Morihei Ueshiba, the Founder of Aikido

The phenomenon known as Aikido originated with Morihei Ueshiba, an extraordinarily skilled and profoundly spiritual master born in Japan in 1883. Morihei, commonly referred to as O-Sensei (Great Teacher) by Aikido students, grew up in Tanabe City. Tanabe, located in Wakayama Prefecture, is about two hundred miles south of Osaka, situated along the Pacific Ocean and bordering the mountain mandala of Kumano. Kumano is believed to be the sacred space where the Shinto gods first touched the earth; it is also the site of Mount Koya, the citadel of Shingon Buddhism founded by the wonder-worker Kukai in the ninth century. The mountains, forests, streams, waterfalls, caverns, craggy rocks, and shrines of Kumano seem to partake of a particular divinity, and Kumano is often described as not simply a place but a state of mind where "god and nature are one."

In addition to their piety, the people of Tanabe are characterized as hard working, stubborn, and possessed of explosive tempers, traits that Morihei displayed throughout his life. Although there were no samurai left in the region by the time of Morihei's birth, the Ueshiba clan had been warriors in the past, and many of Morihei's ancestors were renowned for their great physical strength. Morihei, though, was a bit small at birth and rather sickly as a child. The only boy in the household, Morihei was doted on by his parents and four sisters.

As he grew older, Morihei became more active and built up his body. Working on the local fishing boats, he learned to wield a harpoon, and he took up sumo wrestling. Morihei did a lot of hiking in the Kumano mountains as well, on occasion with the extra burden of an infirm pilgrim loaded on his back. Morihei was quick-witted and loved to read, but he did not like being cooped up in a classroom, so he left middle school in his first year. Even though he abandoned formal schooling, Morihei continued his studies of esoteric Buddhism at a local Shingon temple, memorizing the various rites and chants. Much of Morihei's early education consisted of learning from nature as he swam and fished in the ocean and trekked in the mountains; he later declared, "No matter where I am, part of me always remains absorbed in the sacred space of Kumano."

After mastering the soroban (abacus), Morihei secured a job as an accountant at the prefectural tax office. This work did not suit him (Morihei often sided with the taxpayers against the government), so, in 1901, Yoroku sent his eighteen-year-old son off to the great metropolis of Tokyo, in hope that Morihei would establish himself in a suitable career. Morihei actually did quite well as a merchant in the capital, and he formally began the practice of several martial arts, but his heart was not in commerce, and soon he was back in Tanabe. In 1902, he married Hatsu Itogawa, a distant relative, and prepared to enlist in the army.

As soon as Japan began to modernize, the new Meiji government got entangled in the various "great games" being played out in that part of the globe. The major European countries, the United States, China, and then upstart Japan were all vying for power in Asia. The Japanese fought a war with China in 1894-1895 and surprised everyone, including themselves, by winning. When Morihei returned to Tanabe, Japan was gearing up for war with Russia. Morihei flunked the initial physical exam because of his height: he was less than the required five feet, two inches tall. Mortified by this rejection, Morihei took to hanging from trees with heavy weights attached to his legs to stretch himself the necessary one-half inch.

Successful on his next physical, Morihei was assigned to a Wakayama infantry regiment. The competitive Morihei relished the discipline of military life. Simply finishing at the head of a forced march was not good enough for Morihei—he had to accomplish that feat handicapped by the extra packs he had picked up from stragglers. During his military service, Morihei practiced more martial arts, becoming extremely proficient at sumo wrestling, bayonet and sword fighting.

After war with Russia broke out in 1904, Morihei was not sent to the front with the rest of his regiment. His father, Yoroku, who was a politician with certain connections, secretly requested that his only son be kept from the fighting. Morihei, however, insisted that he be sent overseas, and the young soldier was dispatched to the Manchurian front in 1905. It is not clear how much action Morihei saw in China; at any rate, he returned to Tanabe unscathed at the end of the war. Impressed by his enthusiasm, several of Morihei's superiors asked him to consider a career in the military. Morihei declined, for even at that young age, as he later recalled, "I instinctively felt that there was something terribly wrong about combat; there are no real winners in a war, there is only death and destruction."

After his discharge from the military, Morihei's life had no direction. He began to act strangely, shutting himself in his room for hours, disappearing in the woods for days, or standing on the beach baring himself to the full brunt of a typhoon. He dabbled in various martial arts during this period, and whenever there was rice-cake pounding (a communal event in Japanese villages), Morihei swung the heavy pestle with such manic fury that he shattered it. He did this so often that he was not allowed to participate anymore. To build up his strength, Morihei stacked his shoulder pole with four or five times the normal load, but by doing so he blocked the narrow roads of the village, creating another nuisance for his neighbors.

In 1909 the troubled Morihei came under the beneficial influence of Kumagusu Minakata (1867-1941). Like Morihei, Minakata had dropped out of school early, but he was among the first group of Japanese permitted to travel overseas. He attended college briefly in the United States, and then he again dropped out and took off to travel around the Americas and the West Indies. In 1892, Minakata settled in England, where he worked at the British Museum, mostly doing research in natural sciences. A self-taught polymath, Minakata learned English, French, Latin, Arabic, and Chinese, and over the years he published nearly three hundred articles in international scientific journals.

After eighteen years abroad, Minakata returned to Tanabe. The eccentric scholar Minakata teamed up with the energetic Morihei to spearhead what was likely modern Japan's first environmental protest movement. In 1906, the Meiji government promulgated the Edict on Shrine Amalgamation, a scheme that called for the consolidation of smaller local shrines with bigger national ones. Once that was accomplished, the government planned to appropriate the property of the local shrines, sell off the timber for a big profit, and "develop" the land. Minakata argued, correctly, that once the local shrines were razed and the woods cut down, there would be no place for birds to nest; pesky insects would increase, and farmers would have to resort to the use of costly and dangerous insecticides. Furthermore, watersheds would be destroyed, the bay would become polluted, and fishermen would lose their livelihoods.

In the end, Minakata and Morihei's protest movement proved effective, and Tanabe lost very few shrines. Morihei later remarked: "Minakata was a great man, and he taught me the importance of standing up for the rights of ordinary people and their land." And although he did not refer to himself as such, Morihei remained a keen environmentalist throughout his life.

Despite the success of the protest movement, the economy of Wakayama became more and more depressed—there was not enough land or work to support the second and third sons of local families. Morihei was eager to set out on a new course, so in 1912, staked by his father and another wealthy relative, Morihei headed up a group of eighty-four settlers who journeyed to Shirataki, deep in the heart of distant Hokkaido.

The settlers had to start from scratch in the Hokkaido wilderness, and Morihei was tireless in his promotion of the colony. He cleared the land, he lumbered, he constructed buildings, he grew crops, he raised hogs, he organized health and sanitation brigades, he served on the community council. Morihei continued to practice martial arts in Hokkaido, often engaging in impromptu sumo contests and other tests of strength. Morihei remained undefeated until he crossed paths with the legendary Sokaku Takeda (1859-1943).

Sokaku, described by Morihei as "the last of the oldtime warriors," loved battlefields. Born in Aizu, home of the fiercest warriors in Japan, Sokaku was taught to fight with his hands, a sword, and a spear by his severe samurai father from a very early age. As a child, Sokaku entertained himself by hiding in the bushes and watching the carnage that ensued as the die-hard Aizu clan loyalists battled the Imperial forces. After the Aizu clan was defeated, the young Sokaku took off and waged his own private war against the top martial artists and street fighters of Japan. He roamed as far south as Okinawa and as far north as Hokkaido, challenging every martial artist he encountered to a duel and taking on all comers in the streets, not infrequently with fatal results for his adversaries.

Sokaku paid a dear price for acquiring such fearsome prowess. Pursued by the friends and disciples of those he had killed in combat, Sokaku's life was in constant danger. When Sokaku saw another human being, he saw the threat of imminent death. After Sokaku's sword was taken away from him by the authorities (he had cut down a number of construction workers in a melee), Sokaku armed himself with a walking stick containing a hidden blade, and he concealed an unsheathed knife in his kimono. Every time he left home, he warned his family, "Don't expect me back." Sokaku would not enter a building, even his own house, without first calling out and waiting until someone he recognized appeared to escort him in, and he would not take any food or drink until someone else had tested it first to ensure that it had not been poisoned. Sokaku slept with a knife and iron fan, and he shifted his bedding several times a night to confuse would-be attackers. When he did sleep, he often cried out in terror, haunted by the faces of the people he had slain.

Given his reputation as a peerless martial artist, Sokaku was in great demand as an instructor to the military and to the police. The Hokkaido frontier was overrun with outlaws, and Sokaku had been summoned there to help police establish law and order in the volatile province. At the time, Sokaku was teaching what he called Daito-Ryu Aiki Jujutsu. In March 1915, after being handled with ease by Sokaku, Morihei enrolled in a ten-day Daito-Ryu training course that Sokaku was teaching at an inn in Engaru, and then he immediately signed up for another ten-day session. Morihei spent the next four years under Sokaku's unremittingly severe tutelage.

Morihei once said, "I practiced over thirty martial arts—most for less than three months!" That is, he was able to master most techniques very quickly. Daito-Ryu Aiki Jujutsu was the discipline Morihei studied the longest, and that art had the greatest influence on the technical development of Aikido.

However, Morihei's quest was always primarily spiritual rather than martial, and although he gained much from Sokaku, he was still searching for something deeper than expert technique and devastating power. In December 1919, when a telegram arrived informing Morihei of his father's grave illness back in Tanabe, he turned over his property to Sokaku and left Hokkaido for good.

Instead of heading directly back to Tanabe, Morihei, for some reason, detoured to Ayabe, headquarters of the Omoto-kyo sect. There he encountered the grand shaman Onisaburo Deguchi (1871-1947), and Morihei's life took another dramatic turn. Morihei was enthralled by the cosmic theology espoused by Onisaburo, who emphasized the innate divinity of each and every human being; Onisaburo, in turn, immediately recognized Morihei's sincerity and tremendous potential.

Morihei lingered on in Ayabe for several days, and by the time he arrived back in Tanabe, his father had died (as Onisaburo had prophesied). Despite the fierce opposition of his mother and his wife (Morihei and his wife had two small children, a girl and a boy, and she was expecting a third), Morihei moved to Ayabe and joined Omoto-kyo.

At Ayabe, Morihei practiced Omoto-kyo meditation techniques, learned kototama chanting, and studied poetry and calligraphy—a cardinal tenet of Omoto-kyo is that "art equals religion." Morihei was put in charge of the compound's extensive organic gardens—care of the environment and the growing of healthy, pesticide-free food was another essential tenet of Omoto-kyo. A small dojo (training hall) was built for him to teach martial arts to Omoto-kyo followers, a group that included many senior military officers, mostly navy men. The first year in Ayabe was a great trial for Morihei; his second son was born in April 1920, but he lost both boys to illness later that year. Fortunately, in 1921 his wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Kisshomaru, who was Morihei's sole surviving son.

Sokaku turned up in Ayabe in the spring of 1922. Whether Sokaku was invited by Morihei or showed up on his own accord is a matter of contention. Onisaburo did not hide his disapproval of Sokaku: "This man reeks of blood and violence," he said. The Omoto-kyo people were greatly relieved when Sokaku finally left the Ayabe compound six months later. Although Sokaku and Morihei met several times over the ensuing years, Morihei gradually distanced himself from Sokaku, and he began to modify substantially the techniques he had learned from the Daito Ryu grandmaster.

Perhaps the turning point of Morihei's career as a martial artist was his quixotic trip in 1924 to Mongolia with Onisaburo in search of Shambhala, the fabled kingdom of heaven on earth. For much of the five-month adventure, Morihei was face to face with death, battling bandits, renegade soldiers, and the Chinese army. Onisaburo, Morihei, and the rest of their party were eventually placed in detention by the Chinese military and narrowly escaped summary execution. Released into the custody of the Japanese consul, the party returned safely to Japan in July of 1924.

Once back in Ayabe, Morihei resumed his training with an intensity that both amazed and alarmed his friends and students. Energy seemed to swirl about him; doors and windows would rattle when he entered a room. He trained outdoors in the woods almost every night, and he also disappeared for a time in the mountains of Kumano. One spring day in 1925, the forty-two-year-old Morihei was challenged to a fight by a navy officer visiting Ayabe. The officer, armed with a wooden sword, was unable to touch Morihei. After the officer conceded defeat, Morihei went into his garden to douse his face with cold water from the well. Suddenly, Morihei felt enveloped by golden light: "I saw the divine," he later recalled. "All at once I understood the nature of creation: the way of a warrior is to manifest divine love, a spirit that embraces and nurtures all things."

After this transforming experience, Morihei manifested superhuman, even miraculous, powers. In addition to such uncanny feats as felling ten men with a single shout and scoring a hole in one the first and only time he swung a golf club, Morihei demonstrated the incredible ability to dodge bullets—he faced off against a military firing squad (twice!), and they were not able to hit him. As well as enabling him to anticipate any kind of attack, Morihei's clairvoyance had practical application as well. Once, for example, in the middle of a training session, he suddenly told one of disciples, "There is a gentleman dressed in a black kimono wandering around trying to find this place. Go and fetch him here." The disciple went outside and soon discovered a gentleman in a black kimono. "Excuse me," the man said. "I'm trying to locate the Ueshiba Dojo . . ."

Not surprisingly, word quickly spread of the "martial art wizard," and all manner of fighters came to test Morihei for themselves. Morihei sent every single challenger flying, and by the time he opened his Kobukan Dojo in 1931 in Tokyo, he had acquired a large following of fervent supporters, consisting mainly of the nation's military and political elite. His personal students (including several women), selected after careful screening, were the cream of the crop. During this period Morihei's art was usually referred to as Aiki-Budo.

Although Morihei had largely separated himself from the Omoto-kyo organization (with Onisaburo's blessing: "Your mission is to teach the real way of the warrior to the world," Onisaburo told Morihei), in 1935 he was implicated in the second Omoto-kyo incident. (Onisaburo had been arrested once before in 1921.) The increasingly repressive authorities were suspicious of Onisaburo's anticapitalist, pacifist, and anti-imperialist stance (Omoto-kyo envisioned an egalitarian society free of emperors and government), and they arrested him and the rest of the Omoto-kyo leadership on the charge of lese-majeste. The Omoto-kyo compound in Ayabe was razed and the organization banned. A warrant was issued for Morihei as well, but he was shielded from arrest by several of his disciples in the police agency. Nevertheless, Morihei was interrogated, and it appears he was under house arrest for a brief period.

After lying low for a while, Morihei resumed his position as senior instructor to the main military academies in Tokyo and Osaka. Morihei was, in fact, one of the most important and influential people in Japan at that time. He was, in effect, the government's minister of Budo (martial arts). A hand-drawn instruction manual called Budo Renshu was privately circulated in 1933, an extraordinary film documentary (in which Morihei throws wave after wave of attackers) shot in Osaka in 1935, and another technical manual, Budo, containing professional photographs of Morihei demonstrating Aiki-Budo techniques, was published in 1938. In addition, Morihei also posed for three thousand technical photographs taken at the Noma Dojo (operated by Seiji Noma, president of Japan's largest publishing house, Kodansha) in 1936.

Fighting with China broke out in 1937, and Japan began its headlong descent into the hell of World War II. Morihei remained in active government service during the initial years of the war, but he became deeply disturbed by the increasing brutality and senselessness of the fighting. One military man who studied with Morihei declared, "If we had really understood what Morihei was teaching us about entering and becoming one with an enemy, we would have never gotten involved in such a stupid war!" In 1942, Morihei resigned all his official positions, pleading serious illness, and he withdrew to his farm in Iwama, located about two hours from Tokyo, where he and his wife lived in a little hut. Morihei cut all his ties to the world and devoted himself to the spiritual discipline he now called Aikido.

In 1945, the war came to its disastrous conclusion, and Japan lay in ruins. Morihei, though, was optimistic. "Even if a country is defeated and its cities and industries destroyed," he told his few remaining students, "it still has its mountains and rivers." In other words, as long as the land remains intact, people can draw on their natural inner resources and recover from even the worst defeat. Morihei was confident that Aikido—"divine techniques that do not kill"—would play an essential role in Japan's recovery and in the emerging world civilization.

Aikido and all the other martial arts (with the exception of Karate) were banned by the U.S. occupation authorities. Even if those arts had not been prohibited, in the aftermath of war there would have been very few trainees anyway, because everyone was too busy trying to survive and too hungry to expend precious energy moving around. Hidden in the countryside, Morihei did, however, manage to have a small group of disciples live and quietly train with him in Iwama in the immediate postwar years. Morihei's daily schedule in Iwama in those years was nearly ideal:

6:00 A.M.: Morning prayers and meditation in front of the outdoor Aiki Shrine.

7:00-9:00 A.M. Aikido training followed by a simple breakfast.

9:00 A.M.-noon: Farmwork.

12:00 A.M.-2:00 P.M.: Midday break for lunch and rest.

2:00-4:00 P.M.: Farmwork.

4:00-6:00 P.M.: Aikido training.

6:00-7:00 P.M.: Bath.

7:00-8:30 P.M.: Evening prayers and meditation, followed by dinner.

8:30-9:30 P.M.: Students would massage Morihei's shoulders and legs, read to him, and chat with him before he retired for the evening.

Aikido training resumed in earnest in Tokyo around 1950, and over the following two decades the practice of Aikido spread rapidly both in Japan and abroad. Under the direction of Morihei's son and eventual successor, Kisshomaru, branch dojo were quickly established over much of Japan. A number of Japanese instructors traveled overseas, some settling permanently, introducing Aikido to the world at large. Foreign trainees also came to Japan to study, and when they returned home to their native countries to open their own dojo, the Aikido network expanded further. (There were some foreign trainees in the prewar period as well, mostly Italians, some Germans, and one or two professional American wrestlers, but their study was of short duration.)

In 1958, Morihei appeared in an episode of the U.S. television documentary series "Rendezvous with Adventure," and he was the star of a documentary film produced by a Japanese TV network in 1961.

In his final years, Morihei spent much of his time in prayer, meditation, and study, but he also traveled extensively (including a trip to Hawaii in 1961), deeply impressing a new crop of students with dazzling displays of Aikido techniques and totally confounding them with his mysterious explanations of the secrets of the art. Even D. T. Suzuki, the great Zen scholar, confessed after hearing Morihei talk, "You know, I couldn't follow a thing you said."

True, Morihei spoke in a kind of "twilight language" that was deliberately obscure, but when his students complained that his style of speech was too old-fashioned for them to understand, Morihei would reply with a chuckle, "No, no, what I am saying is the very latest." Indeed, Morihei's teachings focused on all the concerns of today's New Age: the necessity of unifying mind and body; conflict resolution instead of confrontation; everyday life as an act of worship, as a celebration; maintenance of a healthy lifestyle; the importance of regular meditation; and concern for and care of the environment.

Morihei's health gradually declined, and in 1968 he began to suffer from liver cancer. Even on his deathbed, though, he was able to demonstrate miraculous power if someone treated him like a sick old man. Once he sent four attendants flying when they persisted in trying to assist when he did not need their help. Morihei died on April 26, 1969, at age 86. Among his final words was the declaration, "Aikido is for the entire world."

Although Aikido originated in Japan, it is now an integral part of world culture, practiced by people of many different nationalities in all parts of the globe. Morihei remains a living presence in most training halls, and his example continues to inspire each new generation of Aikido students.