Martial Arts Stories

As the martial arts left the Oriental world and literally spread to nearly every country on the face of the earth, there has been a gap created that people have not been able to breech. That gap was first caused by the fact that Westerners did not understand certain fundamental aspects of Oriental thought. Where the Western mind was focused on facts, intellect, and reason, the Oriental mind turned to aesthetics, intuition, and freedom. Where Westerners fought for physical freedom, the Orientals developed personal freedom of mind and spirit. Westerners desired and sought open spaces creating in themselves an individuality unheard of in the East, while Orientals developed a highly integrated society where the individual only exist as a part of the group, from living in a country without the vast open spaces of a continent.

No system has had a greater influence on the development of the modern martial arts than the one known as Daito Ryu. Known primarily as an Aikijujutsu system, according to the students of Sokaku Takeda, the system was actually much more comprehensive in nature than just being an Aikijujutsu, empty hand, system of combat. Like most ancient Ryu, the system was designed to teach total combat to the practitioners from every weapon of the time, to combat skills applicable to Ashigaru (foot soldiers), as well as, Bushi, the upper echelon of the Samurai clans. Thus Daito Ryu as a Bujutsu or Bugei, martial arts system, taught Jujutsu, Aikijujutsu, and weaponry.