Today is the memorial day for Ueshiba Morihei-sensei (1883-1969), the founder of Aikido.
As a callow teenage jiu jitsu student reading the pages of Black Belt magazine in 1969, I vividly remember coming across the notice of 0-sensei’s death and the impact of his photograph. I knew nothing about Aikido and the picture surprised me – he didn’t look like any of my martial arts heroes. He was elderly, dressed in clothing that seemed exotic to me, with a piercing gaze.
He looked like a wizard.
A lot of people talk about O-sensei, but few of them have first-hand knowledge. Even the shihan who were my mentors talked little about him, even though they had been taught by him directly.
I think that sometimes we hear a lot of nonsense about O-sensei and his ideas from people who never met him.
Biographies, even the detailed ones, seldom do justice to their subjects. I think that to really understand O-sensei, you had to be in his presence, feel his hands on you. Kawahara-sensei once told me that taking ukemi for O-sensei was unique – feeling that inexplicable and irresistible power.
Aikido is going to be the starting point of any biography of O-sensei. But there was much more to him – he was an agrarian, a profoundly spiritual man, a calligrapher, a scholar of ancient texts, a father, a poet, a participant in some very tumultuous history. All these things fed into his Aikido.
I think that trying to grasp the breadth of O-sensei is key to understanding Aikido.
He made a massive imprint on Tanaka Bansen-sensei, who then left his imprint on Kawahara-sensei, who passed it on to his students, including to me. I hope that what I am passing on to my students includes some of the breadth of O-sensei, not just the details of technique. Aikido isn’t just a strong nikkyo. It’s a lifestyle and ethos.
Though I never met him, I know I owe him a debt. Today is the day we thank him.