14/08/2026
Here is a popular quotation from "The Art of Peace", translated by John Stevens:
"The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace."
Here is the original Japanese quotation, from "Aiki Shinzui" (合気神髄):
合気はまず己れから始まる。己れを磨き、己れに与えられた天命を果たせ。
Here is a direct translation of the Japanese above:
"Aiki begins with oneself. Polish yourself and fulfill the heavenly mission that has been given to you."
If you noticed - "The Art of Peace" does not exist in the original Japanese, as it does not appear in in any of the original Japanese quotations from which these quotations were drawn, since... it's not really a phrase that Morihei Ueshiba even used.
What John Stevens did was to replace the words "Aiki" and "Aikido" where they appeared in the original Japanese text with "The Art of Peace", significantly altering the nuance and context of the quotations.
Actually,this was done at the request of the publisher, for marketing purposes - hoping to profit off of the enormous commerical success of "The Art of War" by producing a "companion volume".
It worked fairly well commercially, but at the cost of altering and rearranging the original meanings and, particularly in the case of the "The Art of Peace" which consists entirely of out of context quotations, eliminating the context of the statements that would actually give them meaning.
Here are some thoughts on that from Stan Pranin:
"Recently, due to the publication of a series of books whose authorship has been attributed to Morihei Ueshiba, founder of aikido, I have felt compelled to weigh in on the subject of what O-Sensei actually did write during his career as a martial artist. The answer is in brief, 'almost nothing.'
..the published books containing quotations attributed to Morihei Ueshiba available in various Western languages are based on “sanitized” Japanese versions of Morihei’s words. They have been edited and simplified with an eye to presenting text accesible to modern readers, but are devoid of many of those terms and metaphors actually used by the founder of aikido which failed to match the tenor of the times."
"O-Sensei's Spiritual Writings: Where did they really come from?" by Stanley Pranin
(link in comments)