David Orange

It seems you mean "fitness for fitness' sake". In fact, they did have something like that, but not in the Western sense. And the samurai were not acting from so casual a base, but were concerned with total expulsion of weakness from the body and mind. And the whole culture was obsessed with "work" to avoid the serious shame of "being lazy." But the samurai in particular were concerned not with "fitness for fitness' sake" but with fitness as a competitive struggle against every other man one might meet, for the vital edge for survival's sake. So, no, they weren't doing exercises based on the appearance of the body or things like that, but for life-and-death edge, for physical power and because their view of the world includes the body as a shrine for divine power.

Still, Jigoro Kano was heavily influenced in the late 1800s by Western thought and he developed judo and promoted it in the school systems as a form of both mental and physical fitness. So, if anything, the Japanese approach has always been a step ahead of (or beyond) Western "exercise".

No, as a society in whole, they were not. But the martial artists among them were. And many people who were not martial artists but spiritual ascetitcs also pursued harsh physical discipline as a form of spiritual forging--not as a "physical" fitness regime but as a way for the spirit to overcome the natural decadent tendencies of the body. Rajio taiku was Western-sourced and Western-reasoned. Martial arts always had their own extreme conditioning and their own rationale for how that was done--for survival and spiritual polishing.

Of course, in the Edo period the austere training fell from its former place and many samurai grew soft. Likewise, older guys with position and security could get more and better food and didn't have to work as hard and a lot of them did become fat. And there were also naturally big-boned men who appeared stout and even fat, but who could still be extremely powerful. And there were those who did become fat, soft and lazy. But they did so at peril from the tough men below them as well as from their own deterioration through all kinds of over-indulgence.

That was for the popular consumption, however, and really not related at all to martial arts.

They say he was built like a fireplug and was completely solid--though entirely relaxed. Read back in Aikido Journal articles where they describe him living on rice, fish and pickles--and not much of those. He lived an austere life by choice and inclination. He enjoyed living that way and didn't like the feeling of living otherwise.

But he was really a tiny man: just very powerfully developed. He was small but tremendously sturdy. Compare that to Gozo Shioda, who was similarly small but very skinny and never thick. Kyoichi Murai of the yoseikan was even tinier than that, but very similar to Shioda in the ability to project intense, serious power.

That is correct but the Japanese martial artist seldom relied on weight or associated it with power in and of itself. Look at Yoshio Sugino, one of the tiniest men ever, who quit judo because they created weight classes. He believed that every judo man should fight all comers, regardless of weight, and he excelled in judo before he devoted himself entirely to aikido and katori shinto ryu kenjutsu. Men like that were certainly not concerned with BMI, but they carried no extra fat on their bodies.

Again, look at Shioda handling huge men and laughing. And go to Aikido Journal and read up on Yoshio Sugino. Many of the most revered and awesome martial artists were unusually tiny men. Sokaku Takeda, for instance. He was nowhere near the build of Ueshiba, but he controlled the biggest and strongest men in Japan--such as the sumo tori Tenryu.

As in any power position, the one with the gold makes the rules, and the daimyo and their top men could eat and overeat, but the men below them had to fight for what they got. But you are right that some samurai were fat. But they also overindulged in other ways and were not ascetic warriors but bureaucrats over warriors.

Well you're right that "keeping the weight down" was not their motivation. For serious samurai, hard physical training was their way. Their motivations were spiritual development and combat survival--or combat supremacy. Survival was less important to them than killing the enemy. But all this was based in a belief that the body is the shrine of divinity, to be strengthened, guarded and constantly groomed as a tribute to divinity. And this is where modern aikido with overly fat teachers becomes very bad aikido even if the outer appearance of the technique is seemingly "correct".

Let's see...Morihei Ueshiba, Gozo Shioda, Minoru Mochizuki, in aikido. Add in Koichi Tohei and Morhiro Saito.

Sokaku Takeda, Yukiyoshi Sagawa, Kodo Horikawa in aikijujutsu.

Where are the fat guys?

Those are our models for aikido. Those are the models for aikido. Mostly rather thin and anyway very fit and not fat.

Of course, if you get down to master Bobby Thomas or Leroy Green, far departed from the models above, if you want to make those guys your models, then there's no telling what you're going to be modeling.

But what we think of as "fat" is far removed from the power of a "fat" sumo tori and I've yet to meet a "fat" aikido man who approached that kind of power or fitness.

David