Budō, Teachings of the Founder of Aikidō: going to the source?

As is often the case with phenomena that are subject to interpretation, there are many definitions for aikido. Going to the source is a good approach to finding an original definition or description. The source of aikido is Morihei Ueshiba, who lived from 1883 to 1969. He created aikido and is often referred to as the founder or ōsensei (Japanese for grandmaster). Even if I could read Japanese, many of the texts attributed to Ueshiba are interpretive sources, as they are transcripts of recorded lectures and interviews. “Budō, Teachings of the Founder of Aikidō” (M. Ueshiba, 1938/2013) is probably the only available book that Ueshiba wrote. It is an instruction manual and a statement of the aim and spirit of aikido’s philosophy. It became available to the English-reading world in 1993 thanks to a translation by John Stevens, an American professor of Buddhist studies and an aikido instructor who lived in Japan from 1973 till 2013 (“John Stevens (Scholar),” 2023). The name aikido did not exist in 1938, the time of the original book. Ueshiba called his martial art aiki-budō or budō and described it in his book. Sharing Ueshiba’s translated description of aiki-budō requires some introduction because translating Japanese terms is not obvious as they can refer to several concepts. In addition, Ueshiba’s discourse was influenced by Shintoism and he used terms that even his students or contemporaries did not fully grasp. Stevens explained in the foreword to “Budō, Teachings of the Founder of Aikidō” that the text assumes that the “teachings it presents will be augmented by oral explanations from qualified instructors” and that “the text itself is terse and cryptic” (M. Ueshiba, 1938/2013, p. 26).

| Excerpt from the author’s doctoral dissertation: pp. 12-13. |

Even though many words have been written and read about aikido,
it takes embodiment and expert guidance to understand aikido truly.

Desenarrt @ Freepik

Reference

Ueshiba, M. (2013). Budō, Teachings of the Founder of Aikidō (J. Stevens, Trans.; 2nd edn.). Kodansha USA. (Original work published 1938)