Aikidō (合気道), "the way of harmonising energy", is a modern Japanese martial art (budō) founded by Ueshiba Morihei (植芝盛平, 1883–1969). It grew out of the Daitō-ryū aiki-jūjutsu of Takeda Sōkaku together with its founder's religious and philosophical convictions, and it took the name aikidō in the early 1940s. Rather than meeting force with force, it sets out to blend with an attack and redirect it, resolving an encounter with throws and joint controls rather than by destroying the attacker.
The founder
Ueshiba Morihei, honoured by aikidō practitioners as Ōsensei (the great teacher), was born in 1883 at Tanabe in the old province of Kii, now part of Wakayama. He trained in several jūjutsu and weapon traditions as a young man, but the decisive influence on his technique was Daitō-ryū aiki-jūjutsu, which he studied under Takeda Sōkaku from 1915, and his enrolment is recorded in Takeda's surviving ledgers. Just as important to the art's character was his involvement, from about 1919, with the Ōmoto religion and its leader Deguchi Onisaburō, whose spiritual vision Ueshiba came to express through his martial practice. His art was never fixed: it changed markedly across his long life, growing softer and more openly religious in his later years, so the documented teaching is best kept separate from the cosmology in which he wrapped it.
Neutralising aggression by blending with an attacker's force and redirecting it, resolving conflict without needless harm rather than meeting force with force.
From jūjutsu to a way
What Ueshiba taught in the 1920s and early 1930s was still close to its Daitō-ryū parent, and he called it by a series of names, among them aiki-jūjutsu and aiki-budō. In 1931 he opened the Kōbukan dōjō in Tōkyō, a hard training hall that its own students remembered as the "hell dōjō" for the severity of its practice. The name aikidō settled on the art only in the early 1940s, in the wartime climate that pressed the Japanese martial arts towards unified names and national purposes. Much of the form practised today dates from after 1945, when Ueshiba, in retreat at Iwama in Ibaraki, deepened his work with the wooden sword and staff, and from the postwar organisation built largely by his son.
Blending and redirection
At the centre of aikidō lie a few principles rather than a fixed catalogue of techniques. Irimi, entering directly into an attack, and tenkan, turning to lead it past, are the two basic responses, and both depend on kokyū, the timing and breath power that lets a defender meet force without clashing against it. From a grab, a strike or a weapon attack, the practitioner blends with the incoming movement, takes the attacker's balance, and finishes with a throw such as iriminage or kotegaeshi, or with one of the controlling pins counted from ikkyō onward. Falling safely, the art of ukemi, is trained as carefully as throwing. Many lines also practise the paired wooden sword and staff, the aiki-ken and aiki-jō, treating the empty-handed art and the weapons as expressions of one movement.
Succession and the Aikikai
Aikidō is carried today not by a single inherited headmaster in the koryū sense but by a hereditary office, the Dōshu, within the Ueshiba family, together with the Aikikai Foundation that it heads. The foundation was recognised in 1948, and its headquarters, the Aikikai Hombu Dōjo, remains in Tōkyō. The line of Dōshu runs from Ueshiba Morihei to his son Ueshiba Kisshōmaru (1921–1999), who did more than anyone to organise the postwar art and carry it abroad, and then to Kisshōmaru's son Ueshiba Moriteru (born 1951); Moriteru's son Ueshiba Mitsuteru has in turn been named to continue the line. The Aikikai is the largest aikidō body, although it does not speak for every school that uses the name.
Branches and disagreements
Several of Ueshiba's senior students founded enduring lines of their own, and these are best read as honest variations rather than as rival claims to one true aikidō. Shioda Gōzō (1915–1994), a prewar pupil, founded the Yoshinkan, known for a firmer and more applied approach that found a place in parts of Japanese police training. Tōhei Kōichi (1920–2011), once the chief instructor at Hombu, left to build the Ki Society around his own emphasis on the cultivation of ki. Tomiki Kenji (1900–1979), who also held senior rank in judo under Kanō Jigorō, introduced a form of competitive matches in his Shōdōkan aikidō, a step that many other lines reject. These schools differ over how far aikidō should be a contest, a means of self-defence, or a spiritual discipline, and the disagreement between them is genuine.
The art today
Aikidō spread quickly after the war and is now practised around the world, with Aikikai-affiliated bodies coordinated through the International Aikido Federation and many independent organisations beside them. Most lines do not compete, which has fed a long-running debate about how well the art holds up against a resisting opponent; its defenders reply that it was never meant to be a sport, and that its aim is to neutralise aggression without needless harm. Approached as a martial art, as a physical discipline, or as a philosophy of non-destructive resolution, aikidō remains among the most widely practised and most distinctive of the modern Japanese budō.