Was there a technical evolution in O Sensei's Aikido.

One of the truths of Aikido is that O Sensei changed things.  He was constantly revising and updating Aikido.  He changed the Daito Ryu practices, and continued to revise Aikido further all his life.  It was how I justified seeing the Asahi News video for the first time and wondering why I didn't recognize so much of it.  It was how I justified my consternation when I read Budo for the first time.  I didn't recognize everything because things had changed.

John Stevens translated my copy.  To quote Stevens, "For the sake of comparison, several sequences of photographs are taken in Wakayama in 1951, when Morihei was sixty-eight years old, are included throughout this section.  The differences between Morihei's execution of the techniques in the pre- and post-war periods is often contrasted, but as we can see by comparing the Noma Dojo techniques (1936) and Wakayama (1951), the essence of Morihei's art remained the same."

As an example, I was told early on by intermediate students that as soon as Morihei went grey and bald and grew out the famous facial hair, he:

                                                      Got rid of Atemi 

                           And decided hitting people in the face wasn't Aiki.

(Pictures from Budo.  And the stories never came from Sensei.).

This bit about Atemi being discarded and unnecessary post war (the pics above are post war) doesn't look to be completely true.  The actual Tomiki derived Junana Atemi waza set is not explicitly defined as part of Aikikai, but all five individual techniques or some of their variations appear in non-Shodokan schools of Aikido.  They may be defined as kokyunage instead of Atemi and given different names and slightly modified, and maybe even become less refined, but they are there.

When I travel to seminars or other dojo, when a conversation comes up about O Sensei's technical evolution, the theory of growth and evolution is used to justify a disavowal of history and other lineages.  We don't need to know where we came from, because now we are better.  Don't look back; you'll only be looking at second rate stuff and you'll be the worse for it.  Or, Ueshiba evolved and became less martial and more spiritual - as evidenced by "O Sensei stopped using Atemi."  So later generations have less reason to even think they are a martial art.

I have no problem focusing on a basic core technique, learning it properly, and then focusing on the timing and Atemi.  I do think I can focus too much on hitting someone in the face and as a result not enough on necessary precision and principles.  The Atemi should fit seamlessly in a movement in my opinion.

That's very different from trying to say O Sensei stopped using atemi, and modern aikido has no atemi.

There are some great articles and a video out there recently that reiterate what John Stevens said decades ago - Morihei Ueshiba himself did not change much, nor did his personal art.