The Art of Peace?

“I think there are a lot of fluffy unicorns and rainbows floating around some Aikido dojos, and they do not contribute anything positive to the training or the culture. Ueshiba did preach about Aikido being the “art of peace” and “unifying the world.” He was also a right-wing militarist from a Neo-Confucian culture. He would have had a great deal of difficulty wrapping his head around 21st-century Western ideas of what the art of peace means.” In this extract from The Budo Bum – Interview with Peter Boylan, the author touches a very sensitive nerve of the Aikido community

by PETER BOYLAN

“What do you think of those instructors who teach Aikido with The Art of Peace in their hands? Can one teach a martial art based on dubious westernized interpretations of geographically and culturally distant contexts, and personal moralistic overtones?” [Simone Chierchini]

“I find the idea of teaching Aikido with The Art Of Peace as any sort of guide to be extremely problematic. John Stevens is very earnest, but his translations I find are far from hitting the target. I’m waiting for Christopher Li to do a really definitive translation of Ueshiba Morihei’s writings. I speak and read Japanese reasonably well, but not well enough to do justice to Ueshiba’s poetry. He referenced classical Shinto stories and deities all over the place, and quoted both from classic works of Japanese literature that I’ve never been able to make myself sit down and read, much less get familiar enough with to be able to readly spot when they are quoted or referenced. Add the teachings of his beloved Omoto Kyo leader Deguchi Onisaburo on top of all that, and the mix requires a specialist with a deep understanding of the ideas that function as the foundation of his thought before they can be translated well. My Japanese skills help me notice when a translation has missed the mark, but there are very few with the sufficient background to even be sure where the target is.

“I think there are a lot of fluffy unicorns and rainbows floating around some Aikido dojos, and they do not contribute anything positive to the training or the culture. Ueshiba did preach about Aikido being the “art of peace” and “unifying the world.” He was also a right-wing militarist from a Neo-Confucian culture. He would have had a great deal of difficulty wrapping his head around 21st-century western ideas of what the art of peace means.

“I like the idea of bringing Eastern and Western ideas together. I think the synthesis is wonderful and can move both forward much further when taken together than either could manage on its own. However, you have to have a pretty solid foundation in the ideas of the other culture before you can bring them into your own effectively. Taoist ideas are a great example. I’ve been reading and rereading the Dao De Ching and Zhuang Zi for something like 40 years. I’ve read good translations and bad ones. Even the best translations cannot stand on their own. They must have a lot of background information to support them or you will quickly go off the rails of understanding into the realm of personal fantasy. You have to know something about the culture of China in the eras these were written, and the philosophical conversations that were happening to begin to unpack all of the ideas they contain.

“The same thing is true with Ueshiba’s writings. I can’t tell how many times I’ve seen “masakatsu agatsu” attributed to Ueshiba. It’s not his. He was quoting the Kojiki, an 8th-century collection of stories about the kami, the creation of Japan, and the relationship between the kami and men. Ueshiba liked the phrase a lot, and in Japan no one attributes it to him. Everyone knows where it comes from. The same is true for a lot of the things that are attributed to him outside Japan. He was a great martial artist, but I think we give him far too much credit for having unique teachings for society and individuals. He borrowed extensively from classical Shinto, Shingon Buddhism, and Omoto Kyo teachings. If you’re going to teach using Ueshiba’s writings and you haven’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with these, you won’t be teaching anything Ueshiba thought or wrote. You’ll be teaching the framework and ideas that you imposed on the translation. I mentioned the problem with translating wa 和 as harmony earlier, and those issues extend to many other terms that are quickly translated into other languages without the context that supports them in Japanese culture.

“Ueshiba’s real legacy is his martial art. That’s what he excelled at. Study that to learn his lessons. I cringe at the folks who soften Aikido into a marshmallow because they’ve read one or two translations, or worse, none. There are plenty of people who read some of the “biographies” of Ueshiba and think they understand what Ueshiba meant. I’m afraid the images of him as a peaceful, kind old man gently guiding us to a world of peace and harmony are about as far from the mark as possible. He was a badass young man. He was a badass middle-aged man, and he continued to be a badass in his senior year. This is a guy who went with his guru to establish themselves in occupied China. He enthusiastically taught his martial art to the army and some of the worst militarists in Japan. I have never seen evidence that he disavowed or did anything to distance himself from all of this after the war.

“Ueshiba’s martial art was always very martial. He acted from a place of strength, and he expected that from his students. I can’t imagine how anyone could think that teaching Aikido as anything other than a martial art that makes one strong and able to impose your will on the world. Just because he taught that you should use very efficient techniques for doing that doesn’t negate what he was teaching, but it can make it hard for people to grasp. The best Aikido that I’ve felt was both soft and devastating. I’m not exaggerating the “devastating” part. When I’ve been handled by great teachers, they completely control the situation and leave me with the options of doing things their way, or having to break my own arm to do anything else, and the throws have power in them. I hit the floor as hard as I do in judo. Aikido is about the application of power. That’s its base.”

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