Hello Carina,
I am not Joe, but I do think there is a connection between hagiography and this thread.
When I started aikido, I did not know anything about Morihei Ueshiba and we did not have his picture in the dojo when we practiced. The instructor was Japanese and had received his dan ranks from Ueshiba himself. He clearly knew him, but still, we did not bow to his picture. We bowed to each other. However, we practiced quite hard and our method of training was, also, quite hard.
My second teacher did talk about Morihei Ueshiba quite a lot. He was proud to have been one of his immediate students. But, as I stated earlier, what he told me and what my first teacher told me were quite different.
Then I moved to the USA and practiced with yet a third teacher, who also had been one of Morihei Ueshiba's direct students. He never discussed Ueshiba, but at the time I found a book about aikido. It was entitled Aikido and was written by Kisshomaru Ueshiba. It contained some biography, but not much.
When I returned to the UK I met more teachers who had been direct students of Morihei Ueshiba. In response to my questions, they told me to learn Japanese, so I could read what he stated for myself. I was surprised by this rather rough answer.
I came to Japan eventually, learned Japanese, and have read everything I can find that has been written by and about Morihei Ueshiba. My conclusion is that there is much written and stated about him that is hagiography. He is regarded as a kind of saint, but this approach is very selective. You use only the 'good' bits, in order to show what a wonderful man he was. You ignore the 'bad' bits, or sweep them under the carpet.
Morihei Ueshiba had at least two teachers. One was Takeda Sokaku and the other was Deguchi Onisaburo. Both have had biographies written about them and there is a similar mix between hagiography and -- shall we say -- more 'dispassionate' history. The lives of both Takeda and Deguchi were more turbulent than Ueshiba's, but I think it is harder to write hagiography about Takeda -- and the 'spiritual' aspects of his life are not emphasized so much. Deguchi was the propagator of a new religion, so his spirituality has been emphasized very much. However, his life has been written by his grandson, but what struck me were the differences between the Japanese original and the English translation, with some parts left untranslated.
So, indeed we should remember Morihei Ueshiba, as you stated in your opening post, but your reason for remembering him might well be quite different from mine.
Here in Hiroshima, people do not really remember him. They do not know anything about him to begin with and their education has not equipped them to know anything about the Omoto religion. They study aikido quite hard, but do not really have much time for the person who created it and regard my preoccupation with the minutiae of his life as, well, unusual.
Best wishes,
Peter Goldsbury,
Forum Administrator,
Hiroshima, Japan