Regarding
@O'Malley I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that Ueshiba had no formal training outside of Daito-Ryu or that he wasn't a pacifist after the war and that his son made all the changes to the system. Here's a late interview with him where he very clearly lays out a much more extensive background in Budo, to include the Kendo you said he didn't know and where he very clearly expresses his reformed pacifist philosophy for Aikido.
Interview with Morihei Ueshiba and Kisshomaru Ueshiba – Aikido Journal take specific note of the last question, where he specifically references the atomic bomb and a need for an end to war.
Ueshiba was an extreme nationalist and the defeat of Imperial Japan and the surrender created a total paradigm shift within him, as it did in much of Japanese society. As far as Aikido being a finishing school for more advanced Budo practitioners, its what the Japanese Army hired him for and what he was doing in Manchuria throughout the war, studying with Ueshiba required being referred from other teachers for a long time and his son is credited as being the one to truly open the martial art up to the world, although Ueshiba shared the same mindset as part of his post war paradigm shift. The same thing is listed under the IMAF description of Aikido
:: Aikido ::
For the hand technique or "Aikido chop"
@JowGaWolf - I'm sorry if I have not been clearer in my description, Aikido teaches the idea of tegatana, literally, "hand swords" and emphasizes knife hand techniques. Aikido techniques come from sword fighting and the idea of tegatana comes from this idea of using the knife hand as a kind of "spirit sword".
There's a very rigid posture to the hand and exacting instructions on using it to focus ki and how to block and strike/ etc. Here is a detailed explanation from Kenji Tomiki and its the best one I can easily find.
The Three and Six – TOMIKI AIKIDO
I may be getting the entire principle wrong but I have always taught the traditional ideas and then told students to dismiss the rigid knife hands and to adopt a more relaxed flow with the hands, similar to the open hands in Kali. This both promotes easier grabbing/grappling it also allows you to use more striking parts of the hand such as the palm or to turn the strike from a knife hand "chop" into a flowing ridge hand over an opponents guard. I try to stress that the tegatana is primarily to intercept the opponents line, not as the classical ki strike karate chop. This is why I link the aikidoflow videos, because he has adopted what looks like the same method, instead of staying with the classical, rigid chopping that you keep seeing. This may be total Aikido heresy, but it has been what I have found works the best when attempting to apply Aikido techniques against resistance and I stay away from teaching martial arts esotericism albeit some is necessary to understand the principles Aikido is teaching. Maybe the old masters really could karate chop the hell out of everyone, in my experience, it screws up and slows down the practitioner, adds rigidity instead of a flowing harmony to the application of techniques and just doesn't work in the way people are trying to use it.
For the stances, the ready stance and receiving posture are similar to sword fighting stances because you are attempting to maintain distance and then intercept the opponents line of attack, as in Japanese sword fighting. Here's an ok description of the actual footwork/stance as its traditionally taught
Katsujinken Dojo: Basic Aikido-Stance and Movements
There are many arguments on posture, positioning, etc, I don't think it matters as much as people put into it, the hanmi is supposed to be evocative of a student holding a sword. This may get into the region I said before of me just being a total heretic regarding the use of the tegatana concept, but I have always taught this as a "receiving" posture and in practice, my actual stance in a fight tends to at least begin simply with the bladed stance towards the opponent and the hands and arms in a loose receiving posture that looks more like the "hey I don't want any trouble" gesture. The deception is on purpose because I can easily transition through this as I would the more rigid Hanmi used in the dojo while presenting a less threatening or aggressive posture.
Notice he stays relaxed and emphasizes a relaxation of the stance and hands to aid the movement and technique. In my opinion, this is someone who understands how to apply the techniques through an opponents resistance, where what you are seeing is the dojo method that stresses perfect posture/rigidity and positioning and is not true "budo" but a more stylized form just like we see in many other Japanese fighting arts where the demonstration of a technique doesn't convey a practical application.
I am dismissive of Ueshiba's post war pacifism as well as the "peace and love" Aikido community because this total reconstruction both hides the true gift of the art form itself as well as promotes all the esoteric and just imaginary nonsense that has gotten us to this discussion in the first place. I almost feel like a part of Ueshiba wanted to leave the world with his creation but to bury the core of his art behind the fluff he was posturing post war. The Japanese Koryu themselves have had an ongoing problem with being watered down, turned into sport and otherwise morphed into something they are not since the end of the warring states period. Aikido suffers from the "cultural icon / art" decay as well as the strong post war re-write which has made it a favorite of hucksters, hippies and snake oil salesman since it hit western shores during the karate boom.
Despite all of the problems with the "art" as a whole, I don't think its any worse or better off than most other schools and traditions. My first Karate instructor growing up tried to say her red belt kata was based on ripping open someone's ribcage and tearing out their heart with your bare hands, even the pre-teen me called bullshido on that particular claim. Its easy to simply point at Aikido and to just laugh because there is a lot of ammo that's accumulated over the years. I simply contend that its no different to all the fake and bad McDojo's we have seen and the art itself is sound for what it is teaching, "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age" to misquote old Ben Kenobi.
I also don't think that Aikido has truly had its day in the sun yet, as many other martial arts have not, simply due to the way the Eastern martial arts entered popular culture in the last century and the way that the UFC and BJJ rode that wave into a temporary monopoly. Thankfully the more blind/dogmatic devotion to BJJ seems to be leaving the conversation in favor of a pragmatic "train what works" approach. This mindset of training against resistance and focusing on what works has the potential to weed out enough clutter within the community to really give us that next level of development and blending of styles/techniques and philosophies that could create some really exciting stuff in the years to come.
