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Old 09-07-2011, 07:55 AM   #80
chillzATL
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Re: Why so many Haters of Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido?

Quote:
Hugh Beyer wrote: View Post
Sagawa and Kodo, as you point out, continued to call what they did Daito-Ryu. Why, when O-Sensei did not? Could it be that though they saw themselves as modifying the teaching they received, they saw their own arts as extensions of Sokaku's art? Whereas Ueshiba saw what he was doing as something essentially different?
I recall a story that Takeda saw what Ueshiba was doing and saw that he had changed things and they came to an agreement that he would no longer call what he was doing DRAJ. I believe at the time aiki budo was the name agreed upon. The question is whether or not that difference is simply in the syllabus being taught or in how the techniques were actually being done. Hisa said that they had no issues picking up right where Ueshiba left off when Takeda took over at Asahi and we can use Shioda to rewind pre-1935 and get a good idea of how Ueshiba was teaching and doing the techniques, which incidently don't look any different than they do today. I tend to think that, as you said in your previous post, everything Ueshiba was doing was part of the DR syllabus as taught by Takeda, but Ueshiba threw away the things he felt weren't important to what he wanted to teach and Takeda could see that.

Quote:
I don't want to downplay your point that O-Sensei infused his art with his spiritual insight, by the way. I think that was certainly a key influence on what he decided to keep and what he threw away. In my view, he kept the movement that reinforced the spiritual attitude he wanted to engender: centered in the six directions, neither aggressive nor defensive, overcoming conflict by negating conflict. That became the core of his art, and he threw away extraneous techniques like a sculptor throws away all the material that doesn't contribute to the image he wants to present.
What if he simply pared down the number of techniques to the ones he felt best allowed someone to practice and devlop the thing he was really interested in, aiki? I'm not so convinced that the changes in how he did things were all spiritually motivated. My instructor was a student of his for most of the last decade of his life and that's one thing he's always stressed, O'sensei wasn't gentle with you. You were either ready or you weren't and if you came at him half-hearted, he'd probably hurt you.

Last edited by chillzATL : 09-07-2011 at 08:05 AM.
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