The History of Fighting

Due to its unique nature, many people ask the question, 'is aikido effective?' and the simple answer is that if you set out with the aim of causing the least amount of harm while still being able to defend yourself, aikido is very effective. 

The main principles behind aikido techniques are avoidance, control and neutralisation and students are taught to practice with a calm mind, a relaxed body and integrated breathing to allow the moves to flow gracefully. 

When training, students are encouraged to treat each other as partners even when one is acting as the attacker and the other practising the defensive moves. This generates an atmosphere of harmony and cooperation rather than one of competitiveness. 

Morihei Ueshiba was born in Japan in 1883 and as a boy, witnessed his father being assaulted by local thugs on numerous occasions. He vowed revenge and dedicated himself to becoming a great fighter and by adulthood, was an accomplished martial artist with expertise in jujitsu as well as the use of the sword, spear and staff.

However, by the time he was grown, he was also a very spiritual man and became conflicted on the contradiction of hurting others, (even within the confines of martial arts training etiquette), and his belief in being harmonious with all of nature. This apparent paradox would have a profound effect on Ueshiba and would be a defining factor in the history of aikido.

Ueshiba followed the teachings of Omotokyo, a so-called ‘new religion’ that is part neo-Shintoism, and part socio-political idealism and teaches the core concept of the unification of all of mankind in a single "heavenly kingdom on earth." He came to believe that winning at another’s expense was not really a victory and spent many hours in meditation and intense study contemplating this problem. 

From the mid-late 1920s, he set out to find movements within Japanese martial arts that would allow him to subdue his opponents without hurting them and compiled them to form a new art that would become known as aikido, meaning the Way of Harmonious Spirit. 

Put basically, aikido is a combination of the joint locks and throws from jujitsu combined with the body movements taught in sword and spear fighting. However, this is an oversimplification and it should also be stated that some aikido techniques were invented by Ueshiba himself. 

Ueshiba, who is usually referred to as "O’ Sensei" (Great Teacher), spent the rest of his life refining the art to make it accessible to students who were new to martial arts and to those with experience with other forms of fighting while making it deep enough to allow students to continue learning even after many years of training. 

From the 1950s, aikido’s popularity grew due to schools founded by some of Morihei Ueshiba’s best students, most notably Koichi Tohei, Gozo Shioda, Minoru Mochizuki, Kenji Tomiki, and Kisshomaru Ueshiba. Today five major styles of the art are collectively practised by millions of people across the world, all of which can trace their roots back to the aforementioned aikido masters.