Morihei Ueshiba and Kisshomaru Ueshiba book: Budo: Teachings of the Founder of Aikido

Review of aikigeorge@msn.com from Bellevue, WA

Aikido's Founder in his own words and pictures!

Another important book for anyone interested in understanding O-Sensei's Aikido. Often we find people who express deeply held opinions on what the Founder said or believed based entirely on second and third hand information. This book contains the words of O-Sensei himself along with copious pictures of the founder doing technique. Dating from the 1930's these words and pictures come from a time in which O-Sensei's Enlightenment experience had reshaped his vision of Budo. At the same time at the age of around fifty years old he was still at the peak of his physical powers so the Aikido of this time illustrates the balance between the martial and the spiritual elements of Aikido more than at any other time in its history.

Review of Lauchlin Murray (lamurray@hotmail.com) from Fredericton, Canada

An historical resource for the commited aikidoist

This book is valuable to the serious student of aikido in that a series of photographs during a short segment of O-Sensei's (Morihei Ueshiba's) life and practise of aikido can be analyzed. This pictures though were for a specific purpose and I think one or two of the sequences are not correctly replaced from the original work to which they belonged. For those in the aikido community who fuss over at which stage of Ueshiba's practise had the most to offer the modern aikidoist, this book only could stir up the debate. This is not a book that comes off my shelf often to look at exercises to practise, but I appreciate it in my academic approach to the art. Non-the-less, the book belongs in any library on aikido.