Talk:Morihei Ueshiba

Article improvement - citations
I'm currently working - slowly and sporadically - on bring this article up to first Good, and then hopefully Featured status over the coming months. Any assistance would naturally be appreciated. One question I'd like to pose is the issue of reference formatting; given that Ueshiba's biographical information will likely be drawn from a few extensive sources (the introduction to Budo, Training with the Master, Invincible Warrior and Life in Aikido, if my copy ever arrives...), it seems to me to make more sense to rearrange the references as short citations. WP:CITEVAR requires consensus here before doing so, though, so I'd be grateful for other people's thoughts on the matter. Yunshui 雲 &zwj; 水  13:25, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Go for it.Peter Rehse (talk) 13:42, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality: supernatural abilities, Morihei's friends and enemies, etc
I just noticed this article was submitted for GA, and I wish I'd raised this question sooner. This article fails to address the numerous claims that Morihei Ueshiba displayed superhuman talents throughout his life, such as feats of incredible strength, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and so on. He claimed that he could dodge bullets by seeing a beam of light ahead of the bullet's path, and numerous stories tell of Morihei reading minds. Others include taming wild bears, and even being a supernaturally gifted farmer. The stories have a Paul Bunyan-like air to them. Many are quite contradictory, such as examples of Morihei not knowing his own strength and sending innocent bystanders flying with a shrug, or dragging a man for miles without noticing, or accidentally breaking the ribs of horses he rode with his mighty leg muscles. Quite the opposite of the sensitivity and self-control one would expect of an aikido master.You could argue that these claims are absurd on their face and so it's unencyclopedic to repeat them, but one of the main sources for these tall tales is John Stevens, who is relied on heavily. Three of Stevens' books are cited some 18 times here. Which tells us that a Wikipedia editor decided to pick and choose when to trust Stevens and when to ignore him. Using a source that selectively violates the no original research policy.The is neutrality problem is exacerbated by the article ignoring sources which challenge the truth of the tall tales about Moriehi, and which analyze why such stories were created. In particular, I think this article should include the opinions of Ellis Amdur from his book Dueling with O-Sensei, as well as various online sources, where he theorizes that Morihei allowed the spread of the wild tales and encouraged the belief that he was a Shinto god as a way to deal with his his anxiety of influence in relation to Takeda Sokaku and Onisaburo Deguchi. Amdur argues that Takeda Sokaku was not the evil man that Morihei later made him out to be, as a way of forging his own identity. Amdur also notes that biographers of Morihei fail to make clear the imperialist and right-wing nature of Morihei's close associates in the prewar period, which calls into question the image of him purely as a peacemaker. Specifically, Morihei's efforts to end the US oil embargo can be seen as an effort to give Imperial Japan a free hand to conquer its neighbors. Ellis Amdur isn't alone in making these points. See articles by Gaku Homma, who was an uchi-deshi in the last years of Morihei's life, .I should probably tag this article with Neutrality, but for now I think the GA nomination should be reconsidered until the published sources are given a more balanced treatment. Note that many feel that the mythologizing of Morihei Ueshiba is disrespectful and dehumanizing to the man, and would want a sober, rational assessment of the myths as a way to properly honor his actual accomplishments. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 15:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd love to use Duelling with O-Sensei, but to the best of my knowledge Ellis published it himself. A case could certainly be made that he's an authority on the subject (he quite clearly is!), but - again, to the best of my knowledge - he hasn't ever been published by a recognised publishing house, at least not on the martial arts (I'm not sure about his psychology books). Might fall afoul of WP:SELF, I don't know. My copy's on indefinite loan to a friend and has been for a few years, but if you've got access to the text, Dennis, I've certainly no objection myself against putting something in to balance the Yoda-like portrait that one usually gets of Ueshiba.
 * Given the state of GA at the moment we probably have at least a month to make changes before the review gets picked up, so let's get some of this stuff in there. I'm hoping to get hold of a copy of A Life In Aikido fairly soon (by Kisshomaru, so probably a bit biased, but looks fairly thorough) which we can also use to pad it out. Yunshui 雲 水 19:40, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Ellis is essentially reading Stevens and other historians alongside us, and combining it with his recollection of conversations he had with Terry Dobson, Kazuo Chiba and others who knew Morihei Ueshiba,and then giving his opinion on the plausibility and interpretation of the mythic feats we read about. So it's within the realm of commentary and opinion -- Ellis is an expert on Ellis's opinions. I think it should be written in the form, "Stevens has said Ueshiba tamed bears, used kiai to make crashing streetcars land upright, read minds, etc. Ellis Amdur has said he thinks the reasons for these extraordinary myths are ..." Gaku Homma's commentaries are similar, self-published on the web, but they are an accurate representation of Homma's opinions about events he witnessed. In the case of both Amdur and Homma, I think I've seen interviews published on the Aikido Journal website which repeat the same opinions they self-published, so if I can find them it would help overcome that issue.Leaving that aside, we have to either reject Stevens entirely, as unreliable, or else accurately portray what he said about Morihei Ueshiba in at least two of his books, that he really did, according to Stevens, do magic.I'll see what I can do to help bring this into the article. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I just remembered that all of the chapters in Dueling with O-Sensei were originally published in Aikido Journal, so the WP:SPS issue is avoided there too. The journal has editorial control and so the contents are reliable sources as far as that goes. The book form is self-published, but we should be able to accept that they are essentially the same as the journal articles. If anyone really wanted to challenge the source, we could locate and cite the original journal articles for the same effect.We should locate other sources that are also skeptical of Ueshiba's superpowers as well: our goal is to represent fairly both those who assert he did wondrous miracles and those who are skeptics. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:29, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It sounds to me that we are talking about a Controversies Section - it should not disrupt the main body of text which is a pretty neutral. The traditions of Ueshiba's super-natural escapades do not permeate all of Aikido and I think one should be careful not to attribute too much weight to some of the more outlandish.Peter Rehse (talk) 06:49, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * No, having a controversy section is acceptable, especially given that it's easier to stuff it all in its own section. But ideally each point of dispute should be placed in context, or in chronological order, per WP:CRITS, "Avoid sections and articles focusing on criticisms or controversies". So differing opinions about the real intent of the Mongolian expedition belong in that part of the narrative. Claims that Japanese officers broke their hands on O-sensei's head in basic training belong in the part of the article that recounts his enlistment in the Army. Discussion of the claim that he was a Shinto god belongs in the postwar period. And so on.I know it's easier said than done. This is a very challenging biography because this is an enigmatic man, and one of our most thorough sources, John Stevens, is the one blandly asserting Morihei could "use the Force" to do magic. So given the choice between nothing and a controversies section, we could have a controversies section. But even better would be to upmerge all such contend into the appropriate point in his timeline.However, there's another aspect: the re-interpretation, and re-invention of who Morihei Ueshiba was after his death. Gaku Homma says (see Aikido for Life) that latecomers, often aikidoka who didn't know Morihei, invented their own imagined O-sensei to further their own goals and help create the international brand aikido. That would go in a section at the end of the article, like a Legacy section or Legend section. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:08, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that having a "Legend" (or "legendary abilities" or "mythology") section is far preferable to having a "Controversy" (or "criticism") section. Cesiumfrog (talk) 01:51, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Kisshomaru vs Stevens
I'm partway through Kisshomaru Ueshiba's biography of his father, and I have to say emphatically that I find it far more reliable and plausible than John Stevens's work. In Invincible Warrior (the title speaks volumes), Stevens claims Morihei once dragged a huge bundle of kudzu vines down a road, and accidentally snagged a man in the process, dragging him for miles but Morihei doesn't notice because of his superhuman strength, and he says he played tug of war with draft horses, and was immune to cold, and could "read the character" of any person who previously touched water he bathed in. As just added, Stevens credulously reported that Morihei twice dodged bullets in a firing squad. This is a sloppy mixup in The Shambhala Guide to Aikido. In Invincible Warrior, Stevens is less muddled: in Manchuria Morihei was the victim of mock execution torture by the Chinese. At a different time, in a bandit attack, Morihei said he could dodge the bandits' bullets because he saw beams of light proceeding them. Yeas later, Morihei boasted that he could dodge bullets and so a firing squad was set up to test this. Morihei somehow teleported behind the marksmen when they fired (Invincible Warrior pp. 60-61).In contrast, Kisshomaru's description of his father's life events is not so hyperbolic, and he repeatedly shows a dispassionate willingness to point out weaknesses, flaws and mistakes on his father's part. He points out that Morihei's careless attitude about finances placed a serious burden on his wife and children, crediting Hatsu with her resourcefulness in keeping the children fed when Morihei's mind was elsewhere. Kisshomaru's description of his father's teenage battle to defend some fishermen against rich profiteers, and his father's time in the army, are far more believable and balanced. The choices Morihei makes later in life make much more sense in Kisshomaru's humanized version; Steven's version of Morihei is illogical because he presents him as infallible. Morihei's failure to help the fishermen explains his motives and tactics in his later successful efforts to protect the temples in his district, for example. Stevens whitewashes that failure so the tale doesn't hang together.I think the body of this article should cite Kisshomaru's A Life in Aikido as the main source, and citations of Stevens should be removed. A new section, Posthumous myths and legends should catalog the list of supernatural powers, and even godhood, attributed to Morihei. It is in this section where we can cite Stevens, since he is the main proponent of these supernatural claims. This would be an appropriate place to discuss the debunking of these claims by Gaku Homma, Ellis Amdur, and others. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:57, 19 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I am going to delete the Devereux addition mainly because it does not fit into the text - it was just tossed in all by itself.Peter Rehse (talk) 06:48, 19 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Fair enough about deletion of what I wrote; am pretty new to Wikipedia, and understand your reasons... Matthew Devereux  — Preceding undated comment added 18:59, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

TFAR
Today's featured article/requests/Morihei Ueshiba --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:19, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

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Inconsistency concerning Omoto-kyo??
Hi Wikipeople. The article states "His association with the extreme right-wing is understandable when one considers that Ōmoto-kyō's view of world peace was of a benevolent dictatorship by the Emperor of Japan, with other nations being subjugated under Japanese rule." However, the page on Omoto-kyo doesn't really make any reference to this at all. The citation for the above quote is a martial arts encyclopedia. Are we sure this is a decent description of the religion? I have no idea at all - I'm here for info, not an expert. 2A01:CB15:3FA:B900:D5DE:77F1:D3DA:1829 (talk) 14:02, 6 February 2023 (UTC)