#000533
Budo: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido
Morihei Ueshiba; translated by John Stevens
*Budo* reproduces a rare 1938 training manual by Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, here translated into English by John Stevens. Originally prepared privately for a student, the book is one of Ueshiba's few direct statements of his art's aims and spirit, combining technical instruction — illustrated with photographs of Ueshiba himself performing the techniques — with prose and mystical poetry expressing his martial and spiritual philosophy. It offers an unusually clear window onto aikido as its founder conceived it, before the fuller postwar development of the art. It speaks to aikido practitioners and to anyone interested in the deeper, contemplative dimension of the Japanese martial ways.
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The author
Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969), known to aikido students as O-Sensei, founded aikido, a martial art built on blending with and redirecting an opponent's force rather than meeting it head-on. Deeply shaped by the Omoto-kyo religion and by a spiritual vision of budo as a path of reconciliation, he taught widely — including, in the militarized Japan of the 1930s, at military and police academies — before articulating the more explicitly harmonizing philosophy of his later years.
The book
The 1938 manual reproduced here was privately published for Prince Kaya Tsunenori and long forgotten until a copy resurfaced in 1981. John Stevens's 1991 translation pairs Ueshiba's technical photographs with his terse statements of principle, giving a snapshot of the art at a formative stage.
How to read it
It is best read alongside training and with awareness of its moment: a prewar document, predating the postwar refinement of Ueshiba's thought, so its techniques and framing differ somewhat from modern aikido. The mystical passages can be cryptic. Even so, as a founder's own words it is invaluable.
For more context
Compare it with the Stanley Pranin/Sonoko Tanaka commentary edition and with The Art of Peace, a later collection of Ueshiba's teachings.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Morihei Ueshiba; translated by John Stevens
- Publisher
- Kodansha International
- Place of publication
- Tokyo / New York
- Year
- 1991
- Edition
- English edition
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Craft & How-to
- Location
- Colorado