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Old 07-02-2010, 11:43 AM   #74
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: Transmission, Inheritance, Emulation 18

A couple of notes to clean up some points.
Both Ellis and Peter spend significant time going over a panoply of Koryu training and how it may or not relate to Takeda 'getting aiki" that way. It is being quietly suggested that this right of passage or musa shugyo was an inherent requirement for aiki. We can further narrow the discussion as to whether the theory is that this was needed to "get aiki" or discover it, or to further refine a teaching he may have received as a youth as Ellis suggests.

In counter point
Yet we know Takeda exhibited significant skills to defeat larger opponents in his youth.
We know he defeated an accomplished swordsman at 16
We know he claims Chikanori as his aiki teacher
We know he claims it is Chikanori who tells him to lay down the sword and to express his art in jujutsu. Sagawa supports that he heard the same thing from Takeda.

I think there is a "putting the cart before the horse" argument going on in both positions.
I am suggesting an alternate idea; that weapons training, and jujutsu training should be looked at as separate pursuits that have nothing to do with training in IP/aiki, That having received certain training in IP/aiki in his youth, he went out to play with it and learn fighting arts as an adjunct or vehicle to express it in....as.... he refine his skills. What it does not mean is that you needed to go out and learn a wide variety of various arts...to...get Aiki.
Again it is worth noting that nowhere does Takeda state otherwise, He was clear in comments to various sources where he credits his aiki (Ellis supposes it might have been because he was on the outs with his father). There is a modification or possible middle position to be had. One that Ellis treats lightly and all but dismisses out of hand; oshiki-uchi. This was supposedly an indoor teaching reserved for selected students for whatever reason. I believe there are erroneous and overly romanticized readings of oshiki-uchi that might have suited the purposes of certain modern teachers myth making that do a disservice to what might have been a more mundane state of affairs well in keeping with Japanese koryu; a gokui teaching. There is a very real possibility that oshiki-uchi. was indeed a body of knowledge or teaching held in Aizu; an "inside the threshold" teaching of IP/ aiki that has not one thing to do with the popular translation of "inside the threshold" of some supposed castle where you could not rise to subdue an attack on a daimyo or shogun. I use the term disservice as this idea has not been received well or given much credibility by the koryu community-for good reason. But were we to consider the possibility that they were teachings for "indoor disciples" we see a consistency to other forms of transmission of the time; that there exists gokui for indoor students. This also helps to explain Sagawa's later statements;
"That Takeda told him not to teach these things."
The statements he made about keeping "The solo training as an outside practice you didn't talk about."
Tokimune's supposed comment that "My guys don't want to do the solo training either," and "Not to teach but one or two."
As I stated in an earlier post this makes the lack of evidence and the lack of discussion in this search very understandable very pedestrian. It remains entirely plausible that others beside Chikanori knew it. We need not be looking for a group of men who knew these things were all giants in the arts either That just like everything else we see in the arts various people, even with the knowledge, just don't do the work. "Just cause ya know, doesn't mean ya can show."
So this leaves it entirely feasible that Takeda's father (also known to be very powerful) had learned IP/aiki training within Aizu, even possibly with Chikanori and taught it to Takeda as a youth as Ellis postulates. Or that Takeda learned some of it from his Dad and later truly developed it with Chikanori -thus supporting Takeda's statements.
No where does it mean that Takeda had to go travel all over Japan to get it.

While I agree that internal power was practiced in Japan here and there, I question just how complete it was. I think it remains that Takeda's Daito ryu was thee premier art exhibiting IP/aiki with any measure of consistency.

Dan

Last edited by DH : 07-02-2010 at 11:51 AM.
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