A while back Black belt Magazine ran an interview with Kondo Sensei. In the interview, he stated that there are certain teachers who claim to be teaching Daito Ryu but in fact are not and atleast part of the reason was because Takeda Sokaku actually taught them Aiki Kenpo as opposed to Aiki Jujutsu.

There can be several discussions just on that but what I would like to know is this: Is there really an "Aiki Kenpo" and if so did Takeda teach it?

There may very well be a modern hybrid art called Aiki Kenpo, made by someone who mixed Karate and Aikido. But that is not what I am interested in. That exists in all sorts of flavors.

I've read that article. To give Kondo the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the translator did not adquetely express in English what Kondo was saying. That being said, there are a number of inaccuracies, half truths and illogical statements in that article.

To start, the most glaring is that Tokumune Soke taught Ono Ha Itto Ryu as a kind of 'trick' on the majority of unsuspecting students (if I had the magazine still I'd quote directly). He basically asserts that Kenjutsu was not actually important to Tokumune Soke, and that students were taught it to distract them from the real study of the Jujutsu. This doesn't make sense on MANY levels. First, why were the those who often lead the training, as well as being the highest ranking, instructed in the sword? Tokumune Soke as stated in the Aikido Journal interview that the sword is an integral aspect of Daito Ryu Aikibudo. Lastly, it seems strange that ALL other teachers of DR from the Tokumune lineage teach the sword EXCEPT Kondo. The simplest answer is probably the correct one here, and we can state that the sword WAS in fact important to Tokumune Soke, but not so much to Kondo.

In terms of the 'Aiki Kenpo' thing, I don't really understand what is being said here. Tokumune did chage the methodology of teaching DR, because Sogaku left it fairly disorganized. Things like the dan system were put in place, and there was a specific order to how the techniques were to be transmitted. Tokumune called this 'Aiki Budo'--within Aiki Budo are the aikijujutsu techniques; also within it is Aiki Kenpo which are the striking technques of DR. So this could be what the article is talking about?



--Chris

Excellent! Thank you.
This is pretty much what I had in mind.
The article appeared a while ago and has been in the back of my mind ever since. It came back to the front in class last week when we were talking about atemi

Actually there were some mis-translations and there was also some rather free editing done by the magazines editors in this particular article. I actually scanned it into one of my files (if I can ever find it again). I will re-read it. I did speak to Kondo sensei at the time of the magazine's release and asked many of the same questions.

Howard...how are you doing? Haven't heard from you in a while.

Hmmm...interesting. Maybe Jose or Howard can better explain this buisness about the sword being unimportant, as well as Tokumune teaching, really, the only 'true' form of D.R. to Kondo? Not trying to stir it up, actually wondering.
--Chris

Hi Chris,

I'll defer to Jose or somebody else. My knowledge of Daito-ryu is not deep at all.

Regards, Howard