by Beth Shibata — Aikido Today, Spring 1988, Vol. 2, No. 1

Abundant Peace, by John Stevens, Shambhala Publications, 1987.

There is always difficulty in writing the biography of an exceptional person whose exploits and abilities beggar belief. The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, was such a person. The stories of his physical feats and of the seemingly magical feats of his later years are already legendary. This makes telling his life-story a formidable task. And the task is even more difficult because so many people who knew O’sensei are still living — from his son, the current Doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba, to live-in students, to contemporaries.

Biographer John Stevens does an admirable job of sorting out the various tales by providing a good deal of information in an historical context. And, as I read Abundant Peace, I sensed Stevens’s earnest desire to make O’sensei understandable and accessible to a Western audience largely unfamiliar with the more arcane aspects of Japanese spirituality that form the foundation of Aikido.

A number of O’sensei’s abilities bordered on the unbelievable, particularly his strength and his sixth sense. Stevens, however, does not dwell on these topics. Instead, he encourages the reader to look at O’sensei as a gifted and unique person who spent his life searching for something beyond the mundane — someone who blended the spiritual and physical into a transcendent form.

Because he urges us to view O’sensei in this way, it is easier to forgive the occasional shifts Stevens makes from the objective coolness of a historian to a warmer, more affectionate tone, like the one in which people discuss favorite, eccentric uncles.

Abundant Peace, whose title is taken from the translation of O’sensei’s first name, is organized in three sections — The Man, The Martial Artist, and The Message. Each section deals with a major component of O’sensei’s uniqueness. The thread that holds them together is O’sensei’s spiritual and mystical beliefs, the faith in a greater truth, which led him to and helped him along a difficult but rewarding path.

In the first part, Stevens chronicles many stories — stories about O’sensei’s illness as a child, about his pursuit of martial arts as a young man, and about his feats of strength in his early adult life. The stories are offered here with the addition of the context in which they occurred, although the author acknowledges those areas where little information exists. And Stevens’ telling is not limited to the difficulties that O’sensei himself faced; the hardships his family endured are chronicled as well.

The second part, which covers O’sensei’s training in the martial arts, reveals the roots and sources from which Aikido was eventually born. Stevens discusses the many influences on O’sensei: sumo, aiki jutsu, sword styles, staff styles, and the universals of ki and kokyu (breathing). He also traces the changes the core of Aikido underwent through the 40 years that O’sensei spent refining his art. And his translations of a number of O’sensei’s doka (short poems) may provide food for thought for those trying to understand particular movements.

In the third part, Stevens provides a concise summary of the basic concepts of Aikido. The triangle, square, and circle — concepts frequently applied to body movements — are given their metaphysical significance in Aikido. The metaphysical aspects may seem odd to a reader more comfortable with logical and rational frameworks, but they show how closely knit the spiritual and physical were for O’sensei. Here, in “The Message”, there seems to be a plea to the Aikido community to truly pay attention to O’sensei’s teachings. For as Aikido developed a following and the number of instructors grew, so did the discord, much to O’sensei’s dismay. The lessons Aikido teaches seems not to have gone far enough.