Aiki-Truthiness

"Did you hear the story about O Sensei on the train?  When he talked down the angry drunk man?"   I groaned a little inside.  This comment was from a senior practitioner.

The story is from Terry Dobson.  He was on a train in Japan when an angry drunk man started to frighten people.  Dobson was ready to respond with his size and martial prowess when an old man walked up and talked the angry drunk down.  The frightening man quickly collapsed into tears, the situation was immediately diffused without violence, and Dobson appeared to have a moment of enlightenment.

The old man on the train sounds like someone who was fearless, and compassionate.  He sounds like someone we need to have more of in the world today.  This old man on a train in Japan had an influence on Dobson's Aikido, and the story resonates with many people in Aikido today.

It just never was O Sensei.  Dodson gives no indication he even knows who the old man was.

I only heard one story about O Sensei on a train, and it was in a book of Shirata Rinjiro's translated by John Stevens.  O Sensei ordered a stranger who was sitting quietly on a train off.  O Sensei, according to the students, who told the story to the translator who wrote it down and submitted it to the publisher, told his students it was because the man was a thief.  So, I have several degrees of separation from this one story.

I spent a few years having read everything (bloody little) with O Sensei's name or a direct student's name in the title (if it has been translated into English - a huge barrier I regret).  I wish this story was the only one of it's kind.  When I come across a quote I never heard before, I don't get excited.  I get cynical.

Like this image from Shihan Essence.  There are several otherwise beautiful posters that they have fluffed a bit.  "Life and Death are decided in an instant" maybe became translated as "Winners and Losers are decided in a flash."  In asking the people running the site, this was a translation of Shioda Kancho paraphrasing Morihei Ueshiba, then misattributed as Morihei Ueshiba himself directly.  There are many quotes from other sources where O Sensei asked us not to focus on the Good and Bad of our fellow man, or to not focus on Winning and Losing.

Morihei Ueshiba is well known as a devote Shinto practitioner, but in some posters like this Ueshiba is quoted as though he worshipped the Judeo-Christian God.  I believe the original might have referred to Kami, and a number of similar quotes probably refer to "The Universe." 

It is hard to blame the site, as O Sensei wrote little, his image was deliberately modified for marketing purposes, and many students have gone on to spread stories they think should be true or they feel is true.  Their next generation of students in turn respond with further truthiness, misguided loyalty or misplaced trust.  As Aikido rapidly became multinational, multiple languages seem to be in play.  What was maybe in Japanese gets translated into Russian is then translated to Spanish, and then to English or whatever.  The translations are playing the Telephone Game with our art.

It shouldn't be so easy to confuse a generation of students. 

Why do I as a Christian get the joke?  Because I cared enough about my religion to read, and listen to people who deserved to be listened to.  I questioned what I heard, and I corroborated what I read, heard, and believed.  I challenged my beliefs, and I researched them.