Morihei Ueshiba (植芝 盛平, Ueshiba Morihei; December 14, 1883 – April 26, 1969) was a Japanese martial artist and founder of the martial art of aikido. He is often referred to as "the founder" Kaiso (開祖) or Ōsensei (大先生/翁先生), "Great Teacher".
The son of a landowner from Tanabe, Ueshiba studied a number of martial arts in his youth, and served in the Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War. After being discharged in 1907, he moved to Hokkaido as the head of a pioneer settlement; here he met and studied with Takeda Sōkaku, the headmaster of Daitō-ryū Aiki-jūjutsu. On leaving Hokkaido in 1919, Ueshiba joined the Ōmoto-kyō movement, a Shinto sect, in Ayabe, where he served as a martial arts instructor and opened his first dojo. He accompanied the head of the Ōmoto-kyō group, Onisaburo Deguchi, on an expedition to Mongolia in 1924, where they were captured by Chinese troops and returned to Japan. The following year, he had a profound spiritual experience, stating that, "a golden spirit sprang up from the ground, veiled my body, and changed my body into a golden one." After this experience, his martial arts technique became gentler, with a greater emphasis on the control of ki.
Ueshiba moved to Tokyo in 1926, where he set up what would become the Aikikai Hombu Dojo. By this point he was comparatively famous in martial arts circles, and taught at this dojo and others around Japan, including in several military academies. In the aftermath of World War II the Hombu dojo was temporarily closed, but Ueshiba had by this point left Tokyo and retired to Iwama, and he continued training at the dojo he had set up there. From the end of the war until the 1960s, he worked to promote aikido throughout Japan and abroad. He died from liver cancer in 1969.
After Ueshiba's death, aikido continued to be promulgated by his students (many of whom became noted martial artists in their own right). It is now practiced around the world.
Morihei Ueshiba was born in Nishinotani village (now part of the city of Tanabe), Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, on December 14, 1883, the fourth child (and only son) born to Yoroku Ueshiba and his wife Yuki.
The young Ueshiba was raised in a somewhat privileged setting. His father Yoroku was a wealthy gentleman farmer and minor politician, being an elected member of the Nishinotani village council for 22 consecutive years. His mother Yuki was from the Itokawa clan, a prominent local family who could trace their lineage back to the Heian period. Ueshiba was a rather weak, sickly child and bookish in his inclinations. At a young age his father encouraged him to take up sumo wrestling and swimming and entertained him with stories of his great-grandfather Kichiemon, who was considered a very strong samurai in his era. The need for such strength was further emphasized when the young Ueshiba witnessed his father being attacked by followers of a competing politician.
A major influence on Ueshiba's early education was his elementary schoolteacher Tasaburo Nasu, who was a Shinto priest and who introduced Ueshiba to the religion. At the age of six Ueshiba was sent to study at the Jizōderu Temple, but had little interest in the rote learning of Confucian education. However, his schoolmaster Mitsujo Fujimoto was also a priest of Shingon Buddhism, and taught the young Ueshiba some of the esoteric chants and ritual observances of the sect, which Ueshiba found intriguing. His interest in Buddhism was sufficiently great that his mother considered enrolling him in the priesthood, but his father Yoroku vetoed the idea. Ueshiba went to Tanabe Higher Elementary School and then to Tanabe Prefectural Middle School, but left formal education in his early teens, enrolling instead at a private abacus academy, the Yoshida Institute, to study accountancy. On graduating from the academy, he worked at a local tax office for a few months, but the job did not suit him and in 1901 he left for Tokyo, funded by his father. Ueshiba Trading, the stationery business which he opened there, was short-lived; unhappy with life in the capital, he returned to Tanabe less than a year later after suffering a bout of beri-beri. Shortly thereafter he married his childhood acquaintance Hatsu Itokawa.
In 1903, Ueshiba was called up for military service. He failed the initial physical examination, being shorter than the regulation 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m). To overcome this, he stretched his spine by attaching heavy weights to his legs and suspending himself from tree branches; when he re-took the physical exam he had increased his height by the necessary half-inch to pass. He was assigned to the Osaka Fourth Division, 37th Regiment, and was promoted to corporal of the 61st Wakayama regiment by the following year; after serving on the front lines during the Russo-Japanese War he was promoted to sergeant. He was discharged in 1907, and again returned to his father's farm in Tanabe. Here he befriended the writer and philosopher Minakata Kumagusu, becoming involved with Minakata's opposition to the Meiji government's Shrine Consolidation Policy. He and his wife had their first child, a daughter named Matsuko, in 1911.
Ueshiba studied several martial arts during his early life, and was renowned for his physical strength during his youth. During his sojourn in Tokyo he studied Kitō-ryū jujutsu under Takisaburo Tobari, and briefly enrolled in a school teaching Shinkage-ryū. His training in Gotō-ha Yagyū-ryu under Masakatsu Nakai started in 1903 and continued until 1908; although this training was sporadic due to his military service, Ueshiba was granted a Menkyo Kaiden (certificate of "Total Transmission") in 1908. In 1901 he received some instruction from Tozawa Tokusaburōin in Tenjin Shin'yō-ryū jujutsu and he studied judo with Kiyoichi Takagi in Tanabe in 1911, after his father had a dojo built on the family compound to encourage his son's training. In 1907, after his return from the war, he was also presented with a certificate of enlightenment (shingon inkyo) by his childhood teacher Mitsujo Fujimoto.
In the early part of the 20th century, the prefectural government of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, were offering various grants and incentives for mainland Japanese groups willing to relocate there. At the time, Hokkaido was still largely unsettled by the Japanese, being occupied primarily by the indigenous Ainu. In 1910, Ueshiba travelled to Hokkaido in the company of his acquaintance Denzaburo Kurahashi, who had lived on the northern island before. His intent was to scout out a propitious location for a new settlement, and he found the site at Shirataki suitable for his plans. Despite the hardships he suffered on this journey (which included getting lost in snowstorms several times and an incident in which he nearly drowned in a freezing river), Ueshiba returned to Tanabe filled with enthusiasm for the project, and began recruiting families to join him. He became the leader of the Kishū Settlement Group, a collective of eighty-five pioneers who intended to settle in the Shirataki district and live as farmers; the group founded the village of Yubetsu (later Shirataki village) in August, 1912. Much of the funding for this project came from Ueshiba's father and his brothers-in-law Zenzo and Koshiro Inoue. Zenzo's son Noriaki was also a member of the settlement group.
Poor soil conditions and bad weather led to crop failures during the first three years of the project, but the group still managed to cultivate mint and farm livestock. The burgeoning timber industry provided a boost to the settlement's economy, and by 1918 there were over 500 families residing there. A fire in 1917 razed the entire village, leading to the departure of around twenty families. Ueshiba was attending a meeting over railway construction around 50 miles away, but on learning of the fire travelled back the entire distance on foot. He was elected to the village council that year, and took a prominent role in leading the reconstruction efforts. In the summer of 1918, Hatsu gave birth to their first son, Takemori.