History
Aikido, based on skills developed in Japan during the 14th century, was created by Morihei Ueshiba early in the 20th century.
Born in 1883, Ueshiba began studying martial arts as a teen-ager and, at 22, he took up an art called daito-ryu aiki-jutsu. But he was also developing his own ideas about what martial arts training should offer.
Ueshiba opposed what he saw as the over-aggressiveness of existing martial arts. The ideal art, he felt, should be non-aggressive and essentially non-violent, and should teach its followers to seek a peaceful resolution to conflict before resorting to physical combat.
By 1925, Ueshiba had a substantial following of pupils, several of them from the Japanese nobility. He moved to Tokyo in 1927 and built his own dojo there. Five years later, he founded the Budo Enhancement Society and became its chief instructor.
Ueshiba continued to develop his system and its teachings. Essentially, he combined many of the locks and throws of jujitsu with body movements taken from the spear and sword arts he had learned as a teen-ager, at the same time adding many of his own techniques.
Originally, he called his art aikibudo. Then it became aikinomichi before he settled on aikido in 1942. The name means "way of harmony with ki" - ki being a person's mental and spiritual energy or vital force.
A pacifist, Ueshiba was upset by the militarism that led to Japan's involvement in World War II. He decided that the aikido movement must reach out to the rest of world. Because of a post-war ban on martial arts, he wasn't able to do that until the 1950s, when he began actively encouraging his pupils to travel to other countries to teach aikido.
In 1956, several ambassadors from foreign countries attended a public exhibition of aikido at Ueshiba's new dojo in Tokyo, and two years later a television documentary, "Rendezvous with Adventure," introduced American viewers to the sport.
However, aikido's real introduction into America didn't come until 1961, when a new organization in Hawaii invited Ueshiba to give a demonstration.
From there, aikido reached the West Coast of the United States and gradually began to expand into other regions of North America.
After Ueshiba's death in 1969, his son, Kissomaru Ueshiba, took over the movement. The founder's grandson, Moriteru Ueshiba, is also an aikido master and teacher.
One of the important principles of aikido is that practitioners work together, as partners and not as competitors, to maximize the mutual experience. While there are throws and striking maneuvers, the emphasis is on self-defense, not on attack.
One of Ueshiba's pupils, Kenji Tomiki, invented a competitive form of the sport, named Tomiki aikido or tomiki-ryu, in which opponents take turns attacking one another with a wooden or rubber knife. The attacker can score a point by touching his opponent with the knife, while the defender attempts to disarm him.
Tomiki sought Ueshiba's approval of his system, but was turned down because Ueshiba was strongly against any form of competition. As a result, tomiki-ryu is not considered a legitimate form of aikido by purists, although it has a substantial number of practitioners.
There are many other variations of aikido, but most of them are approved by the International Aikido Federation (IAF) and fall under its supervision.
The ruling body in the United States is the Aikido Association of America (AAA), which is affiliated with the IAF. There are about 130 dojo under the AAA's jurisdiction.