Originally Posted by
Cliff Judge
Dr. David Hall's Encyclopedia of Japanese Martial Arts states that the term was not often used before the turn of the 20th century when it emerges as a kind of mystified and mysterious concept. The ancient ways of the warrior that we cannot understand today as it were. I don't have my copy of the book with me but I can quote it later if the thread goes anywhere productive.
I have a vested interest in making E-Budo threads productive and I have Dr Hall’s book in front of me. His discussion of aiki can be found on pp. 21-22. He makes three main points.
1. He begins with a definition of Aiki.
“Aiki essentially means harmony (or unity) of spirit and/or energy. However, this term has developed many shades of meaning over the years. In the area of combative behavior and performance, the Japanese martial concept of aiki is synchronicity of physical movements, breath, and/or spirit. This is characterized as one of the eight innate combative traits.” In support, Hall cites p. 62 of “Hayes, 1991,” but there is no such date in his bibliography. There are references to a nine-part article written by Richard Hayes and published between 1987 and 1994 in Hoplos: The Journal of the International Hoplology Society. Parts 6 and 7 were published in 1990 and 1992, but not in 1991, so we do not know from Hall’s reference to which part he is referring.
Hall states that proponents of early martial traditions were familiar with aiki, but then states that the concepts of aiki, ki and kiai “took on a new vogue and their mystery was greatly inflated in the popular Japanese press.” He adds a bracket with a reference to two chapters in E J Harrison’s book, The Fighting Spirit of Japan, entitled “The Esoteric Aspects of Bujutsu.”Hall is referring to the 1955 edition of this work and the relevant pages are pp. 115 – 116, where he makes lengthy quotes from a discourse by Kunishige Nobuyuki, who was a bujutsu polymath, on the relationship between aiki and shin-ki-ki-itsu, the latter being a method for studying the former. He adds that one of the early texts on aiki, published in 1899, like Kunishige, made extraordinary claims for the powers of aiki.
One of Hall’s sources seems to be Draeger’s discussion about "Essence, Aims and Techniques" in his chapter on Aikido in Modern Bujutsu and Budo. pp. 137 – 161. Hall quotes a definition of aiki that appears on p. 142 of this volume. (There is one mistake in the quotation and the reference, like that for the article by Richard Hayes, is not quite accurate. I have some grounds for thinking that this is due to sloppy editing.)
2. Hall then discusses Daito-ryu and quotes Takeda Tokimune’s definition of aiki from the interview published in Stanley 1969 Pranin’s volume, entitled Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu: Conversations with Daito-ryu Masters. However, Dr Hall omits part of Tokimune’s definition. Pranin’s question was:
“Could you explain in a little more detail about the concept of aiki?”
Tokimune’s answer began as follows:
“Aiki is to pull when you are pushed, and to push when you are pulled. It is the spirit of slowness and speed, of harmonizing your movement with your opponent’s ki. Its opposite, kiai, is to push the limit, while aiki never resists.
The term aiki has been used since ancient times and is not unique to Daito-ryu.” (Pranin, 1969, pp. 53-54.)
Dr Hall concludes this section by noting the similarities between Tokumune’s discussion of aiki (as go no sen, compared with kiai as sen no sen) with the approach of Sasaki Kazunosuke, discussed in a 1991 article in the magazine Hiden Koryu Bujutsu.
3. Dr Hall’s third point is a brief discussion of Morihei Ueshiba. According to Hall, Ueshiba “greatly refined the concept of aiki he studied in Daito-ryu. To him, aiki indicated a ‘creative life force’, the nature of which was ‘all-embracing love.’ In application this can mean completely controlling an aggressive opponent without harming him.”
I do not think that Dr Hall’s discussion here is entirely satisfactory. I have in mind two points.
First, he spends much time on discussing the ‘new vogue’ of discussions given by people like Kunishige, but he has very little to say about the aiki of ‘early martial traditions’. He traces the earliest discussion to 1899, but there is evidence that there were older texts and there is also the statement from Takeda Tokimune himself, that the term was used from ancient times and that the term is not unique to Daito-ryu. All this evidence needs to be weighed and seen for what it is.
Secondly, it is not clear from his bibliography to what extent Dr Hall is acquainted with the published discourses of Morihei Ueshiba. In this connection, I think it is of great importance to study these in the original and then to compare the various translations made. I remember being taught the importance of this when I was studying the Greek Classics at Harvard. You need to establish a reliable text, which includes all the judgments made by those who produced the text, assuming that it was not the original author. Then you need to assess the various judgments made by those who translated the texts into various languages. There is a highly respectable Arabic tradition with Aristotle, for example.
It is reasonably clear to me that Ueshiba takes an awful lot for granted in his discourses about aiki. He appears to assume a knowledge of Onisaburo Deguchi’s writings on Omoto doctrine and kotodama, for example, and also with the ancient Japanese myths recorded in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki.
I also need to respond to your points about the Aikikai, but this will have to wait for another post. This is long enough as it is.
Best wishes,
PAG
Peter Goldsbury,
Forum Administrator,
Hiroshima, Japan
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Originally Posted by Kendoguy9 
