As some may know, Stanley Pranin, over at
Aikido Journal is doing an enormous data dump. Hitherto unseen films of Daito-ryu and early aikido practitioners, such as Tomiki, Shirata, and Hirai are now online. I strongly urge any and everyone to buy a subscription (quite cheap) for the members-only content and also to support Stan's invaluable work.
He's also been uploading pdf's of his old magazine. I recently read an interview with Saito Morihito, and he said the following:
I posted this here, because I think that, as opposed to Aikiweb (which is down anyway), there are more readers who are actually actively engaged in orthodox Daito-ryu practice, in one or the other faction. I have no idea, either, if Saito ever saw Daito-ryu, which faction he might have seen, or if this is merely him passing on what Ueshiba himself said.Now, a caveat: it would be silly to waste time about being insulted here, or coming back with the flaws in aikido. That's not my point in posting. Rather, I'm curious about
:
1. The question of hanmi - I've been told that the Kodokai does not use hanmi as their baseline stance and that Horikawa stated it is because Daito-ryu has it's roots in gagaku (archaic dance). Is this even true of the Kodokai? Much less other Daito-ryu groups? I'm curious, because I do not particularly like hanmi because it twists the hip too far behind - as opposed to hitoemi where the twist is not so radical.
2. I'm aware that DR practitioners would assert that aikidoka's kokyuho is lacking a clear differentiation of aikisage and aikiage. It's unclear what Saito meant here - perhaps an Iwama old-timer has an idea?
3. The unity of weaponry - hmmm. Depends on the faction, doesn't it?
4. I am curious about what DR practitioners think of the more "archane" elaborate waza - what IS their purpose?
In hopes of a professional discussion.
Best
Ellis Amdur