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Old 12-08-2011, 04:14 PM   #81
Ellis Amdur
 
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Join Date: May 2003
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Re: The Founder's Teaching Ability

We do a lot of spinning in circles here.

Unfortunately, there are, as far as I know, no surviving pre-war deshi - but it might be worth a final look. If any still survive, it would certainly be worth asking what forms of training students did.

Similarly, as some post-war Honbu dojo uchi-deshi and soto-deshi, from both the 1950's and 1960's are still alive, perhaps instead of our speculating on allusions in print, one should ask. Kobayashi sensei, for example, is alive and well, as are Saotome sensei, Chiba Sensei, Tada sensei, Kato sensei (although his answers will probably be gnomic as always). At Shingu, some of the shihan are still well - Anno sensei, for example. And Iwama - some of the old fellows from the forties are still in existance.

I do not know about Kobayashi Hirokazu's group, or Tanaka Bansen - if any were there when Osensei taught. Worth asking. Iwata Ikkusai. And as for Shirata Rinjiro, I've heard that some of his students have recollections of OSensei as well.

And how about the Takumakai? I recently read a link from Aikiweb, where one of the leading lights essentially said that what they do is the same as the Yoshinkan (not surprising, as they developed, so to speak, at much the same time) - this teacher had trained at both.

Once one gets past the waza (with the human origami aspect of a lot of Daito-ryu), and gets to essentials, one will likely find far more technical similarities, at least in contemporary periods of development.

But jeez - I essayed a number of speculations in HIPS for a reason - so that people with the energy and wherewithal to do so would follow up on the turned over ground, so to speak, and seek out the last surviving people with concrete knowledge. As far as knowledge of what "they" did (as opposed to our best-practice IS training or staunchest version of pre-post war aikido), there is only a limited time to interview people who have first hand knowledge.

Ellis Amdur

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