Aikido is not technique; not fighting

I've never actually heard a specific reason before. Just the approximate translation of "great teacher".

 

As I understood it the original usage was to distinguish between the two teachers, when someone was talking about Ueshiba Sensei it would not necessarily be clear which one you were referring to.

So O Sensei for the elder and Waka sensei for the younger.

My Japanese sucks so don't take my word for it


I suppose though it would all come down to which kanji was being used.

 

O Sensei

The title of O Sensei referred to M.Ueshiba is in the context of Aikido . Mas Oyama as far as I am aware did not use this title.Neither did J.Kano , Judo founder.
Since O sensei s dead you obviously cannot judge his ability as an martial artist in person. In my case I am fortunate to know many of his Uchi Deshi.These men are/were excellent Aikidoka in their own right but they all agree/d that O Sensei was an exceptional man.
Do you have to meet someone to recognise their talent? If you visit an Art gallery do you not see pictures of old masters who have died centuries ago? I think you would agree that Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius. By your
logic you would state' I do not consider him a great painter since I never met him '.Within the religious context are a bit of a Doubting Thomas?Incidentally I do not mean this in any derogatory context.Just curious.
All the best , Joe.

 

ok with a great artist you can see what his genius was by his paintings. With something like martial arts it is a lot more difficult It is much more like judging a dancer, how do you judge a dancer? well it would have to be by a performance, which you either witness directly or see on film...now that in itself would not deserve the title of "Great Teacher"...and you might remember this interesting clip that I posted

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXNm-2qxRfg"]YouTube - Aikido Henry Kono Sensei[/ame]

in this clip Henry Ko says that Ueshiba didn't want people to know what he was doing.again that doesn't really equate to great teacher.surely a teacher would want people to know?

Now with other styles mentioned I know Oyama from Kyokoshinkai was called "Kansho."
The honour system, being a "living treasure" etc is a very Japanese thing......as an example Wado-Ryu karate was recognised as a martial art before Shotokan, even though Wado-Ryu is a derivative of shotokan.......other countries have their own ways of honouring people or not as the case may be, this doesn't mean that their martial traditions are any less than the Japanese ones.but as someone who has practiced and cross trained in many different systems I personnally don't pay any attention to titles.....the explanation about Ueshiba and his son sounds the most reasonable to me

 

O Sensei

Regarding O Sensei and teaching in general one can teach using a mixture of oral transmission , demonstrating and one to one practice.In some case s the learning process may well be purely by 'doing'.I believe that O Sensei was primarily teaching his Uchi Deshi by a 'Doing 'process.I have it on good authority that O Sensei for example rarely called out an Uke to demostrate on. The potential Ukes had to be aware / develop a connection with O Sensei to be able to at any moment, respond to Osensei.This is a very subtle , non verbal method of connecting with a partner.It is akin to the concept of Path of an Echo.
We in the West are more analytical and we usually like to ''understand ' waza. I think the early Uchi deshi learnt by doing .
joe.

 

That's the problem with people that wish to learn something from those that teach, or hold the knowledge. They want everything spoon fed to them, make it real simple, tell them everything, do all the work for them so I don't have to think or do anything for theirselves...just give it all to them, buffet style, all you can eat!

Considering that O senseis students were already such high ranking blackbelts in other arts, why should he tell them? Didn't their teachers teach them already? Such a high ranking judoka for instance should already know these things, if they were taught properly, right? Or maybe they just wern't taught properly? Who knows (I'm certain O sensei had his own opinnion on this matter).

Sometimes a teacher is there to "point the way up the mountain." The martial artist actually has to climb the mountain for themselves. Find all the crevices and footholds and handholds. The teacher is a guide. Some things you have to learn for yourself, and figure out for yourself...that's called an opportunity. In this case O sensei presented his students with an opportunity or a challenge, and many of them gladly accepted it. Henry Kono in the video you poste is probably one of these individuals.

O sensei also crosstrained in many martial arts systems. The thing is, a martial arts system is just that, a complete system. If bowing and titles are part of it, we do not get to pick and choose that from our teachers which we want and discard that which we do not want...that would be like only climbing part of the mountain.

It is the tradition from which the art was born, the very ingredients that allowed the art to come into being.

I like karate, but I don't like to kick, so I'm not going to kick, and I'm not going to wear those stupid looking uniforms with a belt holding it together, nor am I going to bow to some guy at the front that wants me to call him sensei, or coach, or Mister....so in the katas where everyone else does kicking, I'm going to focus on my boxing skills. And as for a uniform, I'm just going to wear my sweats and a jersey, and my favorite knit wool cap that my auntie made for me. I am the one here to learn from those that already know what the art is, I'll decide for myself what it is I want them to teach me, damnit! And I'm certainly not going to learn anything that might be too complicated, or take to long, or actually require me to think a bit, or anything else that I might not like, or I'll just go somewhere else to learn. And if that guy wants me to call him sensei, or coach or Mister also? Well, we will just have to see about that.

...and I'm certainly not going to be learning from anyone under this teacher of mine...a brownbelt, a bluebelt...nope, if this teacher is what he says he is, then he should be teaching me, not his appointees, this is the guy that should be showing me the way up the mountain when I show up for my class.

Besides, you misinterpret the clip...it is not that he did not want anyone else to know what he was doing...Kono clearly states "he never explained these things that what it was he was doing." Big difference. And the culture being what it was, they could not ask. But, Kono, as he explains, being Canadian just casually asked him one day, and Osensei actually gave him an answer...spoon fed it too him, ala cart..."because you don't understand yin and yang."

As for the posts that Osensei held, one of them was as an advisor on martial arts for the Shimbuden organization as well as for Kenkyoku University in Mongolia. Mongolia is a bit of a journey from Japan, and there he met and confered and "advised" on the martial arts with other highly prized martial artists from Korea/China/Mongolia. Keep in mind that this was a time when communication of this mans skill and expertise was not available via internet. Yet the university saw fit to appoint this man from Japan to this position.

He wasn't just great in Japan, or in the eyes of a few of his students. It transcended far beyond that.

 

your first point......if I wanted to be a surgeon or an engineer I would be taught not spoon fed, but taught, and as somebody who wants to learn something I would seek out somebody who was prepared to TEACH me.......I recently had an epiphany in MA's when I attended an MA class , and I realised that the guy teaching me didn't have a clue about fighting, he taught the style in a very shall we say Esoteric manner, but when he came to the nitty gritty he didn't have a clue..............I have fought people and I know fighting..thios is not a referance to Ueshiba, but to your comments.and as you said Ueshiba cross trained..so he would have picked and chosen what he wanted to do....you say you choose not to kick, well so did he.................at the end of the day MA's come down to the individual, Ueshiba chose this method and so do I, he chose to totally re interpret Daito- Ryu Aiki Jutsu....such that his teacher Takeda refered to Aikido as "Dancing".......the problem with the cult of Ueshiba, is that he is somehow deified, the same was done to Doshin So the head of Shorenji Kempo, and the Aiki Bunnies are doing it with Aikido. I trained with one guy who trained with Ueshiba, ok he was alright.but he didn't have that "bite" that feeling that if push came to shove, he could shove harder than I could..............and Ueshiba has been dead sometime now anyway....at the end of the day if you are in a bad area facing a couple of knife wielding Yahoos, or alternatively lying in a hospital bed being told you have days to live..then it come s down to YOU and your idols will fall very quickly.best not to create them

 

Ha, just try going to medical school and tell me how much you are taught, vs. how much work you actually have to do yourself. Tell me those medical doctors who teach don't tell you how inept and screwed up, and wrong and worthless you are, and how you should never have been in med school, or even breathing the same air as convicted criminals in a federal prison. Your approach would seem pretty idealistic in what makes a competent surgeon. I also went to school with engineers, and the same holds for them (the work part, not the humansitic degrading part).

You think you can become a surgeon without adopting the lifestyle? The cultish lifestyle of doctors going to medical schools? Hilarious. You would probably be better off having a real life, or choosing some other profession.

As for Ushiba picking and choosing, he had to endure those choices from training under teachers that were very, very, very unforgiving.

He was still a great man that many sought out for his instruction, sprituality, and understanding, or his instruction at the least, spirituality and understanding aside...there is a reason his dojo was nicknamed "the hell dojo."

He did not name it this...it was named by those who attended year after year for decades upon decades. There was no cult forcing them to stay, they wanted to learn "what it was that he was doing that he would not explain."

As for the folks you have trained UNDER? Interesting you are not there any longer to actually test out what it is you "feel" or "think," as presumptuous as it may be...better to actually have tried it out than to leave short of your complete training. The fights you have been in are not with those Yahoos that were teaching you, those that you claim did not have the "bite"... most intersting.

Go back under the guise of being a student that wishes to learn from them, and let that person have it...drive them outside to the curb, and call the paramedics/ambulence for them if you so desire, or not..., and then get back to me. Of course if this is not possible either, i.e. you have burned your bridges (and trust me I know plenty about destroying bridges), then get back to me in that regard. Don't give them "if push came to shove..." give them "push, shove, push shove...all the way till their head is about roughly even with the curb. And get back to me.

We can talk about would've, could've, should've all day in the mean time...Did I mention that one of M. Ueshibas' (O Sensei...Great Teacher) students Gozo Shioda (who spent ten years training under O sensei, and was awarded 9th dan by him...) also gave an aikido demonstration before President John F Kennedy, and that Ueshiba himself was also was visited by astronaut John Glenn (as in John Glen was his uke)...you know the president JFK, and NASA astronaut John Glen (Colonel, USMC, Ret), who had an interest in aikido and went to Japan to visit O sensei, and the hombu dojo...John Glen who would become US Senator? Oh, wait...that's not a woud've, should've, could've...my mistake.

You see, there are plenty of other than cultish reasons why he was called O sensei by those that had come into contact with him!

 

It does initially seem to be at odds with any concept of a teacher. But if I remember to content of that video properly (I have no sound right now). The idea being expressed was that O Sensei would refuse to spoon feed his students Aikido and instead forced them to observe and learn through practice.

 

"Sensei" doesn't literally translate to teacher. I believe it translates more to "One who has gone before."

A taste of what training was like in the 1930s from the Aikido Journal article, http://www.aikidojournal.com/article.php?articleID=193

 

I believe in Aikiwolfie´s words.

There´s no guarantee that if someone is teaching, there´s another one learning.
As for the opposite, there´s no reason to believe that if someone is learning, it has to be beacuse someone else is teaching.

These are wrong pre-conceived ideas.

 

Izumizu, just for clarification purposes, I wasn't referring to Aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba when I made that post. I am not ignorant. I was referring to those people that say things to be confusing with the intent to seem philosophical. When he was talking about "O Sensai" I was not thinking of Morihei.

"O Sensai" means "good teacher" and although most would assume when one identifies as "O Sensai" they are referring to the great founder Morihei Ueshiba, I have had the pleasure of meeting individuals who identify themselves with this title. Masters/Dams' sometimes identify as "O Sensai".

 

Although this is not one specifically that I was looking for, there is a marked difference in how relaxed O sensei is in his videos when he is young compared to those when he is older how much more fluid he is.

@Sarah
I completely understand. No big deal. Hope you are having a great time here on MAP and enjoying your aikido practice.

 

True but it's very easy to establish what's being taught is being absorbed.

On a class by class basis an instructor can question to confirm and can additionally ask for students to demonstrate aspects of what's been delivered in that particular class.

On a more formal basis, gradings and other assessment based testing will highlight which students are learning (and who isn't)

 

Of course, that is the role of the instructor. According to the video posted here with Henry Kono, however, Osensei did not exactly explain what he was doing, or perhaps the students that were Japanese did not ask him to explain.

In the video Henry Kono sensei states that at a party for Osensei he just casually asked him one day why it was that he and the other students could not do what it was that Osensei was doing. Osensei replied "Because you do not understand yin and yang."

Henry Kono Sensei was able to get away with breaking this protocol (as he describes it) because he was Canadian, and didn't necessarily have to follow the same rules as native born Japanese.

 

大 - 'O'; large, big.
先生 - 'sensei'; teacher, someone who has gone before.

I have never met anyone who would allow themselves to be called o-sensei. Just as I have never met anyone (legit) who allowed themselves to be called master/grandmaster etc.

I guess you've just been luckier than I.

 

Your statement doesn't make sense.

To be fluid, you need to be relaxed. Also you need to take account for the specific methodology of the various budo Ueshiba studied at various stages of his life, he didn't always apply his technical abilities with "aiki" as the principle concept of delivery, thus, you will see his practice differ depending upon the time in his life, what he was specifically learning/teaching at that time etc.

The "aiki" approach didn't develop until later in his life and followed his association with the Oomoto Kyo sect and Deguchi Onisaburo who, it is understood, first coined the phrase to Ueshiba (and Takeda of Dai-to Ryu) Takeda apparently added "Aiki" into the name of his system fairly quickly, Ueshiba however not until the 1940's when the name "Aikido" was registered with the Japanese Government as a new form of budo.

I'm surprised given how long you've studied aikido, you haven't read these accounts and understood this.

 

I doubt that

 

@ ScottUK
Actually there are some other folks on the internet that call themselves, or have their students call them Osensei. They are not doing aikido but practice other ma. Pretty sad. I guess the luck would be in not having met them, and Sarah having met them, then distancing herself from them.

@Dave Humm

Yep.

Yep, and all of those budo were eventually meshed into what became aikido, an art by his own admission that he himself was just beginning to understand in his seventies.

 

That's true, but we're talking about the past - you only have to look at those deshi who followed Ueshiba in his path to see that regardless of how Ueshiba taught his students, they did in fact learn and learn to very high standards.

It is also important to remember that the VAST majority of those deshi who still live today (and some who've sadly passed away) learned their Aikido in Shinjuku thus, their main source of instruction was from Ueshiba's Son Kisshomeru, in OSensei's absence whilst he was living and teaching in Iwama.

I'm sure you've read accounts of Ueshiba Morihei returning to Shinjuku and being unhappy with how aikido was being taught in his absence. If you've not, perhaps you should add this to your list of research topics.