Quote:
Alex Lawrence wrote:
Aikido really badly fails to protect the attacker. Judo protects the attacker much better; no Judoka has to jump over their own wrist to protect their joints. No Judoka can execute a technique while smashing someone in the face with their elbow. Judo has been refined to remove all the nasty techniques.
Break someones arm or leg in competition and that technique will quickly be banned in competition and practiced less as a result. Judo has evolved under selective pressures that make it very nice on the attacker.
There's nothing like that in Aikido. Two thirds of our techniques are joint breaking techniques by my reckoning.
So has Aikido been shaped by a desire to protect the attacker? No not really. There may have been an intention to do so but it never worked out that way. Again as I've said before, what are we actually doing on the mat? Well we're punching each other in the face followed by jerking one anothers joints with as much as our body and as much power as we can.
That's Aikido. Whatever the intentions of the founder, that's what was passed on. What this thread is really about is "What was Aikido intended to be and is that what we're doing?"
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'Protect the attacker' in what sense, though? I mean, breaking the wrist can protect someone from being killed, for instance...
Isn't what you're talking about competitive judo - i.e., a sport/game, rather than a martial art, like aikido?
Correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't judo throws intended to land people on their heads?
If somebody tries to stab you (to death), and you break their wrist, are you not protecting your attacker (from more serious injury, or death?)?
There was a thread here a while ago called 'Deadly Techniques' that might interest you:
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showth...dly+techniques
I think the conclusion was that O'Sensei removed deliberately deadly techniques from aikido because his conception of budo was that it is a means of protecting society, and not merely of taking life.
The distinction made earlier in the thread between coke and soy sauce is interesting, too: irimi-nage (say) in aiki-jujutsu is a means of destroying another, because aiki-jujutsu is wholly martial in nature (that is, aiki is understood/pursued only insofar as it has direct application to harming others); in aiki-do it is a means of practicing a philosophical outlook - abandoning the individual will in order to align ourselves with the universal will (in one sense, anyway).
If the techniques of aikido were designed purely to cultivate a martial attitude/ability, then they would just be those of aiki-jujutsu - having the sole intention of the destruction of another; however, they are different, and this is because they have a different purpose; hence, the practice of aikido is the practice of a particular philosophy.
A bit of a tangent; my apologies.