Quote:
Marc Abrams wrote:
David:
I understand the mindset of the teachers from that time period and could appreciate that position as reflective of an integral part of that time period. However, there were some notable changes that put the "old ways" to the test.
Traditional martial teachings were done on a much, much smaller scale and typically within one community. It was almost like a re-created family system where the "children" spent a substantial part of any day with the "parent" learning all sorts of lessons. there were oaths and secret teachings that only certain people seem to get.
Takeda Sensei traveled most of the time, teaching from one place to the next, while teaching a very large number of people things. This situation was a game-changer in my mind that made the old teaching paradigm not really effective. Add to that Sagawa Sensei's message in the book "Transparent Power" about hiding the "Aiki" teachings.
O'Sensei allowed (or his son- depending upon who you speak to) the teaching of Aikido to reach an international audience. It seems to me that O'Sensei's teaching style was not that different than that of his teachers. This would them compound the transmission problems.
The deshi and later, junior instructors, seemed to work very, very hard at trying to learn what O'Sensei was doing. These were a bunch of very, very intense, motivated, hard-working people who really wanted to learn. If so few of them seemed to get a "majority" of the teaching, then this model is destined for failure as the teaching of Aikido expands throughout the world.
We all work very hard at trying to get what we can from our teachers. We all struggle hard at trying to discover how to get the "goods." None of us want or expect to be spoon-fed the "stuff." However, I think that if we step back and look at the large scale model of Aikido today, we should be forced to find a better way to learn and teach Aikido. I do not think that the percentages of the people who actually get most/all of the "stuff" will change greatly. Statistics rarely lie (only the people who use them do that). We should be trying to fix the part of the transmission model that does not work on the scale that Aikido does today, while preserving those aspects that are beneficial.
Regards,
Marc Abrams
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Hi Marc,
If we look at some historical information, a few things sort of stand out as peculiar.
First, Takeda taught several people aiki. Most notably:
Taiso and Horikawa Kodo
Nenokichi and Yukiyoshi Sagawa
Yoshida Kotaro
Morihei Ueshiba
Takuma Hisa
Takeda had a verified teaching ability and had verified students who "got" aiki. I don't much care how many he taught. If he produced one student, that can be an exception, but to produce at least 7 means he had a definite teaching style or syllabus for transmitting aiki.
Then, we read this little gem from Transparent Power by Tatsuo Kimura.
"The elder Sagawa, who sometimes had a fiery temper, would take what he learned from Takeda and try it out on strong and mean-looking construction workers he came across. He quickly realized that if you lacked the sort of aiki that Sokaku Takeda possessed, none of the techniques would work against a persistent opponent. So Sagawa's father said to Takeda, "I'm already so old, I think it would be better if you'd teach me Aiki instead of techniques."
This is most likely *before* Takeda started training Ueshiba. Takeda had already split his teaching into two groups: techniques and aiki. He had a teaching methodology for both. He had a methodology for teaching aiki that could definitely be passed down to his students because ...
Sagawa created Kimura
Kodo created Okamoto and another.
Ueshiba gave something to Tomiki, Shioda, Shirata, etc.
The one, critical problem with Ueshiba versus the rest of his peers is Ueshiba's spirituality. He hid all this "hidden in plain sight" stuff in esoteric terms most of the time. So much so that his students naturally ignored him when he was talking.
Robert Frager notes, I puzzled over statements like, "When you practice Aikido, you stand on the floating bridge between heaven and earth," and "Put the Shinto Goddess 'She-who-invites' in your left foot and the God 'He-who-approaches' in your right foot."
Mochizuki goes on to say that Ueshiba wouldn't explain but would rather say it came from God.
Yada yada yada...
And you have to remember that Sokaku Takeda was the mother of all badness. These were his students, not his peers. So when Takeda said don't teach the secret of aiki but to one or two, those students listened.
If Sagawa, Kodo, Ueshiba had wanted to, they could have created as many students of aiki as they wanted. Takeda created at least 7. 7 people went through training, sometimes alone, sometimes together, and they knew the teaching methodology. I believe they knew what to teach and how to teach to create aiki.
But, we're getting off topic here ...