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Old 10-20-2012, 04:29 PM   #179
Chris Li
 
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Dojo: Aikido Sangenkai
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Join Date: Dec 2000
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Re: VoE: AWASE - The Principle of AIKI

Quote:
David Soroko wrote: View Post
It is the system for me. I don't really know what you practice other that it is different from what I practice. When someone says that the system can be made better by changing this and that, it needs to proved to me.
What's changed? Takeda said that his art was a principle based art, not locked into specific physical postures - Ueshiba said the same, so did both Yoshiyuki Sagawa and Kenji Yoshida, which shows the same transmission going down two variant lines from Takeda.

If you're saying that it is locked to specific physical postures than it seems to me that it's you who are changing things.

Quote:
David Soroko wrote: View Post
I think (and I mentioned this before) that you are cherry picking the evidence to support your conclusions. For example, in the Shirata -Stevens book a photo of the Founder in hanmi is subtitled:

"The founder demonstrating the correct manner of holding a sword.[When a question arose one day about the proper posture, he posed on the spot in his regular clothes]".

I think you need to do better than say that: I am "getting too caught up in the exact outer expression", that Stevens made up things and Shirata and Saito sensei were on friendly terms, before discarding photographic evidence to the contrary.
As for Stevens making up things - the entire original Japanese text appears in my blog, people are free to decide for themselves. I will note that Saito's commentary matches my translation, not Stevens.

"Right posture" is a tricky term. There are no articles in Japanese - did he mean "a" right posture or "the" right posture. If he meant "the", did he mean "the only", and what was the context of the situation and the discussion? What about the posture is right and what is not right?

If you're looking at a picture and calculating the number of degrees that are between the feet - then that, to me, is the very essence of "external" training.

Best,

Chris

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