The Importance of a Pure Heart

Jay Gluck was a young man trying to make a living as a writer and photographer in Post-World War II Japan. He sold an article on the exotic fighting art of Karate to True magazine and started looking for another equally exciting subject for men's magazines.

He was able to convince a slight old man to perform a filmed demonstration for his article. Gluck secured the assistance of several off-duty Air Force MPs and the use of a few spare Judo mats. The young men were all experienced fighters and athletes with a knowledge of karate and judo, and were even armed with a few bokken. Gluck set up his camera with high expectations.

And his expectations should've been high, because the old martial artist he had engaged for the filmed demo was Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido.

The MPs attacked Ueshiba for several minutes, but never laid a hand on the man. Instead, they broke out into amazed laughter and childlike giggling as they fell over and into each other while Ueshiba danced out of the way.

Later, the editors of True rejected the film as staged. They found it impossible to believe the little old man could keep a group of sturdy young men from easily catching him. They pointed out the MPs often weren't even looking at Ueshiba, and their stupid grins indicated -- obviously -- that they weren't taking the attack seriously.

Gluck, a well educated man, was struck by a Biblical passage during the filming. Luke 4:28, "And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath. And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he (Jesus), passing through the midst of them, went his way." And also John 10:39 "Again they tried to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands." Gluck expressed these thoughts to both a minister who viewed his pictures, and Ueshiba himself. Both men agreed with Gluck, but Ueshiba (an adherent to a splinter Shinto mystic group) claimed, "In learning aiki, you must make yourself pure. He who was already pure, intuitively knew aiki from the beginning."

Jay Gluck wrote a book: Zen Combat, and you can read more about his adventures in martial arts.