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Old 12-03-2013, 11:04 AM   #24
allowedcloud
Location: Ohio
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 82
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Re: YouTube: Morihei Ueshiba - Rare Aikido Demonstration (1957)

Karl:

Your assertion that O-sensei avoided challenges is not credible. Why?

Because in order to teach budo in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s (when O-sensei started teaching), you *had* to be able to accept and defeat challenges, because he would have gotten them...all the time (people still cared about validation back then). If he didn't have the skills to back up his teachings and lost - or worse, if he "avoided" challenges as you claim, this would quickly become known and he would have lost his students and his dojo. Now, that didn't happen did it?

As to your assertion that he must not have had any challenges because there is no video evidence of this...geez, really? It's not like everyone had personal cameras back then like they do now...videoing anything back then was an expensive proposition. That's why for the most part you only see video footage of demonstrations. Also, when you went to another teacher's school to challenge them a certain etiquette came into play, making the encounters for the most part, respectful, but it would also mean that neither party would consent to videoing any part of the "challenge" (not like they had the technology back then, either).
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