Furuya Sensei posted this to his Daily Message on January 5, 2003.
I saw this poem inscribed on the tang of a sword the other day - what a beautiful poem befitting a samurai warrior!
Dozei no Momo mo Sakura mo tsuzuku beshi
Ichiban yari no ume no sakigake
You companions of Momo and Sakura follow after me
I the Ume are the first to ride into the enemy's line!
- Shokusan nin, the poet
In the traditional Japanese custom of New Year's, it is a time of renewal and a time to make a new start in one's life. For O'Sensei, it is a “sacred" time which literally goes back to the creation of the Universe.
Mircea Eliade, a renown professor of world religions, referred to this as "sacred time and space" or the "renewal of sacred time.” It is for similar reasons that we celebrate Christmas, to renew or to revisit a very sacred event of the birth of Christ. By "re-living" or recreating this important moment in time, we bring ourselves close to this significant religious experience. In similar light, we celebrate the New Year as also a recreation of a symbolic "birth of new life" with the New Year.
For the New Year, I have thought very seriously about the future of Aikido and as so many of us are anxious to move forward and create the Aikido want for ourselves. Before we can achieve this “sacred" privilege, it is our obligation first and foremost to understand and master what Aikido was first intended to be - a martial art brought to its ultimate level approaching a distant realm in which we can achieve a profound "spiritual" awakening within our selves which may not only deeply effect our own personal lives but transform the thinking of this entire world towards peace.
Please train hard.
Note: The plum is the first to blossom in the New Year, the cherry blossoms and peach blossoms come much later. . . . .