The top aikido people all came out of judo, so sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference.
Note when he says "with a forceful movement".
Well, often your opponent is giving you the force in judo, and so you do not have to supply your own. Many judo people know this, and switch to aikido, giving up the competition side, and just work on the shibui of the perfect throw.
If someone is behaving rather badly, but not initiating force, then aikido is pretty useless, to be effective, it needs the opponent's force. If someone is just being boorish, insulting and picking a fight, you can simply use spoken aikido, embrace and extend, redirect: agree with the insult (your are right to criticize the way I am dressed, I never had any sense of style, tell me, how might I improve my look?) Give them three chances to lighten up, and then say "Now I think you go to far with that statement. By then there is usually enough people on your side to inhibit the boor from escalating. If not, aikido game on. A great scene in literature is exactly this in Brothers Karamazov when the odious father is abusing the old holy priest in front of his sons. Check it out. Feel Free To Email This To Three Friends.
Bernie Lau was leaving a mutually esteemed Chinese restaurant last night as I was coming in with a Congolese priest stationed in Seattle and a daughter in from Paris. The restaurant allows double parking in their lot by patrons so you can sit and order and then the staff will come get you if a properly parked patron desires to leave by the path you have blocked by double parking. Sometimes they have a runner who facilitates all of this for tips, a situation that is responsive and sensible, with rules made up on the fly. Anarchy in action. As Bernie, my daughter and the priest chatted amiably in French, I moved the car to best position. Bernie looks good, and is still travelling far and wide. As he was just leaving, we said our good-byes, and inside the restaurant the priest was intrigued by the fellow he had just met, so I apprised the priest of Bernie's background. For the purposes of this blog, I'll add this about Lau Sensei:
When I started aikido in 1971, there were about 30 regulars at a club that had a 4th degree and a 3rd degree as instructors, the late Hirata Yoshihiko Sensei and Lau Sensei. Both had been direct students of Tohei sensei, the 10th degree chief instructor of aikido. I was able to practice as uke when Tohei sensei visited a couple of times, and since Seattle was a regular stop-over for USA-Japan flights, we had a steady progression of top aikidoists visiting, Imaizumi one of the most memorable. Pound for pound, I don’t think you could find more aikido instruction talent per student outside of Tokyo. And then, circa 1974, Tohei sensei sent Kashiwaya Koichi, an aggressive and fresh san dan, to teach in Seattle too.
Bernie Lau as a police officer began his transformation from one of the original students of aikido 1954 in Hawaii under Tohei sensei. Lau Sensei gained his first two black belts from O sensei, and his 3rd and 4th from the Ni Dai Dosshu. Lau Sensei’s style was crisp, efficient, and matched his size and build. He taught a half dozen of us high school students Tuesdays and Thursdays after school in the early 1970s, before he went to work on the police night shift.
As he did more and more police work, he began to change his style. How come he changed his style? As he puts it, aikido does not work.
Very, very true. Depending on the context.
In his work as a policeman, he found aikido doesn’t work if you use it to initiate violence against someone who is no threat to you. But police officers must initiate violence against people who are no threat to them. Police must make arrests upon people who are not fighting, but are not cooperating. People who refuse to turn around and put their hands behind their back. In these instances police must use aggressive force. All the more so for people who resist being forced around.
But aikido has no techniques that employ aggressive force. Aikido is unique as a martial art, it is nonviolent, it has no techniques for initiating aggression. In aikido we use the aggressive force of the attacker, like in judo. But as opposed to judo, we initiate no aggressive moves.
Aikido does not work if you wish to use your power to defeat someone else.
Aikido does not work if your opponent is merely resisting, if your opponent is not combative, not aggressive.
Aikido does not work if your opponent is merely noncooperative.
Aikido only works when someone is initiating a forceful attack upon you. Since aikido is focussed on dealing only with forceful attacks, it is pretty useless if you plan to initiate force and defeat an opponent. Aikido is not for police work.
On the other hand, since the aikido is limited to dealing with any any all attacks in any and all forms, in the measure the opponent offers force, aikido is superior to all other martial arts as a defensive martial art.
If someone is not initiating violence, why fight, let alone use aikido? Otherwise you’d be using aikido to attack, and aikido is pretty useless as a means for that.
On the other hand, aikido, since it uses the opponent’s force, is pitch perfect condign response to an attacked initiated by an aggressor. This is necessary to be a martial art, it is sufficient to be a martial art. I leave it to other martial artists to include in their contexts the problem of defeating someone who is not initiating violence, and includes using one's own power or force.
As a conscientious objector I can neither initiate force nor bring my own power into defeating anyone. At the same time, I have effected about a dozen arrests in the last four decades (most recently a hit and run absconder who tried to escape on foot.) In this instance, his attempt to use force to get past me earned him pin up against the wall, with his feet back and spread (as I said, one of my first instructors was Bernie Lau, a cop.) He was uncooperative, but not violent, so we both stopped there. When he stops using force, I stop acting. As he relaxes his body, I relax the tension of the pin. As he tests the pin under relaxation, I ramped up the pin so experiences force feedback. (Aikido is fairly unique in the pins hurt only if the bad guy tries to get away; also the pins are actually beneficial, they promote a healthy stretch, as opposed to arm bars which break bones and joints.)
If I ever had to exchange blows with someone, I am pretty sure I’d get hurt. On the other hand to answer a bum’s rush with tomoe nage takes little extra energy from me to execute, but can be quite devastating when the attackers face hits the sidewalk, body upside down, at the velocity the attacker brought, for lack of training on how to roll out of a throw. Ouch.
To legally effect an arrest (in most jurisdictions), you must place your hand on the person you are arresting while stating they are under arrest (largely so the prisoner cannot later claim he did not know you were referring to him.) In aikido, you always get close enough to place a hand on someone, which allows you to deflect a close-quarters attack if they violently disagree with being arrested. Only about 1/2 the times have I had to get physical when making an arrest, and oddly, the more serious the crimes, the less likely the resistance. (the rapist, kidnapper and burglars all gave up without resistance. (Not sure if that holds true in general, and if so, how come?)
In Bernie's Change of Heart story, as he tells it, aikido did not work when he in plainclothes he tried to use it to initiate violence against someone who was not resisting, let alone offering violence. When the drunk lumber jack in Bernie's story failed to respond to aikido applied as an offensive tactic, Bernie switched to his considerable training in shotokan karate, a style he had studied assiduously, and began attacking the lumberjack with those striking techniques. No effect there either. The lumberjack simply proceeded to his car to drive off, whereupon Bernie in desperation tore off the antenna, which pissed of the lumberjack, and brought him back out to deal with Bernie. By this time dozens of police officers arrived to answer the officer assistance call, and proceeded to beat down the lumberjack with good old fashioned police work, the night stick shampoo.
Another aspect of the case is Bernie had felt so bad about the turn of events that he quietly disposed of the evidence of the lumberjack drinking, and the lumberjack won $65000 lawsuit against the city for police brutality.
So the whole truth is, no martial art worked on this lunberjack, and certainly not aikido as an offensive art. Aikido never was intended for the purpose of violence against someone who was not resisting let alone offering violence If your context includes initiating violence, or attacking nonviolent offenders, then truly aikido sucks. But as the original mixed martial art (kendo, judo, jiu jitsu, ki-ai breathing) and stripped of offensive techniques, it is a superior self defense system.
Here is a fun video of the Master teaching his style of aikido pre-war. This was 35 years before I started aikido. I've now been practicing 45 years. More changed the last 45 years than the previous 35.
The Catholic Church in USA maintains a Military Ordinariate, which means it has an archdiocese made up in support of the USA military. I wonder what Jesus would say? He did say, obey them, but do not be like them. A priest in a uniform is most assuredly "being like them."
And here is one of the most important ironic points of this article: What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250 years of persecution (i.e., to destroy Japanese Christianity) American Christians did in mere seconds.
This fall the AMS will hold an all-expenses-paid discernment gathering for ordained priests who may sense a further call to military chaplaincy.
And...
During the four-day gathering, AMS clergy, staff, and chaplains will join Archbishop Broglio in giving the priests a realistic picture of what it is like to be a military chaplain and how to become one. The priests will stay at the Washington Retreat House on Harewood Road in Northeast Washington, and from there, go on field trips to Andrews Air Force Base, Fort Belvoir, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the Pentagon. In these real-life settings, they will meet and talk with military officers, enlisted personnel, and other chaplains. The highlight of the gathering will come in the Pentagon Memorial Chapel at the 9/11 crash site, where the priests will concelebrate Mass.
What does any of that have to do with Jesus Christ? This is an indoctrination junket, not a discernment event. And as with Catholic Media, which is all-war-all-the-time, you have to ask, who is paying this piper?
Camo vestments? Where did the Catholic Church get the money to produce this video? If the money the Church spent on this one video were put into catechizing 15 year olds properly, there might be some sanity in USA foreign policy. Some Christian restraint.
What I find interesting is how the very many faithful Catholic pro-peace, anti-war entities are out there, how reticent they are about joining forces.
One challenge is that one arm of the Catholic anti-war left is decidedly pro-abortion, making true conscientious objectors unable to meet-up. But otherwise, there are countless seamless-garment Catholics out there, still reticent about associating.
True, the hatred and horrors the state will visit on those who not only fail to participate, but also on those who fail to agree, makes effectiveness a scary proposition. Yes, even if there is no civil disobedience contemplated (like the Camden 28 below), but merely working on trimming one's sails to follow the Christian narrow path, the state will visit its horrors on you. Try declining baking that cake.
One small contribution would be the demand that no Catholic enters the military without first a military-prep (like marriage-prep) program. If any Catholic joins without the program, they are not allowed to receive the sacraments until they complete the program.
Is that harsh? Take God seriously. Read Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. Look at what happens to a people that equate God and Country, who depend on their own power to defend, and engage in entangling alliances and adopt alien culture. A pair of strict rules: Do not multiply wives and horses. the military does both, with (as put gently by Melville in Billy Budd) sailors etc are exempt from rules of fornication (and generals bang groupies with no consequence) and when do we not thrill at the latest military weaponry (whether it works or not)?
I've been a military man all my life, there has been a John Spiers who fought in every American war, and both sides in civil wars. But being a Christian means you must decline to engage in moral crimes, and Catholicism teaches us to conscientiously object to unjust cause and unjust means of war. I participated in the American War in Vietnam, as a conscientious objector. When I see private property parking slots "reserved for veterans", why, that means me! (The only reason I do not designate myself as a veteran in hegemon venues is for fear of being qualified for set-asides).
Back to what program associated Catholic conscientious objectors could advance: No Catholic gets into the USA military without military prep, taught by conscientious objectors. There are enough of us out there to do the work, and the money from just that one video would probably cover the cost.
Sure, the full fury and horror of the hegemon would be visited on us, just as the Soviets worked over Solzhenitsyn, even attempted murder by chemo-radioactive poisoning. Far from tempting God, we'd be trusting Him to protect us, like a faithful Israel.
Be not afraid.
Deuteronomy 17:16But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way.But he shall not multiply horses to himself,.... That he might not put his trust and confidence in outward things, as some are apt to trust in horses and chariots; and that he might not tyrannise over and distress his subjects by keeping a number of horses and chariots as a standing army, and chiefly for a reason that follows; he was to have no more than for his own chariot, so Jarchi, and so the Misnah (g) and Maimonides (h); the Targum of Jonathan restrains it to two:
nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses; which was a country that abounded with them, and therefore he was not to encourage, and much less oblige his subjects to travel thither or trade with that people for the sake of increasing his stock of horses, Isaiah 31:1.
forasmuch as the Lord hath said unto you, ye shall henceforth return no more that way; not that going into Egypt on any account whatsoever was forbidden, as for trade and merchandise in other things, or for shelter and safety, for which some good men fled thither; but for outward help and assistance against enemies, and for horses on that account, and particularly in order to dwell there, from which the Jews in the times of Jeremiah were dissuaded by him, and threatened by the Lord with destruction, in case they should, Jeremiah 42:15. When the Lord said this is not certain; it may be when they proposed to make a captain, and return unto Egypt; or he said this in his providence, this was the language of it ever since they came out of it, or however this he now said; see Deuteronomy 28:68.
(g) Sanhedrin, c. 2. sect. 4. (h) Hilchot Melachim, c. 3. sect. 3. Deuteronomy 17:17Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away,.... From attending to the duty of his office, the care and government of his people, and from serious religion; and particularly from the worship of the true God, as the heart of Solomon was turned away from it by his numerous idolatrous wives, 1 Kings 11:3, it is a common notion of the Jews that a king might have eighteen wives, and no more (k): neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold; he might increase his wealth, but not greatly, lest his heart should be lifted up with pride by it, and lest his subjects should be oppressed and burdened with taxes for that purpose; or he, being possessed of so much, should make use of it to enslave them, and especially should be so elated with it as to deny God, and despise his providence, and disobey his laws; see Proverbs 30:9. The Jews generally say (l), that he ought not to multiply more than what will pay the stipends or wages of his servants, and only for the treasury of the house of the Lord, and for the necessity of the congregation (or commonwealth), and for their wars; but not for himself, and his own treasury.
(k) Maimon. Issure Biah, c. 1. sect. 2. Misn. ut supra. (Sanhedrin, c. 10. sect. 4.). T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 21. 1. Targum Jon. & Jarchi in loc. (l) Maimon. ib. sect. 4. Misn. ut supra.
On the other hand, the Church of "Romans 13" did overcome the pagan Roman Empire.
We have no priests, lawyers, labor, academics against the wars far worse and less just today than the Vietnam war then... I just turned 18 when this trial ended, a trial of a raid on a draft board by anti-war (pro-peace) activists. It is sad there people trying to end the wars then, but not now. Back then, the government was constrained by hard money economics. The war tax mentioned on the poster in the early scene was on telephone bills. That is how hard up government was for money. But then, Nixon got rid of the gold standard (lite) and they could come up with seemingly endless credit, enough to buy off all labor, academia, religion, law, medicine... you name it. It all went corrupt.
What cost the government the trial was too much participation in making the "crime" happen. No FBI agent lost his job over that. Today, are there any terrorist cases in which the government has not stage-managed the "crime?"
