Personal Traits
Morihei Ueshiba regularly practiced cold water misogi, as well as other spiritual and religious rites. He viewed his studies of aikido in this light.
As a young man, Ueshiba was renowned for his incredible physical strength. He would later lose much of this muscle, which some believe changed the way he performed aikido technique
Ueshiba was said to be a simple but wise man, and a gifted farmer. In his later years, he was regarded as very kind and gentle as a rule, but there are also stories of terrifying scoldings delivered to his students. For instance, he once thoroughly chastised students for practicing jō (staff) strikes on trees without first covering them in protective padding. Another time, as students sneaked back into the dojo after a night of drinking and brawling, he smashed the first one through the door over the head with a bokken (wooden practice sword), and proceeded to scold them.
Morihei Ueshiba played the game of Go often. During one game with Sokaku Takeda, Takeda utilized the Goban as a weapon against a man he mistook for an assassin. The "assassin" was actually a friend of Ueshiba, and had arrived in a scarf due to bad weather. The scarf hid the man's identity, triggering Takeda's paranoia as, at the time, many people actually were trying to kill him.
Read more about this topic: Morihei Ueshiba
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