Martial arts and their misinterpretation
Sun 07:33 PST. Posted by staff@riposte.org.
A couple of days ago, when I was writing the address of my dojo's website onto the pavement with chalk (with the aim of drawing attention to martial arts, especially to aikido), a little kid was coming by with his mother. As he saw what I was doing he asked his mother what I was writing there. After having received the answer from her, he immediately asked her mother "What is aikido?" I was curious about what people not doing martial arts might know about aikido so I waited patiently until the woman said something. She tried, I think to the best of her knowledge, to give an answer even a child can easily understand, and she surprised me with the following answer: "Well, aikido is some kind of fighting sport." This was a surprise because I had never thought about aikido as "fighting", and certainly never thought about it as a sport. I could only say something like this: "Well, aikido in reality is not fighting and not even a sport." Starting with this short interaction we had a nice talk there in which I could explain a little bit more about what was characteristic about aikido, and what was the deeper meaning behind it.
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