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Old 06-28-2013, 06:27 PM   #72
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Dojo: Hiroshima Kokusai Dojo
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Re: No Competition in Aikido(excluding Tomiki)

Quote:
Corky Quakenbush wrote: View Post
Thank you , Goldsbury Sensei for sharing your vast knowledge.

It seems to me that the real intention behind wanting to know if and why Osensei prohibited competition (even if competitions exist among aikidoka) is to find an excuse not to refrain from them. If I am wrong please tell me your reason for wanting to know, if that is not it.
Mr Quakenbush,

Many thanks for your response. I have been following the discussions in several threads and had a problem of whether to put the post in the Language thread or here. Since it was a response to what Christopher Li stated in Post #52 about what I would call Japanese attitudes to logic, I put it here, but it is relevant to the issues being discussed in the language thread.

If I want to find the reason why O Sensei prohibited competition I would read his discourses and since I can read Japanese, I would read them in the original. As I stated in my post, I found three different translations of the same statements forbidding competition, but was struck by what had been omitted in Kisshomaru Ueshiba’s “Memoir of the Master”, and I cannot find any explanation from Mr Tanahashi and Mr Maurer in their “Translators’Forward” at the front of the book. As it happens, Hideo Takahashi gives an explanation at the end of the Japanese edition of Takemusu Aiki about how the discourses published therein were made and Aikido Giho notes that they were selected from notes made during Morihei Uesiba’s lectures to the Byakko Shinko Kai, which is an offshoot of Omoto-kyou.

In your post, you mention the “real intention behind wanting to know if and why O Sensei prohibited competition” and I assume that by “real intention” you mean something other than the explanations given in the discourses. However, I do not entirely agree with you.

A few years ago I held a meeting with Okumura Shigenobu and Tada Hiroshi, both Hombu shihans, in order to clarify the views of Morihei Ueshiba about competition. The thread in the Language forum was begun many years before this meeting and when I contributed to the thread, I had not read all of O Sensei’s discourses published in Japanese. Since then, I rectified this omission, but was struck by Morihei Ueshiba’s rather disdainful attitude to ‘Western sports’. (His treatment of this can be found in one of Stan Pranin’s articles in the Aikido Journal forum.) The meeting was very fruitful and I learned much about O Sensei’s thinking from two of his close students.

Did I have a “real intention behind wanting to know if and why O Sensei prohibited competition”? Other than trying to clarify for myself why he forbade matches, I do not think so. Was I trying to “find an excuse not to refrain from them”? Absolutely not. I took up aikido many years ago because it was not a competitive sport and have never changed my attitude.

Best wishes,

P A Goldsbury

P A Goldsbury
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