Aikido - What's in a Name?
The term Aikido is held in great reverence by the practitioners
of this Budo (myself included ). It is an extremely high minded
concept……"Harmony with the Universal Spirit",
so it's no wonder really. We all imagine, or would like to, that
this name manifested out of the cosmic consciousness to Morihei
Ueshiba whilst in a state of deep meditation, so the name truly
represents his highly developed spiritual/martial way.
The fact is, however , that nothing could be further from the truth.
It seems that Morihei was not particularly interested in naming
his art. Prior to 1922 he referred to it as either Ueshiba Ryu jujutsu
or (perhaps when political correctness was called for) Daito-ryu
jujutsu since this was the art he learned from Sokaku Takeda. After
1922 the term "aiki" materialised on certificates and
the like. This it seemed was at the suggestion of Onisaburo Deguchi,
Morihei's spiritual guru, apparently to denote the strong spiritual
content of Morihei's evolving teachings.
As an interesting aside at this point, Westbrook and Ratti in their
book "Secrets of the Samurai" record that the concept
of aiki is an ancient one and that schools teaching aiki-jutsu had
existed for several hundred years. They also cite the Daito-ryu
as being one of them. Perhaps Takeda sensei simply forgot to use
the term and Onisaburo reminded him of his oversight. (of course!
thats why they didn't get on)
In the 1930's Morihei coined the term Asahi-Ryu for the art he
taught at the Asahi News dojo in Osaka before he was chased off
by Takeda. Latterly the term "aikibudo" was adopted and
this persisted until the early 1940's.
In 1942 Minoru Harai whilst acting as Director General of the Kobukan
dojo attended a meeting of the Dai Nihon Butokukai (an umbrella
organisation which promotes Japanese Budo) which was at that time
re-structuring it sub-divisions). Morihei's "aikibudo"
was to form part of a new division featuring other jujutsu and yawara
schools all based loosely around the same principles. Takeshi Hisatomi,of
the Kodokan and perhaps chairman of that particular forum felt that
aikibudo may not be acceptable to certain Kendo schools and made
a strong assertion for the name of Aikido to be adopted as a coverall
term representing all of the schools in this division. This was
accepted by Minoru Harai and the other members present and from
that day on Morihei Ueshiba's art adopted the name of Aikido.
If the above is a correct account of what went on, it would seem
quite possible that there may be other Aikido ryu out there totally
unconnected with the teachings of Morihei Ueshiba. Can this really
be so? And is Minoru Harai's Korindo Aikido one such art?
So this unique name which we all feel represents the true heart
of our budo was simply a spontaneous, convenience proposed by a
total outsider (well sort of) to cover a multitude of sins and avoid
political incorrectness. Who knows what we may have been practicing
had things been different…Chido perhaps?
Surprisingly it was a bloody good choice considering it was made
by a committee , who cares anyway……whats in a name?
Tony Hughes
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