author: @sleepyfox
title: Was Saito Ueshiba's worst student?
date: 12-Jul-2024
Morihiro Saito (1928-2002) was often jokingly referred to by O'Sensei as his worst student. O'Sensei, literally 'great teacher' is the name that Aikido practitioners use for Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), the founder of the modern martial art of Aikido.
I always thought that this was a cunning plan by O'Sensei to keep his best student at home rather than having them running off to some foreign country to run the Aikido organisation for that country and grow the art of Aikido there, like so many of O'Sensei's senior students.
When we look at people who trained with O'Sensei and then went on to found their own styles of Aikido, we have the following people, together with how long they trained with Ueshiba:
- Tomiki Aikido: Kenji Tomiki, 1926-1936 (posting to Manchuria), 10 years;
- Yoshinkan Aikido: Gozo Shioda, 1932-1937 (start of 2nd Sino-Japanese war), 5 years;
- Shishin Toitsu (Ki Aikido): Koichi Tohei, 1940-1944 (when he entered military service), 4 years.
When we look at the people who ran the UK as representatives of Aikido:
- Kenshiro Abbe, 1945-1955 (after the war, with O'Sensei), 10 years;
- Kazuo Chiba, 1958-1960 (at Hombu under Doshu, not O'Sensei), 3 years.
Back home in Japan, Saito trained with O'Sensei from 1946 till O'Sensei's death in 1969, 23 years. He never left, either to found his own organisation or to run Aikido in another country.
"It is my task to receive the actual techniques of the Founder and then pass them on directly and simply just as they are" -- Morihiro Saito, interview with Budoka no Kotae, 1988.
Having been recently reading the excellent book Duelling With O'Sensei by Ellis Amdur I am struck with a question rather than a realisation, perhaps I was wrong, and Saito was actually Ueshiba's 'worst' student. Not 'worst' in the sense of being rubbish, but 'worst' in the sense that O'Sensei often said that he expected his students to take what he taught them, and to make it their own, to create their own personal manifestation of Takemusu Aiki (martially-creative Aiki), in much the same way that he had done with Takeda's teachings. But Saito remained firmly steadfast to the belief that he should just try and do exactly what O'Sensei did, with nothing of himself added.
In traditional Japanese arts, from Kenjutsu (swordsmanship) to Ikebana (flower arranging), there is this idea of progression called Shu-Ha-Ri. It can be thought of as analogous to apprentice, journeyman, master. More literally translated it refers to copy, break, transcend. In the first stage 'Shu' the student attempts to copy everything about their instructor's form, to make an exact duplicate. This is the stage in which the student believes that there is one 'correct' way of doing a thing. This is the stage of 'best practice'.
In the second stage, 'Ha', the students breaks out of this rigid way of thinking, and learns to create other forms that can be used for the same purpose, under perhaps different circumstances. This is the stage of 'good practice, in context'.
In the third stage, 'Ri', the student learns to transcend the preconceived forms of others and is able to create their own forms. This is the stage of 'emergent practice'.
Perhaps Saito really was O'Sensei's worst student, because he never broke away from or transcended his own master's form?