Not that it was "designed" to be ineffective. Ueshiba changed his focus after the war. Even if things weren't "removed", they weren't really taught/emphasized either. Thus, the general teaching idea of what most people view Aikido as today.
Three points are getting mixed here. 1) What Ueshiba taught; 2) what his successors taught; 3) what people view as "aikido" today.
I was originally discussing the claim that "Ueshiba himself changed the techniques to fall in line with his philosophy in the creation of Aikido. Look at his earlier art before he called it Aikido, it was VERY different. So, while you might not learn his philosophy separately, the ideas are imbedded into the overall philosophy and technique execution itself."
So this is about Ueshiba, not whatever later generations have been teaching, which can differ wildly.
Never claimed that Ueshiba was a pacifist. But, you can't deny by reading his own writings that his view of "conflict" was to blend and harmonize with an attacker to avoid violence and resolve it.
On a political level, Ueshiba was actively involved in a terrorist organisation which attempted at least once to overthrow the government; he and his students provided shelter and personal protection to war criminals; and he taught in an ideological school directed by the Japanese equivalent of Joseph Goebbels.
On a technical level, here is his approach to physical conflict in his later years (1960s from the look of it):
I am not aware of Ueshiba mentioning "blending" as a technical concept. That came later.
It was this spiritual focus that put a different emphasis on the techniques.
Again, this has been debunked years ago based on historical research (as opposed to hearsay).
Morihiro Saito taught as he directly learned it from Ueshiba at the Iwama Dojo (also nicknamed the "Hell Dojo"). Saito was often accused of changing Aikido because his approach was much more "martial" in application and this was very different than what was being taught as a whole in Aikido. It wasn't until years later when books about Ueshiba's techniques started to be published (like Budo) that people saw that he was teaching it as he was taught.
IIRC the Hell Dojo was actually the name given to the Kobukan in Tokyo before the war.
Morihiro Saito learnt directly from Ueshiba in Iwama and lived with him as his attendant from 1946 to his death in 1969 (so post-War). "Budo" was written in 1938 (pre-War) and the technical instruction is indeed identical to what Saito learnt and taught. This is actually proof that Ueshiba taught the same things before and after the war. That topic is discussed in detail in Ellis Amdur's book "Hidden in Plain Sight" and in the following articles:
aikidojournal.com
Was Aikido the unique and original creation of Morihei Ueshiba? Or is there a greater debt owed to Sokaku Takeda and Daito-ryu Aiki-jujutsu?
www.aikidosangenkai.org
You claim that it's "basic stuff", but if you have been around Aikido for a long time (1990's or before) you would realize that this "basic stuff" was NOT a part of most schools Aikido training. It has been "rediscovered" or added back into the techniques BECAUSE it wasn't usually taught or emphasized in the majority of schools. Much like Karate "rediscovered" its applications in kata because they weren't generally taught. At the time, the "atemi" weren't taught as actual strikes when performed by Tori, they were "feints" to get a reaction from Uke and you weren't actually hitting them. The only real "strike training" done was to perform the attacks as Uke, but not on a real application of using them yourself and even at that the strikes were usually only the "sword based" motions.
So, to claim that "its always been there" is both correct and incorrect. Yep, was never formally removed. But, at the same time most didn't know about it because it wasn't taught. Also, read the interviews from early students. They often said that what Ueshiba said and taught was different that what he told them to do.
In Iwama aikido, atemi are part of "kihon waza", which literally means "basic techniques". According to Gozo Shioda and Morihiro Saito, Ueshiba taught that "aikido is 70-90% atemi". So I think that, at least as far as Morihei Ueshiba is concerned, atemi is a key concept.
I wouldn't know about "most aikido schools in the US in the 1990s" and that was not my point. I understand that many aikido instructors imbue their teaching with pacifism and spiritualism but it is different (on both the technical and spiritual levels) from what Morihei Ueshiba taught. Nothing wrong with that, it's just that, when discussing history, we should try to be as accurate as possible.
