Sokaku Takeda

Morihei Ueshiba

Onisaburo Degushi

Born on December 14, 1883 at Tanabe (Wakayama Prefecture), Japan. With a weak body build and oftenly ill, his parents encourage him to start practicing Sumo Wrestling and swimming.

He moved to Tokyo at an early age and during the night started to learn and practice the ancient arts of Jujutsu, Kito-Ryu y Ken-Jutsu (sword) at a Shinkage-Ryu school (dojo).

In  1903 he joined the infantry group of the Imperial Army of Japan in which he learned the bayonet (spear) combat art.

In 1910  he established his family at the Hokkaido island and five years later, in 1915, met his most important teacher, Sokaku Takeda.  Because of Ueshiba´s demonstrated abilities Takeda decided to teach him the secret techniques of Daito-Ryu.

In 1919 he was notified that his father was seriously ill so he quickly departed together with his family to his home town to join his father.  Those circumstances made Ueshiba to give away his land and house to Sokaku Takeda thanking him by his teachings.

On his way, he heard about a great religious priest named Onisaburo Degushi from the Omote-Kyo religious sect, close to Tokyo.  Entristecido por el gran cariño que tenía hacia sus padres, decide visitarlo para poder rezar y pedir la curación de su padre.

At his arrival to Tanabe, he was notified that his father had died two days ago.  Depressed because of that, he lived some months very lonely and thinking on his family.  Some time later he decided to establish his family at Ayabe, close to the Omote-Kyo religious sect and founded his own Dojo "Ueshiba  Juku", in which he was continuosly visited by his teacher Sokaku Takeda.  Later on he began to develop his own Budo idea and techniques.

He was later critizised because he changed the Art name during a period of time in which his teacher was paralized.

He named it Ueshiba Ryu, Aiki-Jutsu, Aikibujutsu, Tenshin Aikibudo, Takemusu-Aiki, and finally, Aikido, registered for the first time in 1942.

For that time the training was so rigurous and the combat techniques so effective and hard that the dojo was referred to as Jigoku Dojo (Dojo from Hell).  During that time he trained his most famous students like Kenji Tomiki, Gozo Shioda, Minoru Mochizuki and many others.

Many years later and fifteen years before he died, Master Ueshiba added to the Aikido more spirituality as we presently know it.

Today, Aikido is practiced in many countries around the world and it was declared as the ART OF PEACE by the United Nations Organization.