Aikido is now very much the Art of Peace. We have our loving, compassionate practices. We talk about our spiritual superiority. Ironically most often when told our art has become less practical, many students become more competitive and defensive about our spiritual dimension. Effectiveness has become a dirty word that many think only applies to MMA. Were we ever an art of violence?
Stanley Pranin had a great blog entry on whether or not O Sensei had ever killed anyone. Like many, I assumed it was self-evident that he had, but Mr Pranin had a great deal more information to offer on the subject as always (check it out in the Aikido Journal). There are no recorded deaths caused by O Sensei. There are a few isolated incidents, like a demonstration in front of the Emperor where he broke an uke's collarbone - and I'm not sure if this was unusual in that he hurt a man (O Sensei got stage fright?) or if the situation was unusual in that there was no escaping the public scrutiny (something much easier to do behind the closed doors of O Sensei's own dojo).
Some have said O Sensei never killed anyone as a solider in the Sino-Russian war, that he was enlightened even then and refused to do so. This gets people courtmartialed today; it probably got soldiers shot back then so I don't subscribe to this idea. Instead, O Sensei's son writes about how his father was given the honour of walking at the head of the formation and was well know for his skill with the rifle and bayonet - a weapon with precious few harmless applications. Takeda Sensei, his teacher, was also not a man given to harmless, painless application. I believe O Sensei was a man who was harshly tested and eventually became skilled enough to make a choice.
O Sensei had gone to China in an attempt to spread the Omoto Kyo religion and to be with his spiritual leader, Deguchi. While they did end up in prision and gained the emnity of a local warlord, Omoto Kyo apparently did retain followers in both China and Japan. I have heard there is a Chinese influence on Omoto Kyo, but I cannot verify this.
So, (my own interpretation of events) World War Two came and O Sensei was "too old" to fight or considered too important a trainer for the military - he did not get back to the front line. He got to stay home, train the troops and then eventually was left with the now childless parents or the widows and orphans of his deceased students, or the wounded and recently crippled returning soldiers. With some Chinese contacts, I can imagine he heard of the atrocities happening on the front and possibly from both sides of the conflict. Tokyo would also have been a military target, making his family and dojo at risk. He left Tokyo in 1942, the same year as the first bombing raids on Tokyo but before the end of the war, and moved to the small farming community of Iwama.
Not long afterward, Kawahara Shihan was a boy living in the outskirts of Nagasaki when the city was hit with the atomic bomb. He was a later a teenager living in Osaka, and joined the local Aikido dojo at 17. Osaka was very heavily bombed during the war, with estimates at over 10 000 civilians killed in 8 major bombing raids. Over a ton of incendiary bombs were dropped on a city of 3 million. He spoke of people so desperate that knife fights were breaking out over food even after the war had ended.
Compared to my own history with a small CN Railway town on the bald prairie the differences are laughable. The "city" grew to 5000 people during my time there. This place was nearly as "white bread" as you can get - the nearest indian reserve was an hour away. There were virtually no representatives of any other colour. We were too homogeneous for even the idea of ethnic violence.
Violence was something that happened in hockey - with the fight to serious injury ratio being heavily skewed. The playground was a place where people made vague threats and made appointments to meet and maybe in the very rare occassion give someone a black eye. I saw and participated in a number of fights - I have only one memory of ever even seeing blood. The height of cruelty was letting the air out of someone's bicycle tires - forcing someone to walk two blocks to the nearest gas station.
Later on, guys would talk about getting drunk and getting in a fight. I would hear the stories of their exploits on Monday morning. No one was too injured to get to school the next day. No one was arrested. Most people never even looked like they had been in a fight, even an hour after having "got the shit kicked out of them." We had no concept of what violence could be.
I compare my childhood violence to Sensei's childhood violence and I feel ridiculous. It never occured to me that the drunk looking for a fight on Friday night wouldn't be a good guy to do business with or talk to on Saturday morning. I would sometimes feel threatened, but I was absolutely never in danger. I never even had a house key. I could go for a walk to anywhere in town at any hour and have no concern outside of staying warm in the winter. On the few occassions there was a fight not on the rink, it never occured to me that the people engaged in violence might come after me or any of my friends. We could form a ring around the two "combatants" and it never occured to any of us we might get injured as bystanders. Weapons were never used.
Compare this to a mother and child huddled in a bomb crater trying not to get noticed by the armed gang of marauders walking by, terrified of rape and murder or having the last scrap of food stolen and left to suffer a slow death. No police, virtually no medical care, clean water, food and shelter a priceless commodity. O Sensei's idea of protecting the world in it's best possible state is a very different in a warzone. My very brief time in Hombu Dojo had me come into contact with people from Israel, Yugoslavia and South Africa. These people also had training very different from mine.
Is Aikido a strictly harmless art? I had some teachers say so, but they came from places like Hawaii, long after Pearl Harbour. Often, these people had a very rigid idea of what Aikido was, but then taught "Jujitsu" and other arts on the same mat during the same Aikido class. The student still learned how to escalate when required. For my Sensei, Aikido was a complete art with a large number of options. The peaceful art was not a matter of a certain movement or hand position - we had choices. We could exercise our choices, and we could escalate the violence when we needed to. Our minds and our hearts were the expression of the Art of Peace. We had the choice, and we did the bare minimum. By Choice. We didn't get stuck in our responses out of ignorance. We learned harmless peaceful Aikido was a luxury that Sensei had not been afforded.
For example, when we learned Tanto Dori: As the Tanto was a dangerous weapon at close range, there was a range of responses that changed with the rank we were testing for. The Ikkyu student was the lowest rank to do this on an exam, and therefore determined to be at the most risk. The Uke's arm was secured, the motion was made to break the arm and the knife fell to the floor. Uke was thrown away and not pinned. No attempt was made to control the knife, the knife was just taken out of the equation.
By Shodan and Nidan, Uke would be pinned and Nage would retain the knife. Controlling the knife and Uke became a higher priority. The student would be expected to show more restraint as they demonstrated more control.
The last Sandan tests I saw Sensei give, Nage was asked to take the knife without ever throwing or pinning Uke. The Sandan candidate was expected to have the skills to stay safe while keeping Uke safe, but had to have the ability to escalate. The Ikkyu student was expected to show that they knew enough to not sacrifice their own safety for the sake of their attacker's and they needed to show they understood the basic kata all contained very damaging moves. Protecting Uke was secondary when you could be killed instantly. Keeping Uke safe was an advanced practice to aspire to, not a given outcome and not a dogmatic mandate to adhere to even if it got you killed. We learned all techniques could be pins, throws, hip throws, atemi waza and higikime. This made for a much more complex Tanto Dori system than I have seen elsewhere in Aikikai.
I can't teach this type of tanto dori here because the students who cringe watching the silly cartoon violence they see on TV can't even agree to learn the most basic (most damaging) form of Tanto Dori. They only try to do kata that would get them killed because they don't have the ability to control Uke yet. Their response is to stand in judgement of Sensei, whose only concern was that his students would be safe. Their preception of violence really says that they have never been tested and that they can't even imagine a situation where their lives are at risk. This one-note practice is I think what has people questioning Aikido's effectiveness and validity as a martial art.
I feel we should embrace our spiritual mandate. We should be an Art of Peace. But, we should not be insular, we should not rewrite history and we should not condemn those who continue to try continue to make Aikido a powerful and applicable martial art. O Sensei and my Sensei were men from another generation that had harsh realities that I do not think should be sanitized so as not to offend our own tender sensibilities. When we do, we just abandon the larger world outside the dojo and we become an irrelevant anachronism.
Stanley Pranin had a great blog entry on whether or not O Sensei had ever killed anyone. Like many, I assumed it was self-evident that he had, but Mr Pranin had a great deal more information to offer on the subject as always (check it out in the Aikido Journal). There are no recorded deaths caused by O Sensei. There are a few isolated incidents, like a demonstration in front of the Emperor where he broke an uke's collarbone - and I'm not sure if this was unusual in that he hurt a man (O Sensei got stage fright?) or if the situation was unusual in that there was no escaping the public scrutiny (something much easier to do behind the closed doors of O Sensei's own dojo).
Some have said O Sensei never killed anyone as a solider in the Sino-Russian war, that he was enlightened even then and refused to do so. This gets people courtmartialed today; it probably got soldiers shot back then so I don't subscribe to this idea. Instead, O Sensei's son writes about how his father was given the honour of walking at the head of the formation and was well know for his skill with the rifle and bayonet - a weapon with precious few harmless applications. Takeda Sensei, his teacher, was also not a man given to harmless, painless application. I believe O Sensei was a man who was harshly tested and eventually became skilled enough to make a choice.
O Sensei had gone to China in an attempt to spread the Omoto Kyo religion and to be with his spiritual leader, Deguchi. While they did end up in prision and gained the emnity of a local warlord, Omoto Kyo apparently did retain followers in both China and Japan. I have heard there is a Chinese influence on Omoto Kyo, but I cannot verify this.
So, (my own interpretation of events) World War Two came and O Sensei was "too old" to fight or considered too important a trainer for the military - he did not get back to the front line. He got to stay home, train the troops and then eventually was left with the now childless parents or the widows and orphans of his deceased students, or the wounded and recently crippled returning soldiers. With some Chinese contacts, I can imagine he heard of the atrocities happening on the front and possibly from both sides of the conflict. Tokyo would also have been a military target, making his family and dojo at risk. He left Tokyo in 1942, the same year as the first bombing raids on Tokyo but before the end of the war, and moved to the small farming community of Iwama.
Not long afterward, Kawahara Shihan was a boy living in the outskirts of Nagasaki when the city was hit with the atomic bomb. He was a later a teenager living in Osaka, and joined the local Aikido dojo at 17. Osaka was very heavily bombed during the war, with estimates at over 10 000 civilians killed in 8 major bombing raids. Over a ton of incendiary bombs were dropped on a city of 3 million. He spoke of people so desperate that knife fights were breaking out over food even after the war had ended.
Compared to my own history with a small CN Railway town on the bald prairie the differences are laughable. The "city" grew to 5000 people during my time there. This place was nearly as "white bread" as you can get - the nearest indian reserve was an hour away. There were virtually no representatives of any other colour. We were too homogeneous for even the idea of ethnic violence.
Violence was something that happened in hockey - with the fight to serious injury ratio being heavily skewed. The playground was a place where people made vague threats and made appointments to meet and maybe in the very rare occassion give someone a black eye. I saw and participated in a number of fights - I have only one memory of ever even seeing blood. The height of cruelty was letting the air out of someone's bicycle tires - forcing someone to walk two blocks to the nearest gas station.
Later on, guys would talk about getting drunk and getting in a fight. I would hear the stories of their exploits on Monday morning. No one was too injured to get to school the next day. No one was arrested. Most people never even looked like they had been in a fight, even an hour after having "got the shit kicked out of them." We had no concept of what violence could be.
I compare my childhood violence to Sensei's childhood violence and I feel ridiculous. It never occured to me that the drunk looking for a fight on Friday night wouldn't be a good guy to do business with or talk to on Saturday morning. I would sometimes feel threatened, but I was absolutely never in danger. I never even had a house key. I could go for a walk to anywhere in town at any hour and have no concern outside of staying warm in the winter. On the few occassions there was a fight not on the rink, it never occured to me that the people engaged in violence might come after me or any of my friends. We could form a ring around the two "combatants" and it never occured to any of us we might get injured as bystanders. Weapons were never used.
Compare this to a mother and child huddled in a bomb crater trying not to get noticed by the armed gang of marauders walking by, terrified of rape and murder or having the last scrap of food stolen and left to suffer a slow death. No police, virtually no medical care, clean water, food and shelter a priceless commodity. O Sensei's idea of protecting the world in it's best possible state is a very different in a warzone. My very brief time in Hombu Dojo had me come into contact with people from Israel, Yugoslavia and South Africa. These people also had training very different from mine.
Is Aikido a strictly harmless art? I had some teachers say so, but they came from places like Hawaii, long after Pearl Harbour. Often, these people had a very rigid idea of what Aikido was, but then taught "Jujitsu" and other arts on the same mat during the same Aikido class. The student still learned how to escalate when required. For my Sensei, Aikido was a complete art with a large number of options. The peaceful art was not a matter of a certain movement or hand position - we had choices. We could exercise our choices, and we could escalate the violence when we needed to. Our minds and our hearts were the expression of the Art of Peace. We had the choice, and we did the bare minimum. By Choice. We didn't get stuck in our responses out of ignorance. We learned harmless peaceful Aikido was a luxury that Sensei had not been afforded.
For example, when we learned Tanto Dori: As the Tanto was a dangerous weapon at close range, there was a range of responses that changed with the rank we were testing for. The Ikkyu student was the lowest rank to do this on an exam, and therefore determined to be at the most risk. The Uke's arm was secured, the motion was made to break the arm and the knife fell to the floor. Uke was thrown away and not pinned. No attempt was made to control the knife, the knife was just taken out of the equation.
By Shodan and Nidan, Uke would be pinned and Nage would retain the knife. Controlling the knife and Uke became a higher priority. The student would be expected to show more restraint as they demonstrated more control.
The last Sandan tests I saw Sensei give, Nage was asked to take the knife without ever throwing or pinning Uke. The Sandan candidate was expected to have the skills to stay safe while keeping Uke safe, but had to have the ability to escalate. The Ikkyu student was expected to show that they knew enough to not sacrifice their own safety for the sake of their attacker's and they needed to show they understood the basic kata all contained very damaging moves. Protecting Uke was secondary when you could be killed instantly. Keeping Uke safe was an advanced practice to aspire to, not a given outcome and not a dogmatic mandate to adhere to even if it got you killed. We learned all techniques could be pins, throws, hip throws, atemi waza and higikime. This made for a much more complex Tanto Dori system than I have seen elsewhere in Aikikai.
I can't teach this type of tanto dori here because the students who cringe watching the silly cartoon violence they see on TV can't even agree to learn the most basic (most damaging) form of Tanto Dori. They only try to do kata that would get them killed because they don't have the ability to control Uke yet. Their response is to stand in judgement of Sensei, whose only concern was that his students would be safe. Their preception of violence really says that they have never been tested and that they can't even imagine a situation where their lives are at risk. This one-note practice is I think what has people questioning Aikido's effectiveness and validity as a martial art.
I feel we should embrace our spiritual mandate. We should be an Art of Peace. But, we should not be insular, we should not rewrite history and we should not condemn those who continue to try continue to make Aikido a powerful and applicable martial art. O Sensei and my Sensei were men from another generation that had harsh realities that I do not think should be sanitized so as not to offend our own tender sensibilities. When we do, we just abandon the larger world outside the dojo and we become an irrelevant anachronism.
Nice essay. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteIt recalled to mind an insight I had while reading Stanley Prannin's pre-war aikido history and interviews. One of O-Sensei's former students, I've forgotten which one, was asked about safety and the number of injuries occured at the dojo in his time there as uchidshi. He thought for awhile, and then replied that he couldn't remember a single one -- and then a paragraph or two later related a time when his wrists were so swollen from shihonage practice that he couldn't hold chopsticks!
That was when I realised, again and anew, that there are always differing and true interpretations of any given word or concept. It has helped me reconcile, somewhat, the idea of Aikido as Art of Peace and Aikido as Martial Art at one and the same time. Context is vital.