On the elevator in my building after aikido class today, I ran into a neighbour (the guy who's been playing his music full blast since he moved in, and finally, after repeated requests by pretty much everyone on the floor, he's finally stopped). I mentioned that I was taking aikido, "You know, the one Steven Seagal does in his movies."
"Oh, yeah," he said, with a slight smirk. "That's a pretty passive martial art, isn't it?"
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This, as you can imagine, didn't sit too well with me, having just come from a class where we spent the best part of an hour doing nikkyo.
Passive, sez he! I should have showed him my bruises. Or better still, demo'd nikkyo on him (though I recall my Sensei saying that nikkyo was NOT a party trick, to be used against those who don't know how to react to it).
I get the impression sometimes that aikido as an art is not taken terribly seriously by practitioners of other disciplines.
Anyway, I just said to him, calmly, that aikido was defensive, rather than passive. I should have added, that it involved a lot of skill in NOT breaking your opponent's arms or other body parts, but by that time he'd reached his door and gone inside.
Passive, indeed.
Ow.