Thread: Ueshiba's Aiki
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Old 11-11-2011, 12:24 PM   #109
Ken McGrew
Dojo: Aikido at UAB
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 202
United_States
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Re: Ueshiba's Aiki

I never claimed to be a master. I claimed to be able to read. I claimed to have eyes and ears. I claimed to listen to what O'Sensei and my other teachers taught. My cup is full of Saotome Sensei.

I don't need to be fluent in Japanese. Chris can provide examples of the translation problems that he says completely undermine the common translations. The examples he gave, I think four words, did not change the meaning of the passages in the way he claimed that they do. He's the one making a claim. He has to make the case, not I.

Dan has claimed to be teaching Aikido. He said that he was showing "true Aikido" in earlier posts. Moreover, he and his followers have claimed that Aikido is not an original art, so he's teaching the art that Aikido stole from.

I have no idea if what Dan is teaching contradicts Saotome Sensei and Ikeda Sensei. All I can go by are these inarticulate posts. Again, what Dan does may be good. Again, it may be able to inform Aikido at times. To the extent that he is teaching a different way of training, a way that is not based on O'Sensei's system of cooperative training, then it is not Aikido. These are O'Sensei's words as reported by Saotome Sensei and which I quoted above.

Dan and others have repeatedly claimed that no modern Aikido reflects what O'Sensei did or wanted us to be doing. I know this claim is false because Saotome Sensei has personally told me that O'Sensei approved of his Aikido practice and teaching. I'll take my teachers word on that.

Quote:
Katherine Derbyshire wrote: View Post
I read your bio. You started aikido the same year I did. I'm no beginner, but I don't claim any particular mastery either. So I might suggest that you empty your cup.

Are you fluent in Japanese? Have you read either author in the original Japanese? If not, I'm not sure how you can speak to the mistranslation issue.

Dan is not teaching aikido. He does not claim to be teaching aikido. He is teaching a set of body skills that have the potential to enhance one's aikido. If you really had read his previous posts as carefully as you claim, you would know this.

As for the whole issue of "blending" and "leading energy"... That's a whole other topic in itself. For our purposes here, let's just say that there is great variation in the way those aspects are approached, and that it's impossible for *all* of the variations to be true to Ueshiba Sensei's original teaching. (Because they're contradictory.) While Dan is not teaching aikido, I see no conflict between the skills he is teaching and aikido as my teachers (who include Ikeda and Saotome Sensei) explain it. If you think there is, perhaps your understanding of those terms might be incomplete. Or perhaps you are reading something into Dan's posts that is not actually there in his in-person instruction.

Katherine