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Old 07-10-2005, 11:58 AM   #10
Dirk Hanss
 
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Dojo: Aikidoschule Trier
Location: Merzkirchen
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 470
Germany
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Re: "Aikido is not a martial art"

Just another aspect.

AikiDO is not an art in the meaning of "jutsu", i.e. focused on learning techniques, but "do" , a way to find oneself and a philosophy. While many modern martial arts or ways have -do in their name, I have to show a little bit more , what I am focusing on.

I recently read a book about someone learning kyudo, which was about 80 years ago. It took him more than one year to really shoot the first arrow and it was far away from the target, and after 6 years he reached the master degree.

So aikido is not a martial art, which pretends to bringing students fast to qualified fighters. But it is martial and it teaches fighting techniques and going forward on the way means also improving fighting.

Some dojo focus more on effective fighting, some don't. Some students are wonderful fighters after a few years or even less, some do not even want to learn fighting. Well you might argue, why to hell are they going the martial way and not simply Zazen? It is a good question, but for our discussion, it is only important that they chose to do aikido.

Don not argue too much about effectiveness of techniques. While all martial arts have a beginner's catalog to start training most of them are not limited to them. I saw karate demonstrations that looked much like aikido, and high ranked judoka may train kicks and strikes. There it is more due to their competition aspect that most of them stick to techniques that are allowed in tournaments.

In aikido we say everything is allowed so if there is a very effective technique, we might find it - maybe in a variation - some times in aikido dojo. And some martial arts like ju jutsu always say their techniques are a mix of everything that is effective and many of them come from aikido.

But the conclusion is the same that you heard before:
No, aikido is no martial art, it can be less art or more spiritual than you expect from MA.
Yes, aikido is martial and you can train it like an art. If you want to, you can do it nearly everywhere, but you might look for a dojo where it is trained more the may you like to see it.

And in the end everything is aikido. Now we can jump over to the other thread discussing, if we are all sitting on the same mount Fuji.

Dirk
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