Semiotics of the Internal

A critical question asked by Jon Reading on Aikiweb:

What is internal power and how does it relate to aikido?

It struck me as important, full of its own complexity. Some follow on questions are:

• Is there only one kind of internal power?
• What types of internal power can be cultivated?
• Are they all equally relevant to arms length grappling?
• Are you integrating internal power in an optimal manner?
• Is your approach still Aikido or Jujutsu?

The last question is driven by whether the source of your internal training is from Japan or China. If you add Chen Taiji to you Aikido, are you still doing Aikido? From 1989 to 2005, I practiced a form of modern jujutsu that was a combination of Karate, Judo, and Aikido reworked with content from Kodokai seminars Yonezawa held in the 1970s. Unfortunately, my teacher in his naivite focused on hard bone crunching locks and not anything more subtle until much later in his career when he invited a qigong teacher to or dojo. I remember the qigong person, who had tremendous stability, say if we could learn to work with qi we would vastly improve. He was fine with the external nature of our locking and throwing, it was a bit beneath him but would be improved if we practiced neigong. It would have been a good thing if he had kept his class going there. I think we would all have benefited. Many years later, I wound up leaving that group later on and focused my time on Bagua, Xingyi, and Taiji. I now focus on them as separate arts taught in the same school, taught in a way that is compatible.

• When I hit someone, is it Xingyi or Bagua?
• When I throw someone, is it Xingyi or Bagua or Taiji?

Sometimes it is clear, sometimes it is less so. I remember an admonition about how once you get a person off balance and hit them, the result will depend on your body development. That development can happen in a variety of ways. It is your body. A question is how you train yourself, so that you can generate power in that circumstance.

The broader Aikido community is very lucky there are people willing to share their body methods (shen fa) with others, outside of a closed group (particular Aikido organization or ryu). I wince a bit when I hear Daito ryu traditionalists talk about the propriety of Aiki, when Ueshiba and Takeda taught so many many people. Even though I am friends with one or two of them and think some of them are good martial artists, there are others, however, who put the name of their art and lineage as something to distract from their own level of skill. I think all of this falls back on what each individual can actually do. This is why inter group sparring and pushing can be very useful.

Is that Aikido?

For me, when I do something that looks like ikkyo:

• Is it Aikido, Xingyi, or kodachi from Jiki Shinkage ryu performed without a weapon in my hand?
• If Takeda studied Jiki Shinkage ryu for a while, is that more reasonable to claim than Xingyi, which he likely never encountered?
• Does it matter, if someone cannot stop me?

Some additional questions are, whether given the benefits of internal power and stability to taijutsu:

• Is it important to seek Ueshiba's specific methodologies or can alternatives suffice?
• Is it important to be able to do what he did how he did it or just be able to do what he did?
• Can this be done by most people in the context of Aikido or is understanding Daito-ryu necessary?
• If you practice other approaches and they influence your Aikido, is that acceptable?
• At what point are you no longer doing Aikido?

I am writing this as someone who did what is probably considered fairly low-level external Aikido for a time and then decided to focus on internal martial arts in their own context. I have worked those ideas back into my taijutsu. In fact, because one student followed me in my path from jujutsu to bagua, in applications to Gao style baguazhang, some of my old taijutsu waza survive, albeit in modified form. Are they Aikido, jujutsu, or Bagua? I ask this because in Chinese traditions, applications like locks and throws are considered in an art if they follow the principles or feeling of the art (e.g., the same lock done by a bagua person or a xingyi person, a little differently), but there is a basic level of knowledge considered independent of specific arts.

I don't think I do Aikido any longer. If I do something that looks like irimi nage, is it just Bagua or is it good Aikido now that I know internal ideas, or is it bad Aikido because the form doesn't look quite right?

I feel remiss in not trying to offer some answers or opinions; I plan to do so in a follow up post. Here, I will at least notice one problem with the entire line of questioning is something my first Bagua instructor, Bob Galeone, related to me, in his opinion Aikido lacking a well-defined decision procedure (in the logical sense) to determine a person's skill. I think recent efforts at going back to what Ueshiba wrote, his philosophical environment (phenomenologically, semiotically) are useful. I think relating his ideas to other practices in Chinese and Japanese martial arts is also useful. But, I think the questions above begin to point at some of the challenges thereign. Just because in Taijiquan we have certain ideas of body mechanics, and they work extremely well for stability, does not mean that a Shaolin Lohan practitioner who is stable uses the same ideas or methodologies to be stable. If an Aikido practitioner seeks to be stable, and has lost the connection with what Ueshiba taught, and picks a Taiji methodology to accomplish that skill, is it more or less compatible with Aikido versus one who does very fundamental stance training from Shaolin Lohan Quan? Or is it Aikido because the person dresses in a keikogi and hakama, and bows to a picture of Ueshiba in a dojo with tatami mats? And still pays dues to his parent organization and goes to annual seminars? At what point, in adopting methodologies from other arts (Taiji, Bagua, Systema, Jujutsu, etc) is the person no longer welcome in her own dojo? How do some people navigate incorporating ideas into their practice and stay respected shihan in their organizations and others wind up leaving?

Thinking about the change of Daito-ryu to Aikido, and from pre-war Aikido to post-war Aikido, it is almost as if there is a change in semiotics from pre-war to post-war, from Ueshiba Morihei to Kisshomaru. By that I mean a translation into a different conceptual framework, that encodes ideas in a different manner, and may result in the same signifiers (signs) pointing to different signified, when looking from father to son, whereas in Ueshiba himself, changes in signifiers potentially from Daito-ryu terminology (possibly Shingon-based?) to Omoto-kyo?

Some interesting studies might be:

1. How do the philosophical concepts taught at the Aikikai in Tokyo align with those taught in Iwama and those taught in separate (pre-war?) Aikido organizations such as the Yoshinkan?
2. How do the concepts of Omoto-kyo framing Ueshiba's description of his practice correspond to statements made by other teachers of Daito-ryu?

At the same time, I think it is important to recognize that there can sometimes be a distinction between what one's mental framework is for their practice and what they are doing. Many ideas get lost in translation, and Chinese martial arts are an exemplar rather than an exception. One of the challenges I face when I hear the word internal used in reference to Japanese jujutsu or taijutsu is that the spread of so-called internal schools of Chinese martial arts seem to post-date the major influx of martial theory from China to Japan. Taijiquan and Xingyiquan may only date from the late 16th or early 17th century and Baguazhang was developed in the 19th century. They share common characteristics that seem to be compatible, and different from older martial arts that also provide a mechanism for reaching high levels of personal development (what can be contrasted by being called external martial arts, which need not be a pejorative term).

We in contrast have the founding stories of Yoshin-ryu being set in the early Tokugawa era (e.g., via Chen Genpin) and some cross-pollination in Jiki Shinkage-ryu, where there is in influx of ideas from Ogasawara Genshinsai, who spent 20 years in Beijing after changing political affiliations one too many times. We know that today Jiki looks very different from other lines of Shinkage-ryu. An open question is whether that time period caused the resulting differences. It is well known, of course, for its focus on breathing, posture, and power, and its relative scarcity of explicit tactics compared to other lines of Shinkage-ryu. Sadly, we also know Takeda Sokaku was rather experienced by the time he visited Sakakibara's Jiki Shinkage-ryu dojo. It is overly simplistic to assume Jiki Shinkage-ryu was a tremendous influence on the man; however, maybe he found something compatible or inspiring in its approach, based on his training.

Despite the questions regarding timing, either of martial theory or practice from China to Japan, or in Takeda's own martial development, if we look besides general anatomy and pre-modern types of movement (from hunting, agriculture, horsemanship, archery, spear, etc.) it seems like at least at the beginning of the Edo period, there is an opportunity for there to be some common ground in place that could follow similar, albeit culturally specific, developments in parallel. If we assume Chinese internal martial arts developed around the same time. Japanese martial artists in the Edo period did possess the necessary philosophical framework of Taoism needed to discover or develop somewhat analogous internal martial arts ideas. Rather than being a product of an extremely martial environment (e.g., Aizu-han rustic wabi sabi), could Aiki instead be developed due to a prolonged period of peace, that allowed people extended periods of study, practice, and analysis?

Fast forward to today, in reading Sasamori Junzo in his book on Budo and Christianity, he speaks of using his dantien quite clearly in talking about Ona-ha Itto-ryu kenjutsu and kiri otoshi, which is supposed to drop an opponent where he stands. He references Itto-ryu taijutsu explicitly, which might lend some credence to Ellis' thesis that Daito-ryu aiki is somehow related to Itto-ryu teachings from Takeda's family. The fact that Takeda Soeman is said to have studied Shugendo (Onmyodo) is also interesting to me, regarding Taoism, is mentioned at some points by Daito-ryu practitioners, and I think might be related, or at least worthy of consideration.

What the above does not answer is why all Edo-period Japanese jujutsu did not similarly develop concepts of Aiki. Clearly, the people who encountered Takeda, and later Ueshiba, had access to local machi dojo for jujutsu and gekken/kendo (or kenjutsu). The number of people drawn to those teachers may have been influenced due to political reasons or the spread of Omoto-kyo (was it Deguchi who suggested the term Aiki-jujutsu to Takeda?) but the skill level of the two men is not in question.

Some of the questions in my first post are driven by the fact that maybe a thesis is that while a conservative subset of modern Aikido practice might be quite compatible with internal martial arts ideas, by the fact that the core subset of Daito-ryu practices are as well, a question remains as to whether it is more efficient to attempt to learn those practices directly (if they are accessible -- for a period of time it was not so easy to do so, possibly now things are more open and there are unique figures making versions of these teachings available more widely today) or whether homologues can stand in sufficiently well.

I think the answer may depend on what a person is trying to achieve, which drove me to ask whether it is sufficient to be able to do what Ueshiba or others did, some of what they did, and by the same means. There is also the question of what a decision procedure is, outside of a kata pedagogy and gokui/kuden methodology, for evaluating levels of skill in a practitioner.

In Taijiquan, there is the concept of push hands practice to evaluate levels of relative skill between practitioners (although that itself can devolve and become devoid of meaning in the wrong context) and a set of classics that one can consult to evaluate whether one is still doing Taijiquan. The first is a question of being good or not good (relative level of skill), whereas the latter is a question of doing Taiji or not doing Taiji. Even with those textual resources available, there is extreme variation in the outward form of different Taiji styles, and arguments about correctness and effectiveness across major groups, and differing accounts of Taiji history.

A benefit with Aikido, in comparison, may be the existence of written sources not yet fully explored, and that the different Aikido organizations, and even Daito-ryu organizations, have a common subset of practices they can at least recognize in each other.