I wasn't there to see it. The question is, are the people who were there telling the truth? The stories I read say he dodged the person pulling the trigger. That's different from dodging the actual bullet. Dodging the person pulling the trigger is conceptually the same as what we try to do in aikido class, so I'm willing to accept the stories as true.
I heard he's dodged a whole load of bullets all at the one time. He had guys riding round in a circle on horse back firing revolvers. These stories probably are ture. O Sensei was a little mentle with these kinda things. He also used to bang his head off a rock every morning to make his head tougher. There's also a story he lost the plot with one of his students because the student damaged a tree with his bokken or jo. Story goes the student was watching O Sensei practice from a distance and thought he was hitting the tree. So he did the same. As it turnd out O Sensei never touched the tree. But was extending ki into it to help it grow. Ever notice how teachers who are supposed to understand all this calmness and ki stuff lose it ever so easily LOL.
It's the stereotypical MA master. Extremely calm in public, but a hard ass when it comes to teaching you. PL
i heard o sensei once turned some apple juice into milk. don't think he was quite up to the water to wine trick, though.
Hmm. That's a new one for me. The one I read about, told by an aikido student who witnessed it, was that a line of marksman soldiers stood in front of O-Sensei, like an execution line. This was a staged demonstration. They all fired revolvers at him. He jumped behind the line of soldiers before their bullets reached the point where he was formerly standing. He did it twice in a row. O-Sensei's explanation to his aikido student was that he could sense when the bullets were about to be fired, and so moved at that time. The same type of story is told about his Army days. O-Sensei would charge the enemy and not be hit by their gunfire. His explanation was, again, that when he got close to the enemy he could sense where they were aiming and when they were about to shoot at him. He dodged the enemies' intentions. And hence his need to charge in close. I think I read the story about the firing squad on the Aiki Journal. Honestly I don't remember if that's the right site. It was a couple years ago that I found the story. I've read of O-Sensei's army exploits in several books.
