueshiba doing judo.
I guess my own questions would be:
Seeing how so many deshi were apparently drawing his bath and bathing him and training with him everyday at hombu...cough. How could Ueshiba be in Osaka for so long. Unless of course he could be in two places at once?

Ueshiba's detachment..."issues?"
Ellis makes a compelling case for Takeda's issues and constant movement. Couldn't Ueshiba's constant disappearing and not wanting to have a close relationship with his students-as reported here and elsewhere, and protracted absences from his family, be seen as some sort of phycological disorder, just like Takeda? Ueshiba's had his own bizzare behavior. And facing a firing squad and God knows what else in his life might have contributed to his own "detachment." Other than the one instance of Takeda being woken from his sleep and stabbing out in the dark...only to hit his son in the shoulder, how is it any different?

Maybe there is a more mundane understanding to be had here. More of a normal course of events for some Budo men at that time.
With Takeda, we still have the issues of possible PTSD. Ellis and I have discussed this as well. PTSD, does funny things. I have quite few friends who changed markedly. Takeda saw war at a young age, killed bandits (quite literally). Was attacked by 60 + constructions workers, killed a dozen and wounded many others and was almost killed himself. In and of itself, quite an interesting story that could be told, but in and of itself quite an example of PTSD and its effects.
I think it is incumbent on us to try to understand a different time, a different culture-hence different norms, a different level of attachment and treatment of what "family" was, and how hard scrabble it was just to survive on one's own means. To often we judge, by what we are familiar with.
Dan

Last edited by DH : 11-30-2011 at 09:10 AM.
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