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Old 08-20-2009, 08:05 AM   #83
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,511
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Re: Steven Seagal seems like a jerk teacher. A bit at least...

Quote:
Ricky Wood wrote: View Post
David,
Are you suggesting that feudalism in Japan was not violent?
No. Just that it was nice violence.

No, of course not.

Those movies I mentioned were post-Meiji representations of Edo periods and further back and they were really about the heritage of the sword. They were made to show Japanese their roots, more or less: these are the times you came from. The figures in these movies are like Jefferson and Davie Crocket and Benjamin Franklin and such for the Japanese. All carrying swords. The action in them is exagerated like The Alamo with Fess Parker. The gore of the old chanbara films was always a lesson about the sword. You shouldn't think that sword fights are banging swords together: a sword fight is cutting people up. You can't make a movie about sushi without showing some slicing...you can't make a movie about a butcher without showing some cows being cut up. And to make a movie about swords, there will be blood.

But O Sensei's aikido was intended to powerfully thrust into the world as a statement for and an expression of peace. And Love.

I don't believe that "aiki is love" but I do believe that aikido is a pure and powerful thing created by Morihei Ueshiba to make that statement of peace. The scroll he gave my teacher was daito ryu. The aikido he created was intended to be something different: a handmade sword for peace in the world.

So the nature of aikido and how it is used is certainly as important as the nature and depiction of the katana, both as an instrument of death and protection and as a shaper of a society.

To show the nature of the katana, you must show the cutting. But to show the nature of aikido, you must show a sword of a much finer nature and it must not be covered with gore and wielded with taunts and a sneer.

Seagal has shown us Morihei Ueshiba's sword of love used for the vilest purpose of making Seagal wealthy and famous. In the process, he defames Morihei's sword and perpetuates the mentality that Morihei intended to cut through. That's how he misuses aikido using it to create what it was intended to heal.

That's what I really mean and that is why I protest Seagal's flicks.

Thanks.

David

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

"Eternity forever!"

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