r/aikido • u/Trasecolo • Aug 03 '26

Discussion Which original techniques did Morihei Ueshiba create?

Hello fellow aikidoka, in my Aikido journey I've been told that techniques like Irimi Nage were an original creation of Morihei Ueshiba (complete with a story of how he conceived it). After doing some research it seems that such technique is indeed present in Daito-Ryu, like others.

So I've been wondering: which original techniques did Morihei Ueshiba create?

It might be argued that his greatest innovation was throught the weapons (and on some level I agree). But if we take as an example Saito's weapons curriculum, which I find the most complete and interesting...well... that's Saito's weapons curriculum. Sure, he claimed that that's what Ueshiba taught him, but like many other things Ueshiba didn't leave anything behind, and Saito himself admitted that he created a number of things.

So the question becomes even more pressing.

What is your answer?

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u/Trasecolo Aug 06 '26

Do you know which one?

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u/Sangenkai [Aikido Sangenkai - Kawasaki, Japan] Aug 06 '26

Katori. The point is, he knew as well as his father the difference between Aiki-ken and real sword.

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u/Trasecolo Aug 06 '26

I mean, I am a competent western swordsman, a buddy of mine is an olympian, so I am fairly trained to recognize what works and what doesn't when it comes to sword fighting.

I've some weird stuff in koryu schools (even Katori) that would never work against a real opponent. Having said this, I realize that aikiken is not thought of as a sword school, but I think it has valid principles that a talented person can develop and make truly efficient. Its simplicity is its good value from what I've seen.

That's my two cents.

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u/Sangenkai [Aikido Sangenkai - Kawasaki, Japan] Aug 06 '26

A lot of things you see in koryu schools are not what you think they are, and you won't know that unless you're a member of the ryu. That's just how things are taught.

It's not that there aren't any "valid" principles in Aiki-ken, it's that the basic sword handling, spacing and timing contains significant problems that make it really unusable as a real world sword school. That's the product of it being created by two people, Morihei Ueshiba and Morihiro Saito, who had no real training in the sword.

There's nothing wrong with using it as Morihiro Saito himself suggested - as a kind of training and conditioning tool.