Believe me, we don't have any worse politics than most other martial arts. However, one could plausibly maintain that we have the largest discrepancy between what we say are doing and what we are, in fact, doing.

What people fail to realize that Aikido was a lifelong "work in progress". Technically, the 1930's folks weren't even doing Aikido. It didn't start being Aikido until 1942 and that was during the war when almost no one was training. O-Sensei really created Aikido in its post war form during his time in Iwama working with Saito Sensei. That's why Saito was always the "source" for info about Aikido Kihon waza. But, it seems that, while the Founder was busy creating the outer form of the art during those years, the exercises the 30's guys did to develop internal power skills somehow drops out. I see no signs that Saito Sensei's Aikido had these exercises as a foundation. The only one of the 30's deshi who stayed with the Aikikai and called what he did Aikido was Shirata. He did internal power exercises as part of every class he taught at his dojo.

So- as we get into the post war period, this knowledge as a systematic teaching tool drops out as O-Sensei focused more and ore on the Spiritual side of the art. I think he was far more concerned with the idea of Aikido movement being the movement of the universe than he was with his students having the kind of integrated internal power he himself had.

One can't conclude that O-Sensei wasn't a good teacher nor is it realistic to say that all the 30's guys who were so amazing had to go elsewhere to get their stuff. I think it is absolutely important to understand that O-Sensei started off teaching Daito Ryu. The aforementioned 30's greats all had Daito Ryu certificates from O-Sensei. Later, he morphed it into Aiki Budo which is where he takes the skills and starts to integrate his spiritual ideas into the training.

It's not that the 30's guys didn't change with the Founder over time... You can see that none of them were doing Daito Ryu by the time there are films of them. They clearly developed their movement over time along with the Founder. The difference was that they had the internal skills as a foundation upon which they placed the larger movement of Aikido. Shirata was one of the earliest of the 30's deshi but one can see videos of him and it's clearly Aikido as we understand it that he's doing. But there is a "content" there that is often lacking in the later generation of post war teachers.

So, I think it is more the question of why didn't O-Sensei think it was important to teach these skills later when he clearly had originally. He was certainly frustrated by the fact that on some level his students "weren't doing his Aikido". But he didn't seem to have taken any direct action to correct that.

Everyone blames it all on poor Kisshomaru but I simply do not believe that. Kisshomaru was very serious and totally committed to trying to transmit the essence of the Founder's Aikido. So do we conclude that the son wasn't talking to his Father about this or that the Founder kept silent about what his son was doing, as if he weren't totally aware of what was happening? I don't believe it. If the Founder had thought that the post war folks at the Aiki were destroying his art he would have read them the riot act. K Ueshiba, Osawa, Arikawa, and company would have changed anything he told them to change. They were totally loyal to the Founder.

Now what I am not sure about was whether the Founder felt that perhaps he hadn't emphasized the right stuff with the folks from Saito on. Certainly they were far more responsive to his Spiritual ideas than the pre-war folks had been as a whole. And I think this reflects his interest and emphasis. But did he perhaps realize that he had neglected something crucial technically when he looked ta the fruits of his efforts at the end. I have no sense of whether he took any personal responsibility for the fact that his students may have had less skill on the technical side than he had wished.

I think that the students at the end of O-Sensei's life reflected the interests and emphasis he placed on his own Aikido at that time and the students fro the early part of his career reflected the same. I don't think it was accidental but I don't think it was fully intentional either. I can see this in what I am doing and we're only talking about 20 or so years. What I did with my students when I first opened my dojo is very different than what I do now. I have an entirely different set of things I am working on myself and I understand what I want to give my students much better. But it is still a work in progress. I have told my students that they are part of a great experiment. If I get it "wrong" I won't have a chance to redo it; they'll be stuck with the Aikido I have passed on and any changes they'll have to workout on their own when I am gone. I have the feeling that O-Sensei may not have been entirely happy with the relative emphasis he placed on the various elements that went into his Aikido in the transmission to his students. But it wasn't as if he could start over again.