The Irony of Aikido

I have to write about aikido today, mostly because I passed my black belt test yesterday, and I now have an excuse to puff myself up.

I am 55 years old, so it became a race to see whether I would reach this goal I’d set for myself or whether it would be time to start thinking about a walker. My knees, for one thing, aren’t quite as spry as they used to be, although I will be the first to deny that.

Aikido is unique as a martial art in many ways. To the casual observer, it displays movements resembling the throws in judo (although actually much different) and the joint locks and pins of jujitsu. It has many similarities to the capture techniques of chin na from the Chinese tradition.

It’s Japanese in origin, founded by Morihei Ueshiba, known as O Sensei, Great Teacher, to everyone in aikido.  A phenomenal martial artist, he stood less than five feet high, and approached the martial arts as a deeply spiritual pursuit. He apparently first used the word ‘aikido’ to describe his art during the Second World War. In Japanese, ‘aikido’ means Way of Harmony.

It always sounds a little strange to those who don’t practice that any martial art could be considered a peaceful or harmonious pursuit. This is a paradox that draws people in: often young men, for example, full of ego and male competitiveness are matured into something else by the discipline and the example of their elders. This is not just aikido, of course, but applies to any serious martial art. One becomes drawn to the spirit of protection.

But aikido, especially, because of its non-competitive practice method and the martial rigor of its elder statesmen, leads to a sense of practice for its own sake. It’s good for you: it requires mental and physical alertness, the long-term practitioners are almost always fine people, and getting up quickly from flat on the mat to your feet hundreds of times in a training session provides surprising conditioning. The reason you’re prone on the mat of course is that you’ve been thrown or pinned there.

I’m a slow learner. I’ve practiced aikido off and on for about 15 years. Several times I stopped for school or work reasons for years at a time. I came to it after studying tai chi chuan as a martial art (not as a charming form of oriental dance) for quite a few years, and which I still practice (I love ‘push hands’). And I still practice fencing of course, although never as seriously as the other two.

There are ironies here, for me, practicing aikido. I’m not terribly sympathetic, for one thing, to the conformity of the Japanese mind set. I’ve read in the history of Japanese politics and martial arts, the history of the samurai and the shogunate, and please believe me that most North Americans would find it barbaric and stifling in the extreme to live in those times. And this is the soil from which all the Japanese martial arts have grown. It is the source of their greatness.

There is a very hierarchical structure to a Japanese art such as aikido, with its grades and tests and constant bows of respect, which is in contrast to the more free form structure in much of tai chi chuan. In tai chi, I’ve never thought about belts.

The traditional Aikikai form of aikido I practice is still governed largely from Japan and uses exclusively Japanese nomenclature… I’ve had my internal struggles with the Japaneseness of it although I now appreciate, for instance, the precision of the technical vocabulary.

The biggest irony is that my father fought as a Marine in some of the toughest battles of the Second World War against the Japanese: Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and many other more nondescript Pacific islands. Surviving that, I think he always felt that the only true security rests in having a clear field of fire.

In our home growing up, we had the carbine he was issued during the war: he dismissed it as useless at stopping a man, and apparently while in service immediately replaced it with a more effective weapon. We had manuals and papers he took from Japanese he killed during many battles. Not only papers… we still have the samurai swords that he took as trophies of war from the Japanese officers who wore them as a mark of their rank.

He never liked to reminisce about the war and its cruelties and would rarely speak of it. He died at an age about 10 years younger than I am now. I often wonder what he would think about aikido. I wish he were here to talk to about it.

Getting a black belt in aikido is not such a big deal, although I’m proud today. It merely marks one as a beginner who may be starting to get the drift of it.

Explore posts in the same categories: Aikido, Martial arts