Aikido: Emerging Modern [Part 3/3]

Previously, we had established that while Judo and Karate were Meiji era arts, Aikido was a throwback in part of a broader ultra-conservative reaction to the Meiji Revolution. In its efforts to basically be a Tokugawa period martial arts style, however, it really only managed to be the product of Imperial Japan. A powerful indictment here is that Aikido pretty quickly had to pivot after Japan's surrender, though. I mean, obviously it did, right? The art was washed of its ultra-nationalist and new age religious overtones and rebranded primarily by the Aikikai as something closer in nature to cooperative meditation in motion. It became something more akin to generic life enrichment. In fairness, Aikido isn't alone in this either, at least not completely. Judo began to take a hard left turn into sportification in the post-year wars. The American occupation of Japan had banned martial arts, but their ban may or may not have really been all that necessary. The Japanese people were already turned off by all things martial, and they associated martial arts with a regime that had led them down a path to ruin and starvation. While many of we Judoka today bemoan how sportified the art has become, myself included to a degree, we also have to acknowledge that this direction really makes a lot of sense when we put it in context. The same can be said about karate proper. Sure, it had already been sanitized for Japanese mainlanders from the outset, but it should come as no surprise to us that karate had to first escape Japanese borders to get back to full-contact sparring, at least broadly speaking. Japan was simply tired of fighting and perhaps was a bit more aware of how martial arts as an education system is a very thin line away from martial arts as an indoctrination system. As a kind of cruel joke, it seems like Aikido has only maintained some of its uglier features from that period. It has now replaced Ueshiba's grassroots ultra-right-wing religion with more Western New Age spiritualism. It is still largely a samurai LARP for many people. It still draws people looking for hidden secrets of a bygone era where there really isn't much to be found. But Aikido really isn't any of these things, and crucially, it never was. Aikido was a dated practice at the moment of founding because it was a callback to a time that had already come and gone. Yet paradoxically, there is a subsection of people who argue that the way forward is to try and go back, just remixing Aikido's original sin. This is why I'm so critical of the idea that going backwards is somehow a pathway forwards. Aikido was founded on a similar premise, and even if it were very dubiously somehow a good idea then, very few would suggest where the art is now is all that good or healthy. I said towards the beginning of the series that no tree is ignorant of the climate it's grown in. The climate in this analogy is popular culture, and even more specifically, people themselves. There is a lot of noise about how to make Aikido more popular, but virtually none of that noise deals with what everyday people actually want from their martial arts practice. The reason for Judo's early success and BJJ's current American success is that these arts have a finger on the pulse of popular sentiment. Modern Aikido has simply failed to frame itself in a meaningful way for people in the 2010s and 2020s. This is not to disregard the possibility of a countercultural resurgence or another throwback period, but at the moment Aikido just stands in stark contrast to what most people find valuable in their training. Very few people would debate that reconciliation is good where possible or that flowing with things outside of your control is just more efficient. But people don't need these specific Aikido techniques attached to this very specific martial system to reach those conclusions. The reason BJJ initially survived and thrived as a countercultural movement was because it offered something perceived as new that offered something contemporary people were interested in at the same time. Now, yes, much of BJJ was essentially a repackaging of early 20th century Judo, but Judo itself was just a repackaging of the Jujitsu that predated it. While genuine martial innovations do sometimes grow out of these shifts, I think we often vilify the repackaging of martial arts a bit too harshly. Even as it pertains to Aikido, my own criticism is not that it is a streamlined Daito-ryu or a repackaged bunch of other techniques from other styles. My criticism is that it just doesn't offer much that other systems don't already offer, and what it does offer you're typically going to find better instruction elsewhere. In my view, the most egregious feature of modern Aikido is that it often doesn't even really seem to buy into its own mythology. The post-WWII Aikido landscape was defined by a pivot, but this isn't the pivot you'll often hear about from casual Aikido practitioners. Popularly, the story you're likely to run across goes something along the lines that Ueshiba, the founder, saw the error of his ways through the lens of a brutal outcome in WWII. Sometimes this shift in character is even pushed as far back as his poorly documented time during the Russo-Japan War, but ultimately, the story goes this change of perspective made his techniques softer and his philosophy more peace-loving. While the narrative power here is palpable and understandable, none of it is true. A criticism some of my Aikido videos occasionally draw is that much of what I discuss has been known about in research circles for years and years. This is one of those myths that has been debunked almost like a rite of passage for newer Aikido researchers. The reason I bring these things up is that there are still people parroting the myth, both inside and outside the art, but I'm going to save this particular issue for the very end of the video though, so let's put a pin in that. The research shows Ueshiba's technique remained more or less the same, and if any new quote-unquote softness was to be found in there, it likely had much more to do with his now-advanced age than some underlying ideological shift. We also know there was no such ideological shift happening at all to begin with. Ueshiba maintained his ultra-right-wing connections for the remainder of his life. People really, really want Ueshiba to be some sort of pacifist sage warrior, but literally nothing in the historical records suggests that he ever was. This does lead us smoothly into some of the post-war adjustments made by the Aikikai, particularly through Ueshiba's son, who took over after his father's de facto retirement. A point I want to make about the second-generation head of Aikido, though, is that he doesn't appear to have been the first choice. In fact, Mochizuki Minoru was once approached to take over Aikido but rejected the offer, likely because he sensed rough waters ahead and was probably already formulating his own ideas about what martial arts practice should be. Another man, Nakakura Kiyoshi, was also in line to become Ueshiba's successor and even married his daughter at the behest of Ueshiba himself, a common practice when passing on the position of a style's head. Nakakura's reason for departing Aikido is a bit more obscure. He mentions something about not being good enough to carry on the legacy, but this to me sounds like humble Japanese language disguising a more grounded reason. Nevertheless, he abdicated his position as successor and returned to the Kendo world, where he was already very successful and very famous. I bring this up for a couple reasons, although keep in mind the following is very much my own speculation. While the accepted history is that Ueshiba's son and eventual successor, Ueshiba Kishomaru, was too busy with his own career to take over at first, this has never really sat all that well with me. Given the rigid conservatism in these martial arts circles, I suspect the founder likely could have forced the issue with his son, who was his own blood. Instead, he chose to pursue at least two other potential successors, and he had to go outside of the family and jump through some extra hoops to do so. Again, this is my own speculation, but Kishomaru's ascension to leadership of Aikikai feels more like the founder settled for him, as opposed to choosing him out of recognition for technical or leadership prowess. If any kind of document exists that were to confirm my suspicions, I'd suspect it's probably kept well out of public view. At any rate, Kishomaru got to work fairly quickly. His father, at least according to hearsay and rumor, at least to my understanding, was displeased with the direction his son was taking Aikido, but if these rumors are to be believed, the disagreement probably was not born out of martial considerations. Kishomaru had correctly ascertained that Aikido would not be able to continue forward as an imperial ideology, as previously discussed. While this was a very smart call on the part of the new Aikido head, his pivot into branding Aikido as a lifestyle practice was, at least in my opinion, a decision that has plagued Aikido ever since. I'm going to be clear here that the narrative control of Aikido's brand under Kishomaru almost makes me want to call it a cover-up. Now, that may sound terribly dramatic to my viewers, but the shoe sort of fits. Let me just run down a few examples here. Nowadays, it is widely known that Daito-ryu is the predecessor art of Aikido, but few modern Aikido people have been around long enough to remember the Aikikai's campaign to diminish Daito-ryu's importance. Takeda Sokaku, Daito-ryu's founder, was often a mere footnote in official histories in the decades immediately after the war. The Aikikai even went so far as to edit things out in photos that went into newspapers so as to obfuscate Ueshiba's connections to Daito-ryu. Takeda Sokaku wasn't even the only victim of this campaign. Ueshiba's own nephew, Noriaki Inoue, often credited as co-founding Aikido, is completely erased from Aikido canon. It was likely Noriaki and his family were the ones that funded Ueshiba's early martial arts career and perhaps even introduced him to the Omoto-kyo religion. The aforementioned Mochizuki and Nakakura, the latter of whom even married Ueshiba's daughter, were also both curiously missing in official retellings and biographies. Other students, after a break with the Aikikai, also get written out. Tomiki Kenji and Shioda Gozo, for example, are among their number. Naturally, Ueshiba's right-wing connections are never even hinted at in these officially approved histories either. This was clearly a purposeful operation to wipe Aikido's slate clean and craft it into a more palatable brand. In fairness, Aikido is hardly the only art to have ever done narrative control like this. It's actually very common. The aforementioned Daito-ryu is rife with myths and its founding narrative is very difficult to believe. I won't spend too much time here unraveling it, but consider that Daito-ryu claims it was founded some 400 years before the next oldest confirmed martial arts school in Japan. In reality, Daito-ryu seems to have been entirely the invention of Takeda Soukaku. Similarly, UFC1 was in many ways just an advertisement for BJJ and could also be seen as a form of narrative control by a style for larger marketing purposes. Going even further back, the Gracie's Dojo storming random places with a camera in tow, completely unannounced, is a similar tactic in narrative control. Of course they're going to beat those guys, not just because BJJ is legitimate, but because they didn't even know that they were going to have a competitive match that day. It was hardly a fair setup. And while I cannot definitively prove that Judo used similar tactics, I do feel it is a little suspicious that the police tournament that really launched Judo into the stratosphere is related to us primarily through the Judo perspective. Documents that cover that day have never seemed to materialize out of any archives as far as I know. This very well could just be a coincidence, or maybe the records were destroyed or otherwise lost, but it is something I think about from time to time and I do think Kano probably partook in some narrative control over his system. Again, this is a very common thing. I'm not trying to paint it as good or bad, just that there are clumsy ways to do it and perhaps slightly more correct ways to do it, even if it comes across today as a little bit ethically dubious. Returning to Aikido, I'd also like to point out here that the casting out of the talented teachers like Kenji Tomiki, Shioda Gozo, and the like, to me, was probably the singular greatest error of post-war Aikido. After the war, Aikido had this prime opportunity to actually be the thing it advertised it was, a philosophy of peace and cooperation. Yet, ironically and tragically, we saw it look at some of its brightest practitioners and label them as too different. I'm sure the animosity in many of these cases was indeed a two-way street. Having said that, surely there was a way for the Aikikai to approach these decorated Aikido experts and say, look, you want to do things your way, and while we might not do it that way at the headquarters dojo, we still want you with us because we value your perspective. How can we organize it in such a way that you can stay with the organization but still pursue your brand of Aikido? And if the individual still cut ties after that olive branch being extended, then of course it would be wholly on them. But broadly speaking, I don't think this seems to be what happened in most cases. These people seemed like they were told to toe the line or hit the road. While I understand following the doctrine of the head of a style is considered traditional and accepted in Japanese martial arts, I believe Aikido was uniquely positioned to reject that trend on the basis of its ideological foundation in concepts like reconciliation, harmony, and cooperation, yet instead it chose excommunication, rivalry, and division, which from where I sit has always felt like a major betrayal of its core principles. Even with Aikido rebranding itself, it's still playing out its founding mistake as a traditionalist throwback by committing to these excommunications. The underlying message here is clear. Aikido is all for peace and cooperation, just so long as the right people are at the top in calling the shots. And like I mentioned in the previous part, this does parallel nationalist sentiments of Imperial Japan as well, which styled itself as a stabilizing, peacekeeping force while setting up a so-called co-prosperity sphere in East Asia. The fine print, of course, was that peace was for all so long as the right people, Japan in this case, were at the top in calling the shots. A further irony here is that the Aikikai's campaign of narrative control was largely a reaction to the early success of the Yoshinkan Aikido system. Rather than reach out to Shioda and the Yoshinkan to figure out a mutually beneficial compromise that respected the agency of both the Aikikai and Yoshinkan, the Aikikai was clearly threatened by Shioda's rise, so threatened in fact that their early demonstrations were formulated as a direct reaction to Yoshinkan demonstrations. The Aikikai, which brands Aikido as an art that supposedly rejects competition here, has the first inclination to try and out-compete the Yoshinkan instead of reconciling or compromising with them. Now, keep in mind that Ueshiba's supposed no-competition philosophy is actually pretty overstated these days. He actually said very little about competition in the grand scheme of things, and what he did say wasn't even unique to Aikido. Both Judo and Karate's founders basically were both in the same camp and weren't all that fond of competition, at least for its own sake. I think Kano was smart enough to recognize, however, that it was sort of a necessary evil because if he banned competition, students would just find their own way to compete in private. Put a pin in that too for a second, I'll come back to it very quickly. The point here is that Ueshiba didn't say much about competition, and what he did say wasn't an Aikido-specific trend. If anything, there is a body of circumstantial evidence that suggests Ueshiba was actually concerned about Aikido's clout in the competitive sphere. From developing techniques to counter-Judo to tolerating Tamiki's interpretation of his art, the competitive approach to Aikido appears to have only been formally disavowed after Ueshiba was more or less out of the picture. A recent post made on the Sangenkai Facebook page shows Saito Morihiro writing that Ueshiba would secretly teach kaishu-waza to top students with shiai in mind, a word used specifically for competitive sports matches. Meanwhile, early students such as Kuroiwa clearly cared about the competitive dimension. Kuroiwa famously developed his hip throw to drop people directly on their heads, something developed to navigate potential dojo-storming scenarios. Therefore, while the whole Budo movement more or less preached that martial arts were not for competition, that premise has clearly failed. Even in its own time, it proved a very difficult ideal to maintain. On that note, let's come back to that point about students finding a way to compete anyway in private. Even if someone like Kano didn't necessarily like sportified competition, there was an insightful recognition that if he failed to implement a competitive format, his students would find their own way in secret or informally to test themselves against one another. Which ultimately meant the direction of the art would have been outside of the founder's purview. And for the record, I do think Kano understood the value of competition in marketing well, too. Again, look at the core events that led to Judo's popularization. Kano artfully made martial arts fit into the cultural paradigm contemporary to him, but also made sure his art was constantly winning, at least more than it lost, in bouts. Yoshinkan Aikido, on the other hand, follows a fairly Aikikai-like philosophy which tends to reject competition. However, some Yoshinkan lines out there do do demonstration competitions. The Aikikai itself, while it doesn't have official competitions, I would argue still has soft competitions. As I've pointed out previously in my Aikido and Aestheticization video, really the Aikikai competes through demonstration and aesthetics. No, they are not awarded points or medals, but they do gain reputation and advertise their schools through these public showings. Maybe if you wanted a metric, you could go look up some of the annual Aikikai demonstration videos and see which ones have the most views. Shirakawa Yuji comes to mind as someone who's sort of winning the popularity contest. What I'm getting at here is that pretty much every major Aikido dojo competes in some way. Competition, or the desire for it, is simply an inevitability of the martial arts space, especially where young people are concerned. Sit a group of them in a room and competition tends to organically arise on its own. And also, you know, keep in mind that most of martial arts is made up of young people. It is a very young hobby, so of course competition follows naturally. The question is whether you want to consciously direct that energy or not. In the Aikikai's case, they opted not to. The result is now a system where de facto competition happens at aesthetics-based demonstrations and therefore demonstration is what students are incentivized to train for. The post-war ideology of non-competition has not only been heavily contradicted by Aikido's organizations and actions and dealings, but in my view has outright failed just across the board more generally. Nor is this even going into the issue where some dojos have a very insular, almost incestuous tendency to claim that their specific approach is quote-unquote most correct and therefore better than their peers. It isn't too difficult to find stories among some dejected Aikido people about how they have been berated from time to time about a foot being slightly off angle or somehow they're moving too forcefully. While quality standards are indeed important, many Aikido schools are puritan along very semantic lines, which again feels like it spits in the face of this style being about harmony, cooperation, and so on and so forth. This style, more than any other Budo, I feel is the most ideologically positioned to be a very creative and open project. In practice, it somehow manages to be even more calcified and closed off than many of its peers. The tendrils of Aikido's post-war narrative reconstruction did not remain confined to Japan. It really began to take off on the American mainland in the years after the war during the era of Woodstock and free love. I've not really seen this connection too deeply explored anywhere else to my knowledge, but I've long suspected this combination is no coincidence. Remember, this was also a time when East Asian philosophy was broadly being romanticized and perhaps we might say fetishized in general by Americans. Inside the new artificial canon that the Aikikai had crafted, a young generation of Westerners found a supposedly peace-loving philosophy that felt vaguely like a path to save the world and towards utopianism. It was this interaction, in my opinion, that transformed the lifestyle art that the Aikikai had curated into an almost new age religion for certain Western adherents. In the process, Ueshiba's casting as a saint-like figure reached its apotheosis, and his cult of personality went international. Some in my audience might wonder if Kishomaru's transformation of his father's rightist ideological Aikido was really such a bad thing, though. After all, even if it isn't historically rooted in pacifism, if it is now actually about such values, can't the overreach of the Aikikai's narrative control be at least somewhat forgiven? In 2023, the 61st All-Japan Aikido Demonstration was opened by one Yamatani Eriko. She is openly connected with the Nippon Kaigi, an organization and lobby that is deeply revisionist. It advocates abolishing gender equality laws, decreasing the separation of state and religion, monarchism, increased militarism, and the denial of comfort women alongside such things as the characterization of historical Japanese imperialism as liberation of East Asia from Western powers, and, of course, the all-time classic denial of the atrocities that took place in Nanjing. The point is that the Aikikai still, after all these years, seems to maintain deeply far-right, ultra-nationalist connections. And just for my American viewers who are probably desensitized to these kinds of terms due to our news cycle, I mean these guys are pretty much in the camp of restoring Imperial Japan straight up. They are very much the real deal in that sense, and openly so. I did not have to do some sort of journalistic deep dive to get this information. It's on their English-language Wikipedia page. I want everyone to keep in mind that Aikido is not filled to the brim with people who believe these things, though. Most practitioners, even in Japan proper, are likely completely oblivious to such questionable connections. They, too, are swept up in the veneer of Aikido as a peaceful project aimed at lifestyle enrichment. It seems to me that these types of relationships really only exist at the highest level, and even then, they tend to exist quietly. Finally, I feel a bit obligated to discuss where Aikido can go from here, because really, this was a single, long essay pointing out all the critical errors found in the art across its existence. I suspect some people might be ready to completely throw the art away at this point. What I want to focus on here is that the techniques in Aikido aren't unique to Aikido and still deserve to be experimented with. Personally, I'm not all that interested in being part of the big organizations and politics anymore. While I mostly discuss the Aikikai in this video, really every Aikido style has this traditionalist impulse that it can't quite seem to shake. Even if an organization doesn't come with all the ideological baggage, every style now very much wants to maintain its image. Sometimes that's through aesthetics, sometimes that's pedagogy, but either way, there's very little room for going on your own side quests in my experience. Broadly speaking, I think Aikido's critical failure is that it just doesn't speak to people well, even internally. Earlier, I mentioned that a fairly common criticism of my channel is that I really am just bringing research that has been out there for a very long time to YouTube. And this is true, but frankly, I think it's clearly necessary. The research arm of martial arts is fairly fresh in a broad sense. Only recently have martial arts academic journals begun to pop up and be taken somewhat seriously. But even beyond that, if this research were truly so accessible and broadly understood, we'd see the history be better understood in Aikido dojos. And as a result, we would see Aikido have to come to terms with the fact that its approach to marketing itself has largely been a failure. The whole peace and anti-competition bit seems to have been entirely fabricated. The campaign against competition has largely failed, and there isn't really a strong correlation between why these specific techniques in Aikido manifest those specific ideals to begin with. Judo broadly preaches the same sorts of things, martial arts as an education, mutual benefit and prosperity, and, at least historically, a quiet disdain if not begrudging acceptance of competition. Beyond that, Judo also advertises similar technical qualities, such as technique overcoming strength, to name one. Judo is an international success, and despite its many issues, it maintains its place as one of the world's premier grappling systems. Aikido, meanwhile, is just barely limping along and does not seem to be improving. I see more Aikido people scoff and make excuses for this state of affairs relative to Judo than genuinely interrogating themselves on why Judo has been so successful, whereas Aikido has not been. The future of Aikido, in my opinion, is first and foremost about getting the research out of academic papers, blogs, and closed group pages and into the hands of everyday Aikido practitioners. We still need the researchers and the like, don't get me wrong, but all that work won't mean much unless it's actually incorporated into Aikido culture more generally, and this extends outside of the art as well. I am thrilled to report that I'm in touch with people all over the globe at this point through this channel, not something I set out to do or expected, but something that has been achieved somehow. Many of these people do not do Aikido either, but many have seen my little hobby side project here and have either been inspired to play with Aikido ideas or techniques or at least have come to understand the art better than just the cultural punchline that it often is. I love getting comments from Aikido people, don't get me wrong, but I really get excited to see comments from people who are like, I've never done Aikido in my life and I'm really not all that interested, but this was interesting and I learned something. In essence, I'm saying step one is Aikido needs to incorporate this knowledge that is so freely available out on these research pages and in books into its mainstream discourse and narrative. Step two is building a better marketing arm, which I know some martial arts people detest, but let's just be realistic, every successful martial art markets itself. Aikido has just historically done it rather poorly because it's basically an art designed with the imperial Japanese context as a starting point. People like underdog stories. I was just watching a Martial Geeks video, link in the description, a few days back and one of his commenters was like, holy crap, you got Kota Geish to work in sparring. As much as people like a dead horse to beat on the internet, a surprising amount of people, I think, want Aikido techniques to be effective, and why wouldn't they? It's just more options for them. In the same vein though, whatever narrative Aikido might craft for itself, it needs to approach it honestly. I personally have zero qualms for aesthetics-based cooperative demonstration Aikido. I'd teach that class alongside the martial stuff because, frankly, I think it's fun, but it would be clearly labeled Aikido Demonstration Class. As I age, I certainly am more interested in the physical culture side of Aikido and martial arts more generally, and making sure that my quality of life remains high into older age. I like sparring, still, very much, but I also want to be doing this forever, ideally. Aikido can actually have its cake and eat it, too, here. Plenty of people would join up and go to great lengths just to do cool-looking things. What are skills-based calisthenics or gymnastics, if not fitness for the sake of doing really cool-looking stuff? There is a market for that, just as much as there is a market for combat sports. Finally, Aikido needs to introspect and ask itself what it can deliver to people today that other arts don't. What is going to get people into Aikido dojos when a Muay Thai place or BJJ place is right next door? Historically, I think the answer to this has been Aikido's ideology, but again, no one is biting on that line anymore. Ironically, I think framing competition against other martial arts is probably the wrong route. Maybe a better question is why aren't more Aikidoka engaging with broader martial arts in the landscape? Where are all the Mochizukis or Kuroiwa types these days who aren't just Aikidoka, but Karateka and Judoka and Boxers and whatever else? It might be useful if Aikidoka could actually sit down and have a meaningful conversation with other people in their own gyms about martial arts, because right now, Aikido people do not usually get thought of as being normal, but instead ideologues and cultists. Also, I know that some Aikido people will scream at the sky and say the world is wrong and that they just don't understand Aikido, but you know, that's a very, very juvenile way to approach your marketing strategy. At the risk of repeating myself, I really want to hammer home that Aikido people must do a better job at presenting themselves to the space. Aikido is an art largely viewed as filled with ideologues, cultists, and just delusional people, and the fact of the matter is that there are shreds of truth in that. I hate to say it, but it just is. Aikido does tend to be closed off and Puritan. We still have people out there who genuinely believe Ueshiba was a warrior saint, despite the research that proves otherwise being a Google search and about 10 minutes away. The heart of the matter is that I cannot tell you what the future of Aikido is. What I am confident in predicting, however, is that on its current path, it will continue to age out and contract into a very niche art for very, very niche people. To course correct, Aikido needs to be more open and more honest with itself, both intellectually and practically. I'm not arguing we dismiss tradition. In fact, my own view is that severing our connection to tradition would be a mistake. But we also have to reconcile with the reality that our traditions are not these snow-white, triumphal things. Aikido's mired in ideas and circumstances that don't serve modern people. Arguably, they didn't even serve past people all that well. So, I'll conclude with the same questions as before. In 2025 and beyond, what can Aikido deliver to people that other martial arts do not? Why choose Aikido? And when you answer that, how are you going to communicate the value of that special thing to people both inside and outside the art? Because as useful as the research circles have been for those of us already deeply invested, Aikido has certainly not taken these findings to heart more popularly. The state of affairs I see among many Aikido people is to just keep doing the same thing we always have been. And clearly, that just fails. Anyway, thank you all for listening. This was a behemoth project to get out. So, I appreciate your being here and making it to the end. As always, this channel isn't possible without you, the viewer. So, I am genuinely grateful for your attention and your interactions. And I will see you all in the next one. Peace.