Zitat von Peter Goldsbury
So I think that Kisshomaru Ueshiba also taught and demonstrated'kihon waza', but he was very conscious, and so is the present Doshu, that such waza are only a small part of the total art. It seems to me that there is a wide division between what is taught "officially" in Hombu and what is taught elsewhere, including Iwama and local dojos like here in Hiroshima. When I arrived here, I was surprised to find very interesting wazas that I had not seen before and sometimes I would discuss this with the biggest yudansha here: at some point in the discussion I usually mentioned Daito-ryu, the Takumakai, and what Morihei Ueshiba taught in Osaka...
I asked the Doshu and other masters of Hombu if Morihei Ueshiba did IP (internal power) training and the answer was yes, but he never taught it : he left this type of training to the students who perceived it and wanted to do it. The corollary was (is) that this type of training must be a complement to the formation of one's "kihon", but not a substitute for it.
In Hidden in Plain Sight, Ellis Amdur discusses the issue of reducing the large number of waza found in Daito-ryu. The accepted tradition is that Kisshomaru did this, but Ellis claims that Morihei himself did it (ch. 14. "Aikido is 3 peaches"). Thus, one might conclude that Morihei Ueshiba did this as part of his religious mission to bring the three worlds into harmony, but that Kisshomaru, who gave little thought to such religious theories, accepted the reduction because it made aikido much more accessible to a large number of people and thus ensured their survival.
The problem with keeping aikido "pure" is that it automatically creates a dialectical conflict between what is "pure" and everything else, and I have spent some effort holding elsewhere that neither Morihei Ueshiba nor his spiritual master Onisaburo Deguchi saw the world in such terms.