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Old 11-30-2011, 12:26 PM   #11
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: O'Sensei teaching Aikido at the Hombu Dojo after WWII

Quote:
Christian Moses wrote: View Post
Ken, if you're going to stick your fingers in your ears and refuse to enter into any genuine discussion with anyone maybe you should give up on the whole forum thing. If all you need to know about aikido you can get from Saotome Sensei and his books, maybe you should stick with that. Your refusal to honestly approach information from reputable sources makes me question your motives here. I suspect you're getting pretty close to making people's "special" list.
Hi Chris
It's a sure sign that talking to certain people is a waste of time when their posts in return are not responsive to anything that was corrected. When Mr. McGrew is offered factual information he never refutes it in the same manner. Add to that when his is clearly wrong, he avoids that and later starts discussing it as if he knew it all along. Those are the key indicators that put people on that "special list." Oh well. Although I respect Saotome's skills and publicly speek favorably of them, I remember telling a high ranked teacher under Saotome that certain sword work he was doing was not "Samurai weapons" and that Saotome made it up. I also told him the majority of it would be widely panned by anyone with actual koryu experience as having anything to do with Samurai weapons. It was work meant to express aikido movement with weapons. I thought the guy was going to hit me. "How do you know that?" he demanded. I said "It was on the first page of the book! Did you skip that part since you were more interested in looking at the pictures?"

When it comes to discussing this subject, we all need to avoid the trade mark "true believer" syndrome that embarrasses many a teacher and try to focus on the facts. This was what Stan himself faced, when he had to set aside what he had read and been told, then later what he faced when he had to present facts and truths that ran counter to everything the Aikikai was putting out and many Japanese Shihans were telling Americans. Some it was pure bullshit, some exaggerations of fact. much of it self serving claptrap. Stan took a lot of heat, for daring to reveal to the world a far more cogent Aikido history then had been told.
As I said earlier who wants to be the guy to tell some true believer that "No, Johnnie, your teacher never did those things, never trained that long, and no O sensei was not THEE teacher during that period...In spite of what your own beloved teacher said."

All the best
Dan