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[mateo]

I think Rehse will be in agreement with me here, as will others with experience living in Japan, on the use of the terms 'budo' and 'bujutsu'.

I think sometimes that aikidoka and judoka have their own idiosyncratic ways of looking at the word budo based upon their respective Founders take on the term.

However if we asked a jujutsu instructor in your local Himeji if he practised budo I think he would unblinkingly respond "Yes" and if you stated that you thought he was practising "bujutsu" and not "budo" I believe that he would laugh and think it absurd to differentiate.

I'm taking some license here but I believe that Shioda Gozo stated something to the effect of "There are many paths to the summit but there is only one goal." Both Ko Ryu forms and Gendai Budo may lead their practitioners to a state of enlightenment and in this way they are both 'budo'.

It is however sometimes expedient to use the terms 'budo' and 'bujutsu' to divide arts based upon primary emphasis and this was used to great effect by the respected Mr. Donn Draeger however I don't think that this really conforms to the actual use of the terms in Japan and much of the newer work in English on the subject seeks to reflect this. I think Kano Jigaro did however differentiate the terms in this way and judoka often follow suit.

I think however that rather than wrestling with the semantics you are actually concerned with martial feasibility of aikido technique as taught in the dojo.

I practised Daito-ryu with the then Takumakai, now Hakuho-ryu, Group, while I was in Osaka. Their technique was often severe in the kind of damage it sought to do and was done with great percision and subtlety. Very dramatic finishes with crushingly real results held in check. BUT I often thought that one of my hapkido brethren or a good judoka or wrestler would have cleared the aikijujutsu dojo out given their greater experience in knowing how to APPLY the simpler, less severe waza they knew from practising on resisting and unpredictably moving partners.

We know of course that wrestling is NOT 'budo' although it has a martial history and martial applications. There is no conscious effort at self cultivation and looking for deeper philosophical meaning in the sport.

I have no doubt that the daito-ryu practised by Okabayashi-sensei is a budo form in that its exponents do believe that the waza will instill greater understanding of the world at large and its inner workings in the practitioner.

I also feel that the aiki budo I was exposed while in Shizuoka by Mochizuki Minoru sought to be and was successful at being a budo form despite being less martial. I think perhaps it was more so due to the degree of importance it placed upon character cultivation and the education of the practitioner.

If it were even less martial and more dance-like it may be that there would not be enough of the martial applications left in the art for one to associate it with any kind of fighting technique at all. At that point I guess one could cease to call it budo. But who will draw the line that says this is too far and that is still legitimate budo. I guess I think it is more practical to acknowledge that something originates from a martial backgound and choose the art with the level of realism (as we perceive it) that we are comfortable with to practise personally.

Sorry to talk at length on a long dead thread but I thought that there were things still left to be said on a interesting topic.