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Old 05-16-2009, 06:35 AM   #35
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
United_States
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Re: O sensei and 'correct ukemi'

Quote:
Charles Hill wrote: View Post
Hi Dan,

Please note that my post started with "Hi Szczepan". Please note that the "lesson" (in quotes to emphasize that this is your word) includes the appellation "for anyone interested" and "supposed." Then please indicate how I communicated that "you (plural)" don't get it. (Also not sure what "it" means.)

Then perhaps I can understand your post enough to respond with something interesting. Otherwise your post comes off as strawmannish.

Charles
Hi Charles
I hope I didn't come across as adversarial in any way. That was not my intent.
From "Hi Szczepan" you made a segue in the next paragraph to "anyone interested" which led to telling us how transmission is supposed to go, which then led to the implication that we are not capable of understanding what his deshi meant with certain comments.
If I was too strong please understand I wasn't trying to hang you with your comments, just responding that we hear far too much about the vagaries and grayness of Japanese comments in person and in print as to negate almost the entirety of the experience. I don't think that always holds up to scrutiny. The comments you quoted do not stand in isolation. They stand in context with thousands of pages of interviews and then they themselves in person being asked. Not to mention his later deshi being felt up-close in person.
There are enough comments, personal stories, testimonies what have you, to put the proverbial flesh on the bone in regards to Ueshiba and his training, this to include much video witness as well.
My comments were directed to the point-or should I say hypothesis- that so much is supposedly vague.
If it were indeed as vague as some would have us believe it would leave us with nothing to talk about as we could challenge everything said by everyone, and I would even challenge the witness of video footage that the vast majority of Aikidoka do not understand just what Ueshiba is doing in that footage. And if I were so inclined I could do so without being vague in any way.
Also the comment about "Japanese transmission" was a stretch. I think you over reached in trying to combine all of the transmission models into a single experience. That became particularly strident as a comment in a debate which unclouded Ueshiba and Takeda's model juxtaposed to the more traditional model of teacher as Uke.
I will have to review when I have more time-I am about to train all day, but I struggle to see a straw man anywhere on the horizon.

Cheers
Dan