The Basics

Going through the history of Aikido language in a very cursory fashion, I realize I was more after an understanding of the art in general.  Really, it looks like different teachers had different ideas of how to teach and what to teach.

All the groups ultimately want to improve the world and the people training in their Aikido.  Everyone claims martial efficacy as a goal.  Takemuso Aiki, the spontaneous creation of Mushin technique, is something pretty well every branch of Aikido, if not every martial art in the world holds up as a goal.

The question is How.

Our English language has 26 letters, 5-7 vowels making 20 separate vowel sounds with a total of 44 sounds, and a pile of grammar rules that many experienced English-only communicators frequently mangle.  Our written language is represented in calligraphy, cursive, printing, and an ever increasing number of font.  We have jargon for specific uses and groups.  We have dictionaries and thesauruses (thesaurasii?).  And, we allow poetic/artistic license anytime any of the rules don't serve us.  But, we start written English with 26 things that can expand eventually to Dick and Jane, Ulysses, a Brief History of Time, and the Bible.  26 things that give us unlimited potential.

When we learn mathematics, we learn the language of the universe.  Physics bears witness to all creation.  The greatest mathematicians still started with 0-9, then learned how to manipulate them.  Ten digits that can be used to predict the weather, the seasons, the depth of the ocean, the power of the atom and the location of interstellar bodies.

The most basic and most powerful computer programs all are derived from 0 and 1.  Like the Yi Jing, Wuji (Nothing) gives birth to Taiji (two things - something and the absence of something), the Four Symbols, the Eight Trigrams, the 64 Hexagrams and so on all the way up to limitless.  Whether it is Yin and Yang, or Binary machine code, two things can eventually lead to potential we have yet to fully realize.

The Founder and his teacher apparently didn't build on basics so much as dropped the equivalent of astrophysics on their students and left them to figure out how to frame their own insights and communicate to their students in turn.  Maybe it's not surprising so many people developed different ideas.

More of what is in a name - Omote and Ura reconstruction

O Sensei himself was not regimented in how he taught, and apparently neither was Sokaku Takeda.  For the students who followed them, the well formulated methods of teaching that Kano Jigoro successfully advocated for and successfully implemented nation wide for Judo probably influenced everyone to some degree.

(Not necessarily directly, though Kano shared many students with Ueshiba.  I mean more in the same way that BJJ and MMA has forced everyone to consider their ground game.  Kano arrived in the scene with methods that helped students and teachers clearly understand what was being taught and how well the student was progressing.  The promise of understanding within years, instead of decades of chaotic instruction must have had huge repercussions and mass appeal.)

There are separate associations with their own names for techniques.  The wide variety of practice methods out there would seem to indicate that O Sensei's teachings were very different for each student and a wide variety of technical expressions were tolerated.  

Wide varieties in names were also apparently tolerated or eventually came to be.  For example, a very rudimentary wrist twist is known as Kote Mawashi, Nikajo, and Nikyo in Aikido alone.  It exists in some form in every martial art I have every seen demonstrated, with many different names.

One technique I was required to learn was called both Ikkyo and Nikyo Omote.  I never learned how to distinguish which was which.  This picture is labelled Ikkyo below, and this is the technique I am referring to.

I learned this next one as a Wakigatame.  Someone asked Sensei if it was Gokyo, and I remember him saying, "No."  Another higher ranked direct student of O Sensei I met a few years later said, "Yes."  Here is a picture of Shioda Sensei doing the same technique, labelled Nikyo (by an American dojo - Shioda used Nikajo to my knowledge, and maybe never used Nikajo for this movement.  The point is how badly we communicate within our collective art).  It appears in Daito Ryu, but I don't recall which catalogue or what it's name is.

As people were coming to train with O Sensei with a wide background in traditional martial arts, many techniques in the Aikido syllabus already had multiple names.  The student could fall back on terms stemming from guarded family arts, insular clan arts, as well as exposure to the martial arts of other countries including Okinawa, China and Korean.  If O Sensei didn't provide the name, the student already had a framework for labeling the technique.  Look up words like "walk," "stand," or "hold" in an English thesaurus - I am glad to have only a handful of Japanese terms for these subjects!

Names eventually became "correct" as declarations of allegiance to political bodies especially in the West.  Language barriers probably played a role.

To a native Japanese martial artist, the names might very well be completely interchangeable - most of the Japanese technical terms like Kote Mawashi are very rudimentary and describe the movement, offering no deeper spiritual meaning.  

If that is the case, the fault isn't really with the Japanese labels but rather in Caucasian monolingual nobodies like myself who are trying to learn "Thee Right Way."

From the Sword

I have been told many times that my style of Aikido comes from sword work (not by Sensei, and I think it isn't a fully true statement and maybe becoming less true with time).

The problem is, I had little sword work coming up compared to some associations (more than some, but not a lot).  So, I was left in pre-YouTube and Facebook days to watch movies and read books.  Kata practice also left me with a sense of an extended and protracted contest.  There are other fighting styles from different cultures who try multiple rapid cuts, but the theory is most of those cuts are going to fail to do much.  Most Japanese arts seem to try to be minimalist - one move, one kill.

I was raised on Darth Vader, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Luke Skywalker.  I was blown away by The Princess Bride.  I caught Revenge of the Ninja in the theatre as a new release.  Choreography has since become more lavish, wire work more common, computer graphics and clever editing common place.  More Crouching Tiger, more Zorro, more Kill Bill, more Matrix.

This Link shows some Iaido cutting practice.  My understanding is each practice target device is supposed to have roughly the same feel and offer the same resistance as a human arm, leg, or neck.  The wall shaped device would then offer the same resistance as a vertical cut through the torso I guess.  

Each movement is a single, simple, lethal, fight stopping movement.  I watch the final fight scene from Sanjuro, or when I watch Sword of Doom, this is what I see.  There are no blocks, no handsprings, no flips, and it's much less fun and sexy.  It looks quick and lethally simple.  When I watch these scenes with non-martial artists I get told it looks fake (and, these are movies so they are fake) - but the same people don't make that comment about Jackie Chan.  Maybe the idea that we really are that fragile is unsettling.

I remember Sensei saying empty handed Shomenuchi was "Two Kills."  Raise the hand - finished.  Lower the hand - finished.  It's the same movement as Tohei's Ikkyo Undo, as Shioda's Kokyu Ho #1, as Tomiki's Atemi Waza.

This was one idea that I tried to work on leading up to my last test - no meaningless movement, each moment in time an opportunity to strike, lock, or throw.  One move, one finish.