Quote:
Ellis Amdur wrote:
I very well could be very wrong. Maybe Tanomo really was one of the hidden masters - the one's whom no one ever saw do a lick of martial arts, including, perhaps his best friends - maybe so.
But how can you claim that a jujutsu ryu that fueled the top man of his era (Takeda's grandfather) didn't have "aiki," when no one has investigated the substance of it's curriculum, even though it was one of only two otome ryu in Aizu? And the stories about Kanenori are at least as incredible as those re Takeda? How can you assert that others, such as the Kito-ryu master I described in HIPS were not manifesting the same things. (I really loved the judo scholar referring to Ueshiba as a ghost risen from the grave that Kano dug for Kito-ryu - which, btw, used the term "aiki" for some of what they did - goodness gracious). How can that not be of relevance? You say "aiki" is unique? Well, how was it transmitted in secret, given that the public story is so unrealistic and fantastic (a rather widely disseminated art among non-familial hatamoto, pages of the court, in addition to family, and no one revealed it? That is about as likely as the secret satanic cults that were so pervasively active among American daycares in the 1980's).
Best
Ellis Amdur
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Ellis,
It appears that you equate "aiki" with martial validity and skills from the above section. Could you clarify if that is so? I would put forth a different theory that does not equate all aiki skills with martial skills.
I'm fairly sure that there are koryu out there (I could be wrong since I don't know a lot about koryu) and there were koryu out there that had in their training methodology a way, a manner in which instilled certain body skills. These training methods rebuilt the body to work a specific way. Now, here is where my questions enter into this whole discussion.
While overtly, these training methods do rebuild the body to move in a certain way that is more martially valid, that rebuilds the body to be structurally more solid yet also freely mobile, and to wield weapons in a very capable manner, why does not mean that these training methodologies teach other internal specific skills such as intent created spirals? Certain internal skills are directly transmitted in a manner that can be completely outside weapons or jujutsu training. IMO, certain of these internal skills might not have been included in koryu.
Is it really such a stretch to look at Takeda's martial teachers and find that they, indeed, did have the training to build a very structural, martial body that was above other training methodologies but yet did not have the complete internal set of skills that Takeda eventually had? We only have to look at Tenryu to see that Ueshiba built upon his sumo training which had already given Tenryu a very solid foundation. While that foundation allowed Tenryu to progress very rapidly, it did not help him against Ueshiba.
When Tanomo enters the picture, why must we assign him to some martial prowess to prove that he had internal skills? As we know, there are and were people who studied internal skills extensively just for health and did not care to fight with them. Given that Takeda already had a very solid foundation in internal structure and other things, why is it such a leap to think that Tanomo might have completed Takeda's training with "aiki" as Takeda defined it? All outside a martial context, which Takeda merged with his martial nature.