Morihei Ueshiba

Japanese martial artist and founder of Aikido, "the way of harmonizing energy." Born to a samurai family in 1883, he trained in jujutsu, kenjutsu, and sojutsu, and was deeply influenced by the Omoto-kyo Shinto sect of Onisaburo Deguchi. After a profound spiritual experience in 1925, he formulated an art whose purpose was not victory over an enemy but the cultivation of love and the reconciliation of the practitioner with the universe. Known to his students as O-Sensei (Great Teacher), he is the source of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive contemplative-martial traditions.