Aiki as a concept- why all the fuss?

[Cliff Judge]

Cliff,
Maybe I'm confused aren't you the one who talked about aversion too crazy personalities and sketchy history...OF DAITO RYU? That's what we're talking about. DR has one of the most consistently, wierdest histories from beginning to the present day, that I have ever heard of.

I was responding to this:

Edit
The only question remaining, is that since this material is so profound that it has spanned cultures and eons of warriors, and exposure to it has continued to change the minds of seriously accomplished modern budo people, to include Shihans and Menkyos.....why aren't more seeking it out?
I've yet to meet anyone in budo who is not easily moved and easily stopped. Further, that budo people who are also grapplers find it to be compelling and worthwhile. Many of whom consider it a game changer to what they have previously done.

So you are suggesting that Daito ryu has spanned centuries and eons of warriors? Because the name was coined by Sokaku Takeda (his own name for his own art, he didn't appropriate the terminology of something else to sell his teaching but let his performance speak for itself).

If you were speaking, as I thought, about the general set of 'internal power" type skills that you call Aiki because you think it is okay for you to do so, then let me rethink this.

If it's truly a common type of training that has existed forever, and it is truly unstoppable, whatever, and few people are practicing it, then yes, that is kind of strange. Certainly these skills would be trained to infantry and special operators all around the world, right?

Or you know...there is no real pattern there, no common type of training, its just a lot of different things that kind of look similar. Or it isn't really that important to fighting.

Or it could be that the claim of a consistent and powerful training method that has spanned centuries hits some people in the same part of the brain as the Duxes and Luvrets of the budo world?

I'm just speculating.

[Raff]

I'm going to disagree with Dan here, I think that there are large numbers of folks working on this stuff now. When we first brought him out here in 2010 there wasn't much around, now there are groups all over the world doing this stuff. This weekend's Honolulu workshop will have folks flying in internationally from Australia and Japan, not to mention the Mainland and Hawaii neighbor islands. Actually, it's shaping up to be the largest Aikido seminar in Hawaii for 2014 - from any group.

I just wish that more people were actually averse to him - that would leave more time for the rest of us.

Best,

Chris

There are many reasons why people do not work on this "stuff" at the moment. The first and most obvious one is that the vast majority does not even know that a different kind of training potentially bringing different skills actually exists. I have personaly met countless people who just practice without the slightest interest for the history and the development of their own art. They are mostly coming twice a week to meet other people whom the befriended and train. Most of the time, "Budo" for them is just a hobby, a way to keep fit or a simple sport. They usually study by the book without asking themselves too many, if any, questions. That´s it. Is it so bad after all? I could not say but the question remains open.

On the other hand, it is also true that a relatively small minority of people do actually strive for getting something different. Some are even making huge financial sacrifices in order to fulfill this ambition to improve themselves. As a matter of fact, it is now becoming a new market. Like every market, different offers/methods are proposed to the people, some extrememly good, some good and others which are indeed nothing more than deception. It has become quite easy nowadays to travel worldwide, so getting to the source of knowledge tends to become a lot easier than it used to be 25 or 30 years ago.

We should also not forget that not everybody is willing to teach openly and some do not even seem to be concerned about the survival of their method once they pass away. I remember reading that HINO Akira stated that he did not really cared if what he had created and taught during decades should disparear with him.

As for Takeda Sokaku´s odd behavior, I can not find anywhere in the history of Japanese Martial Arts somebody who made such a deep impression on the whole martial arts community nationwide. For sure, there have been very skilled people, Mas Oyama comes to mind here, who did like start from nothing and created something huge, but Sokaku is really in a class for his own. The term Aiki might have been in used long before he were even born but he is the one who displayed in public the best martial abilities. No one before him, and most probably no one after him.

[Dan Harden]

Sure Takeda's skills were supposedly fantastic, but how does that support a history? It doesn't. I think he made it all up. Which is fine. But why not just say so? Does that mean anyone can make up an arts history? Can they say anything they want based on their skills? I don't think so.

[Koshu]

DR has one of the most consistently, wierdest histories from beginning to the present day, that I have ever heard of.

This ties back to why I spotlighted certain general characteristics of Asian culture earlier in this thread. Creation myths, ancient and modern, and modern paying homage to the ancient, are part of the fabric of the culture.

What matters are the skills preserved within the peculiar fabric/medium of the culture, the software/operating system behind the skills (since we're all born with the hardware), and how the software can be maintained, refined and made more potent and portable going forward. I agree with Dan's past comments about the west being arguably more fertile ground than Asia for this going forward. Sam Chin once described I Liq Chuan, in its modern form, as an "American martial art".

[Cliff Judge]

This ties back to why I spotlighted certain general characteristics of Asian culture earlier in this thread. Creation myths, ancient and modern, and modern paying homage to the ancient, are part of the fabric of the culture.

In Takeda's day and age, and to his customers, a "mythological" history was expected and desired. If he had gone around demonstrating some stuff that he had kinda worked out from sumo, the jujutsu he learned as a kid, and some etiquette material, and said "this is the result of my own training in many different arts, but I've gotten rid of most of the context of those arts and put this together myself. Look its a great way to fold people up when they come at you on stage like this." Nobody would have paid him for techniques.

Today, its the opposite, really. Or it should be. The underlying credulity is different; what a background story is meant to convey, how accurate and verifiable it must be, etc.

What matters are the skills preserved within the peculiar fabric/medium of the culture, the software/operating system behind the skills (since we're all born with the hardware), and how the software can be maintained, refined and made more potent and portable going forward. I agree with Dan's past comments about the west being arguably more fertile ground than Asia for this going forward.

These things matter to whom? if you are talking about "Asian culture" or even Japanese culture, you are painting with a mighty broad brush. You and the IP folks obviously feel this way. But many schools of koryu have simply been left to die on the vine rather than change the school to adapt to students or the times, and the idea that you would try to extract some piece of teaching and blend that with other things from other arts and consider that "refinement" or "making it more potent" is a little appalling to some people.

[Raff]

Sure Takeda's skills were supposedly fantastic, but how does that support a history? It doesn't. I think he made it all up. Which is fine. But why not just say so? Does that mean anyone can make up an arts history? Can they say anything they want based on their skills? I don't think so.

The probability that Takeda Sokaku actually discovered a principle which was later called Aiki is indeed very high. Techniques per se existed long before him but he somehow found a way to enhance them. In transparent power, we are told that:

"Kimura: But it is possible for one person to come up with something so remarkable?

I believe so, if you realize a certain principle. The position of the hands or wether your opponent comes at you from the front or the back, none of these things present a problem. The number of techniques is not a problem either. Besides that, there is no way that something so great could be transmitted from generation to generation. Nor have I heard that Tanomo Saigo was a master.

Of course, there are many problems with this quote but it shows that even the closest students of Sokaku did not really believe in the "official story". If we take for granted that Sokaku is indeed the founder of DR, why did he choose to make up a whole story and who helped him in the process, if not Saigo Tanomo? Whatever the hypothesis, Saigo Tanomo remains a central figure in DR history, everything starts, so it seems, with him.

You have surely noticed that Sokaku did appear at a very specific moment in the Japanese history. The Meiji restoration proved to be cruel for the native martial arts and many japanese tended to reject their own culture. In Japanese sport. A history Mr Thompson and Mr Guttmann say:

There were [...] some intellectuals whose admiration of the West was (and denigration of their own culture) was uncritical and extreme. Mori Arinori (1847-1889 a politician and a scholar) suggested in 1872 that the country adopt English as the national language and Takahashi Yoshio (1835-1901 jounalist and businessman), writing in 1884, urged that Japanese husbands divorce their wiwes and marry Western women of robust physique and superior intellect".

I find it rather interesting that Sokaku actually poped up right at that moment of massive self-flagellation showing skills far above the average level and claiming that they were indeed very old. Those familiar with his eccentric personality should not be that surprised anyway since it is quite typical of his behavior.

To tell the true, I´m also skeptical about the official history but as far fetched as it may look, Sokaku´s version remains nevertheless the most plausible. I truly believe that when he started, as a 16 years old, his Musha Shugyo, Sokaku did not have any knowledge or mastery of the skill which will make him famous in later years. Something happened between his Musha Shugyo and his time as an apprentice under Saigo Tanomo. Even if Saigo is not the source, we might well speculate that someone belonging to Saigo´s entourage could have initiated Sokaku. DR techniques, even the most basic ones, are so subtles and so precise that they could not have been created by a single man, not even by a genius. Obviously, somebody possessing superior body skills can create spontaneously a technique only by moving or reacting but this cannot explain everything.

You stated that Sokaku issued scrolls and makimomos. Since he was illiterate, he could hardly have made them up on his own. Here again, I cannot help thinking that those scrolls were probably given to him by Saigo Tanomo and that he might have helped him in shaping and embellishing the story but there is most certainly true in it.

As long as he lived, Sokaku always credited Saigo Tanomo as his teacher and insisted that DR was a secret martial art of the old Aizu Han. By taking this stance, he reduced himself as a simple link belonging to a much bigger chain while he could easily have claimed "I´m the greatest".

By the way, there are many martial arts who do have wierd history, Systema, for instance, makes strange claims, kyusho jitsu also. Everything tends to become a myth with time. DR makes no exception. I will never forget what were told at the university in the history department the very first day: "You should quickly forget all what you have previously learnt about history until today for the real teaching starts here and now. Everything you were told before is either wrong or incomplete".

On a far dramatic subject, you might interested to read what historian Shlomo Sand has to say about certain myths concerning his own people.

[Dan Harden]

In Takeda's day and age, and to his customers, a "mythological" history was expected and desired. If he had gone around demonstrating some stuff that he had kinda worked out from sumo, the jujutsu he learned as a kid, and some etiquette material, and said "this is the result of my own training in many different arts, but I've gotten rid of most of the context of those arts and put this together myself. Look its a great way to fold people up when they come at you on stage like this." Nobody would have paid him for techniques.

Today, its the opposite, really. Or it should be. The underlying credulity is different; what a background story is meant to convey, how accurate and verifiable it must be, etc.



These things matter to whom? if you are talking about "Asian culture" or even Japanese culture, you are painting with a mighty broad brush. You and the IP folks obviously feel this way. But many schools of koryu have simply been left to die on the vine rather than change the school to adapt to students or the times, and the idea that you would try to extract some piece of teaching and blend that with other things from other arts and consider that "refinement" or "making it more potent" is a little appalling to some people.

This is the finest bit of irony, in that you are attaching to the so called *IP crowd* the very same thing your founder did, while excusing him for lying.
Comically, Takeda fullfilled every cut up, every fraud, every character flaw, the strip mining of the arts, the sale of the inner core of the arts in public seminars, teaching without qualifications in those arts, and chasing people for money that the ebudo crowd has pasted onto so many in IP crowd. None of whom I have ever met who has ever come close to this bizzare behavior.

Cliff continued in what I considered and explained as the apple not falling far from the tree. He defined it and then defended it. Takeda's *customers* expected lies. So..... That was okay.
Again it is the most bizarre art I have ever heard of. With some modern practitioners of DR seeking to destroy the reputations of others for the very things their art was fine upon. There is no need to say it for them, they say it themselves. They continue to do it like clockwork. Right on time. Every time.

[Cliff Judge]

Sure Takeda's skills were supposedly fantastic, but how does that support a history? It doesn't. I think he made it all up. Which is fine. But why not just say so? Does that mean anyone can make up an arts history? Can they say anything they want based on their skills? I don't think so.

No no no, sir, This here is some fine irony. Indeed, skills have no bearing on historical claims.

[Dan Harden]

What you call the IP crowd (the few of us here cannot represent such a diverse group anyway)...are not making claims, Cliff. We are quoting your own teachers and using teaching modalities that they also know are a match to other cultures....as noted and quoted by them. The difference being that we......uhm....are actually teaching those same modalities.

I noticed you side stepped all of the other issues that are very hard to defend; like those modalities coming out of inner teachings of other arts and that Takeda stripped them out to make his new art. A charge you frequently lay at the feet of everyone else.
The efforts here to defend the history of the Daito ryu and its supposed ownership of aiki have brought into focus a dialogue of the past history and behavior of your arts founder and teachers that has not been addressed on the web before. I am not sure that it has resulted in exactly a positive effort on the part of DR's defenders, nor that it accomplished what you had collectively hoped to accomplish. Suffice to say, there are many in the art who categorically disagree with the views expressed by the DR practitioners here.

[Cliff Judge]

I'm not actually interested in defending Daito ryu's history.

Takeda had exposure to multiple systems, and sumo, and IMO Tanomo taught him an etiquette system that may have also been a palace policing art. To the extent that he "mined" anything, it certainly isn't clear that there was any intentionality about it. And he didn't present himself as teaching any of those systems. He made up a martial lineage for just himself and didnt try to paint a connection between what he was now doing and what he had been taught. I don't think he would have broken any oaths if he did though, I don't think he got far enough in anything with empty-hand skills to matter that much.

That's my opinion based on what I've read. I don't know how that squares with the defense of the history of Daito ryu you are comfortable with arguing against.

I don't believe that Daito ryu owns any particular individual skill or training method either, and I've never said that. But I don't think using the word "Aiki" to reference those particular skills is appropriate for just anybody.

[Dan Harden]

I'm not actually interested in defending Daito ryu's history.

No just in going after anyone questioning it.
Lets see...
You guys have gone from being incredibly rude and insulting to me and those who train with me, all while offering us an argument based supposedly on me teaching the inner secrets of DR, on to me not knowing the inner teachings of DR, on to me exhibiting anti social behavior equal to criminals, on to me strip mining the arts to sell their secrets in seminars, on to me falsely equating the training model of DR with those of ICMA, on to just about any appalling behavior you can think of to apply to me personally.
This...as we present quote after quote of your own teachers discussing Chinese training models for internal strength and descriptions of the manipulation of yin/yang (in/ho/ho), using actual classic internal Chinese training sayings... in your own art?
Has it escaped your attention that your arguments are so convoluted and contrary to their own talking points, as to be absurd?

Cheapening and strip mining the arts

In Takeda's day and age, and to his customers, a "mythological" history was expected and desired. If he had gone around demonstrating some stuff that he had kinda worked out from sumo, the jujutsu he learned as a kid, and some etiquette material, and said "this is the result of my own training in many different arts, but I've gotten rid of most of the context of those arts and put this together myself. Look its a great way to fold people up when they come at you on stage like this." Nobody would have paid him for techniques.

Today, its the opposite, really. Or it should be. The underlying credulity is different; what a background story is meant to convey, how accurate and verifiable it must be, etc.

If we add Takeda's taking his material from a collection of other arts, essentially strip mining them for his own invention, lying about its history, inventing additional scrools, his budo circus stuff, his teaching seminars for large sums of money, his recruiting students to find high-roller clients, him chasing Ueshiba for money where is there a modern equivalent?
If you are so very concerned Where are your concerns over this?
*Do we look for the Art of DR being held accountable for the outright stealing of the internal Chinese arts innner secrets? They quote it, they discuss it, they use them? Why are you not outraged...for them, Cliff?
*Do we look for modern helmut cutting test cutting all stars who wrote books about an art they never took part in?
*Do we look for secret back-dated menkyos?
*Do we look for Trademarks and other money making protective devices?
Where do we look to find lies, and bizarre behavior?

You and the IP folks obviously feel this way. But many schools of koryu have simply been left to die on the vine rather than change the school to adapt to students or the times, and the idea that you would try to extract some piece of teaching and blend that with other things from other arts and consider that "refinement" or "making it more potent" is a little appalling to some people.

A perfect description of what Takeda did and what DR really is. Again the question is....
Why are you not appalled for the koryu he stole it from and the Chinese arts your teachers keep quoting?
Aiki is the joining of two kis. It is the manipulation of in/yo (yin/yang) heaven/earth/man etc. etc.. Dantian rotation, as defined and taught within the art according to the teachers of the art. The various methods for training it from solo training and breath power expressed in in-ho-ho on to the use of it in circular and spiral force in directed paths are well known in other arts.

Suggestions
If you guys are so concerned for the accuracy of Aiki and where it came from and who should own it; you need to present a better argument with support material, to counter your own teachers quoting other arts as their source material.
If you are concerned for ethics and morals, you really need to clean up your own arts very public and colorful history.

The IP crowd as you call it? We at least give credit where credit is due and site source material, we offer no rank and gladly have no colorful stories to tell.

[Dan Harden]

EDIT:
One last bit worth mentioning. This IP crowd you keep mentioning? I have lost track of how many Koryu people, as well as advanced -even shihan level- teachers are involved. All of whom remain in their arts, involved with preserving them. Your accusations are unfounded, without merit and don't even meet any criteria as a credible insult or critique.

[Cady Goldfield]

The thread is veering away from an objective discussion, and head-on into the realm of personal yet again.
Let's please steer clear of the old accuser-defender routine and get back on track.
Thank you.

[Dan Harden]

Good point. There is enough to be discussed objectively without having to continually defend this or that.

[jdostie]

I think this is the quote I was looking for. If not, it's close. I saw it a few weeks ago looking at old threads, and thought it contextually applicable to this topic.

No one is trying to be secretive, imply superiority, hand out decoder rings or anything like that nonsense. Just the opposite is true.
You could look at it like this- no one wants to talk about it lest they are looked upon as those who "stand in the face of true mastery and speak out of the depth of their ignorance."
Superior attitude?
Hardly.
The history is great stuff.
Most of us feel the art is off-limits to discuss in any depth.
But your mileage may vary

By the way should you think it in some way odd or unique-consider this.
I Haven't noticed anyone discussing
Katori Shinto Ryu
Araki Ryu
Yagyu ryu
Shindo Yoshin Ryu
Yanagi Ryu
Tatsumi ryu
Sho-Sho ryu
Or many other things I could name either. Whats the difference?
Too many people know and are interested in the Daito ryu right now.
That will pass.

cheers
Dan

http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthre...Criteria/page2


Have your feelings on this subject changed Mr. Harden, or have I misread?