hughrbeyer

All very well, Professor, but then O-Sensei went around giving talks and radio interviews about how Aikido was the art of love and everybody should practice Aikido to usher in an era of world peace and mutual understanding. (Exaggerating only a little.) If he meant what he said at all, he surely recognized the need to spread the art, and of an organization that could do that. One of the most salient differences between him and Takeda Sokaku's other students was that he opened his art up, while the others kept theirs closed. And however little he may have been involved in the management of the Aikikai, he certainly supported it with his constant travels to different places to teach.