Morihei Ueshiba
(born 14 December 1883 in Tanabe, Wakayama Prefecture; died 26 April 1969 in Iwama)
O-Sensei
Morihei Ueshiba is the founder of the modern Japanese martial art, Aikido.
Aikidokas often refer to him as O-Sensei, which means ‘Grand Master’ or ‘venerable teacher’. The prefix ‘O-’ is a mark of respect and reverence in the Japanese language.
His childhood and youth
Ueshiba was the fourth child and eldest son of a wealthy family. His father, Yoroku Ueshiba, was a respected farmer, and his mother, Yuki Itokawa, came from a noble, landowning family.
At around the age of seven, Morihei Ueshiba studied Confucian classics and Buddhist scriptures at his father’s behest. His father taught him sumo and swimming.
Ueshiba completed upper primary school in Tanabe and then, at the age of seventeen, went on to secondary school; however, he did not stay there for long and instead decided to resume his studies at Yoshida’s commercial college.
His work as a trader and the start of his martial arts training
In 1902, he left the local tax office, where he had begun working whilst still at school, and moved to Tokyo, where he ran a stationery and school supplies shop in the Nihombashi commercial district.
At the same time, he began training in traditional jujutsu and kenjutsu; however, he was forced to give this up due to a bout of beriberi and return to Tanabe. There, he soon married Hatsu Itokawa (1881–1969).
In 1903, Morihei Ueshiba enlisted as a volunteer in the army in Osaka and, a few years later, took part in the Russo-Japanese War.
After being promoted to sergeant for his bravery and courage on the battlefield, Ueshiba was granted home leave. He used this time to learn the Goto style of Yagyu-ryu jujutsu at the Nakai Masakatsu Dojo.
In 1907, the army discharged him. He returned to Tanabe, where he worked on the Ueshiba family’s farm. At the same time, Yoroku Ueshiba hired the judoka Kiyo’ichi Takagi to teach Morihei in the barn, which had been specially converted into a dojo.
In 1912, Morihei Ueshiba took part in a government programme and moved, along with other fellow participants, to the northern part of the island of Hokkaido. In the years that followed, alongside his work as a farmer, Ueshiba campaigned to improve social conditions, such as better housing, and to establish a primary school in the settlement. During this time, he met the Daito-Ryu master Sokaku Takeda, from whom he obtained his Daito-Ryu Jujutsu certificate following intensive training.
The Ueshiba Academy
Morihei Ueshiba was a friend of Onisaburo Deguchi, the co-founder of the Omoto-Kyo movement.
Particularly following the death of his father on 2 January 1920, he sought guidance from Deguchi in his search for a spiritual life. Ueshiba moved to Ayabe to live with Deguchi, where Deguchi helped him to build a dojo that was to serve as the foundation for the Ueshiba Academy.
At first, Ueshiba taught only the followers of the Omoto-Kyo movement. After a while, word got round that an extraordinary budo master was teaching in Ayabe. As a result, more and more people who did not belong to the movement enrolled at the academy.
Around 1921, following the first Omoto incident, in which Deguchi and other followers of the movement were arrested, Ueshiba began to give his training a more spiritual focus. He increasingly moved away from the classical styles of Yagyu-Ryu and Daito-Ryu and developed his own style based on tried-and-tested principles.
Officially, he called this style Aiki-Bujutsu. Among the general public, however, it was known as Ueshiba-Ryu Aiki-Bujutsu.
The refinement of his martial arts skills
From that point onwards, Morihei Ueshiba refined his martial art. Spiritual development came increasingly to the fore and also had an impact on the techniques; profound personal experiences played a major part in this development.
He changed the name from Aiki-Bujutsu to Aiki-Budo, as the ‘Do’ refers to the philosophical principles inherent in martial arts. In the late 1920s, Ueshiba held martial arts classes in Tokyo, where he ran the Kobukan Dojo in the 1930s.
When Japan entered the Second World War, Ueshiba retired to Iwama, where he returned to farming and opened another dojo.
The name ‘Aikido’ was first mentioned around 1941.
Harmony and love as a means
Following his final military deployment in Manchuria, Morihei Ueshiba became a very peaceful man. This attitude also found its way into the philosophy of Aikido and was to become one of its key principles.
In 1961, Morihei Ueshiba visited Hawaii at the invitation of its people and said that he had come to Hawaii to build a ‘silver bridge’.
Ueshiba saw the harmony and love inherent in Aikido as a means of uniting the people of the world.