General Miura

I know there are a number of competent aikido historians out there, so I'm hoping one of them can help me unravel a mystery I've encountered. According to the official history (as related by Kisshomaru Ueshiba, John Stevens and others in their various biographies of him) O-Sensei went to Tokyo in 1927, and whilst there was challenged by one General Miura, a fellow student of Takeda Sokaku and a hero of the Russo-Japanese War. O-Sensei soundly trounced Miura, who described aikido as being "true Budo" and signed up on the spot. We all know the story.

My question is: who was General Miura? There seems to be no record anywhere I've looked of a man who fits the bill. The nearest match I can find is Miura Goro, a soldier and statesman who was implicated in the assassination of the Empress of Korea in 1895; he was a lieutenant-general in the Imperial Japanese Army, although I can't find a record of him killing fifty men in the Russo-Japanese War (he would have been in his late 50s / early 60s at the time). The major sticking point with his candidacy for O-Sensei's opponent is that Goro died in 1926, aged 79 - a year before he supposedly met and fought with Ueshiba.

Does anyone have any other ideas as to who O-Sensei's General Miura might have been? I'd really like to know. I know the atmosphere here can get a little heated from time to time, so I'd like to point out straight off the bat that I'm not interested in challenging or debunking the accepted history of aikido; Stevens et al are professional historians, unlike yours truly, so I'm sure there are sources they have access to which I (armed only with Google) don't know of. It's quite possible that there are several books about Miura in Japanese which I'm missing simply because I read the wrong language. All I'm asking is that someone point me in the right direction.

Nevermind; mere minutes after posting this I tracked down some information on Major-General Makoto Miura, who fits the bill perfectly. Boy, is my face red...

Hi Stuart.
What did you find? Could you point me to a source?

Thanks.

Hello Stuart,

Yes, I, too, would be interested in knowing your source. I have done some study of the Russo-Japanese War -- and there are many sources in Japanese as well as English, but Gen. Miura's name is not mentioned. Did he have more than one name?

Best wishes,

Peter Goldsbury

http://www.aikidojournal.com/article...ht+wing+nakano

Thanks Peter. I've seen that as well as other aikido relateed sources. I'm looking for some non-aikido sources, a record of General Miura, outside of aikido. It's pretty easy and solid who Adm Takeshita was outside of aikido circles for instance.
I find there is so much embellishment surrounding Ueshiba Sensei. Corroborating who some of the people he came in contact with is of interest to me.

I can't say that I came up with much, and certainly nothing that wasn't aikido-related... The source I found was this interview with Tokimune Takeda, which seemed to confirm that he was a Daito-ryu student; that's the best I came up with. Everything else seemed ultimately to derive from the original recounting by either Kisshomaru Ueshiba or John Stevens. As far as sources for his military career go, I couldn't locate anything in English; if he was a Major-General in the Japanese Army then I'd assume there are Japanese documents recording the fact, but none (as far as I can tell) that exist in translation.

If he's responsible for killing 50 men, I would imagine his name must be listed somewhere like in military dispatches. Any Japanese-reading historically-minded people living in Japan might be able to help by going to archives.

Interestingly, you can filter out aikido websites with the "-aikido" function on Google, and "Major-General Makoto Miura" doesn't get any non-aikido hits.