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| Exclusive
Interview with Stanley Pranin
(1-2 pages) |
Stanley
Pranin started Aikido in 1962
at the age of 17. His first dojo
was a Yoshinkan dojo run by a
man named Virgil Clark. Since
that day Aikido has always been
part of Stanley Pranin's life.
His writings on Aikido and its
historical beginnings, and its
founder Morihei Ueshiba will be
appreciated for many years to
come and prove invaluable to those
practicing and researching this
unique Budo.
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| MI:
How are you today Mr. Pranin? Mi Magazine
really appreciates you taking the time out
for this exclusive interview. Let us start
by asking what rank in Aikido are you Mr.
Pranin? |
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| SP:
I have a 5th dan received from Saito Sensei
in 1983 |
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| MI:
This year's Aikido Expo is not far away, how
do you feel when you are there among thousands
of people knowing you started it all? |
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| SP:
Well it is overwhelming, but it is not
the kind of situation where you can
sit back and contemplate on what is
going on at the time. There are always
little problems to fix and people asking
you questions, and running from room
to room and it is very much a whirlwind
of activity. Although afterwards when
you sit down and watch the videos, you
think, "Well that was quite an
accomplishment and it seemed like a
lot of people had a good time and probably
a few lives were changed", It really
is a satisfying feeling at the end of
it all. |
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| MI:
Do you plan to take the Expo to other countries
in the future? |
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| SP:
I think we will be moving it around within
the States, possibly Canada. I feel it would
be a little more complicated if we took it
to another country. The laws and the cultures
are different and I would have to rely very
heavily on someone in that country to do a
lot of the legwork and that I feel would be
difficult. I don't completely exclude it as
a possibility; it is something I would hesitate
outlaying before actually committing to. I
also would lose control over a lot of the
aspects of the event that I can handle here
within the States and I know the culture and
laws already here. |
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| MI:
How many people are you expecting this year? |
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| SP:
I am hoping to get between 700 - 1000
attending, you never know, but I think
we will do much better than Las Vegas
because there is very little martial
arts activity here (Aikido Journal Office
is based in Nevada) by comparison whereas
southern California is a Mecca for martial
arts so hopefully we'll get quite a
bit more. Click here for Expo
details.
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| MI:
Will you be participating in any of the demonstrations?
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| SP:
No, I really don't have the time to prepare
for something like that, however I have toyed
with the idea of doing it, but I just want
to concentrate on making the event run well
itself. |
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| MI:
What is your opinion on Aikido Today? |
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| SP:
Well I have written a lot of editorials
on that. I think that there is a lack
of leadership in that when an activity
is founded it is usually founded by
a very passionate, highly motivated,
charismatic individual and then when
an organization forms around that person
you tend to get people who are more
interested in running an organization
and doing the things organizations do
and creating by-laws and preserving
the traditions, which means the art
that they were exposed to directly where
as other people who had access to the
founder may have received quite different
instructions, so you tend to get a kind
of change to the situation of inertia
where change is resisted.The organization
becomes a goal in another self and it
all tends to become more bureaucratic
and in that sort of a situation it is
certainly understandable. If you think
of Aikido as something vital in your
daily life and you wanted to prepare
yourself physically, physiologically
and spiritually for a violent encounter
or to just deal with your daily life,
I think we have to be constant seekers.
The type of atmosphere, the type of
thinking and the type of focus that
an organization typically emphasizes
might not be the optimum one for personal
development, so I fortunately through
what we do with the website and the
activities that we are doing which are
independent of an organization means
I don't have to deal so much with that.
If
I ever were to begin teaching Aikido
actively again I am not really sure
that I would join any organization
or attempt to give ranking. Basically
I think that there's a kind of a status
quo, which is satisfactory, but borders
on mediocrity. In terms of technique
and the direction, there's not really
a forward dynamic thinking that I
can see that comes out of the organization,
so one of the purposes of the expo
is to create a situation, of a dynamic
mix of people from different kinds
of Aikido and other arts who can get
together. By just being in proximity
with a diverse mix of people like
that and being able to see their techniques,
feel their techniques, tends to be
really stimulating and if you look
at O'sensei's background, he did a
lot of cross training to, so those
who criticize the expo for venturing
into other areas which aren't related
to Aikido should maybe look back at
the history and see what O'sensei
and his teacher Sokaku Takeda did
and their personal training.
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| MI:
Would the development of Ueshiba Sensei's
Budo have been different had he not had his
Satori's (mystical experiences) |
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| SP:
Well one can only speculate. I did not
meet O'sensei; I arrived in Japan two months
to the day after his death, so what I know
of the founder is what I have understood from
talking with people who have been close to
him and reading a lot and thinking about the
subject. You have to understand that his so
called enlightenment is portrayed as a one
time thing, but when you look at the way he
was particularly in his later life, where
he is going in and out of consciousness, and
would talk as though he were a vehicle, and
he was channeling for the Kami or the Deity
and he adhered himself in those terms, so
when you see O'sensei, lets say on the mat
doing Aikido or you see someone who is channeling
for a higher energy, I tend to view that there
may have been something that stuck out in
his mind that he talked about. I think that
there may have been many experiences that
brought him closer to the universal spirit
and that he went in and out of that consciousness
and maybe even remained in that unconsciousness
for long periods of time especially as he
grew older and contemplated those things more.
You
know we talk as though we understand what
we mean by Satori and if I were to ask you,
or you ask me or we ask ten other people
to describe what we are talking about when
we say Satori I think we would get some
pretty different opinions. So words like
that I tend to handle kind of lightly because
I really don't know what people mean or
what images it might conger up in their
own consciousness. It is quite hard to say
but perhaps it was around 1925 but it is
very hard to pin down a date and you know
it could be a difference of experiences
and he had enlightenment like experiences
in Mongolia, also when they were captured/arrested
and prepared for execution. So I tend just
to listen to the stories but there's not
much I can do with it, as an historian.
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| MI:
What changes occurred later on to throw open
the doors to the wider public? |
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| SP:
I would recommend that readers take
a look at an editorial I did titled
"Is O'sensei really the founder
of modern Aikido?" basically to
answer that question you have to look
at how Aikido developed within Japan
and spread around the world after the
war and you will find that O'sensei
played a rather small role in that.
Of course he influenced the people who
did pass his teachings on and he was
there as a source of inspiration. The
people who actually did the leg work
and the instructions were for the most
part people like Shioda Sensei, Tohei
Sensei and some of the early Shihan's
who traveled Japan and other countries
around the world. |
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| MI:
There seems to be a marked contrast between
Tomiki Sensei's and Shioda Sensei's emphasis
and approaches. Would you throw some light
on this? |
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SP:
I have also written some editorials regarding
Tomiki Sensei and Shioda Sensei and they go
into quite some detail. Basically Tomiki Kenji
Sensei was influenced a lot by O'sensei but
also a lot by Kano Jigoro the founder of Judo,
and as well as being an excellent martial
artist he was an academic. A lot of what Tomiki
Kenji Sensei did later on with the art was
based on the Judo model much more than what
O'sensei was teaching.
O'sensei
was rather unorganized in terms of teaching
so Tomiki Sensei wanted to codify things in
a manner similar to what Kano did, who was
also an educator. Tomiki Aikido developed
it into a form that had competition, which
took place in the late 1950's and part of
it was that he wanted to give the Aikido club
the status of a normal university club, so
in order to do that the administration dictated
that a competitive form would have to be developed.
So part of this creation of the sport's system
and the system of competition was due to him
wanting to have a more beneficial status within
the Waseda University, so you have to factor
that into consideration also. I don't know
if he would have developed a system like that
had he not had that pressure from the university
administrators. Only the old timers within
the Tomiki Organization could answer that,
but I know that to be a fact.
O'sensei
and his pre-war teachings first and foremost
influenced Shioda Sensei and Shioda Sensei
did not study very much after the war from
O'sensei, so it developed into Yoshinkan
Aikido, which took place after he went off
on his own. Shioda Sensei had to do things
like teach large groups of people and that
caused him to modify and codify his teaching
methodology to deal with large groups of
people. Again, nonetheless there are interviews
with him where I have touched on that.
Click Next to Continue...
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