114「伊都のをのこり靈はらう伊都魂を光の中にたける雄武び。」- 植芝盛平
Original Waka1
伊都のをの
植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)
こり靈はらう
伊都魂を
光の中に
たける雄武び
Translation
“Itsu’s man, knotted spirit purged and cleansed—Itsu’s spirit bright light, in the midst and center—raging fierce martial war cry!” – Morihei Ueshiba
Waka Translation
Itsu’s own man,
knotted spirit purged and cleansed—
Itsu’s spirit bright
light, in the midst and center—
raging fierce martial war cry!
Morihei Ueshiba
歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）2
伊都の男（いつのをの）
残霊祓ふ（こりたまはらふ）
伊都魂を（いつたまを）
光の中に（ひかりのなかに）
猛る雄叫び（たけるおたけび）
植芝盛平
Bungo Romanization
Itsu no ono
kori tama harau
itsu tama o
hikari no naka ni
takeru otakebi
Ueshiba Morihei
Notes
1 Waka verse allows for overages and underages.
2 To fit waka prosody I normalize minimally, keeping O‑Sensei’s lexemes but regularizing forms to bungo usage and replacing the ateji 雄武び with the standard 雄叫び in the prosodic version. I also supply 伊都男 “Itsu‑man” to resolve the opening syntagm and achieve metrical balance (see §2 & §4).
Translation, Notes, Commentary, and Research by Latex G. N. R. Space-Coyote
Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–114: Knotted spirit purged bright (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. (Original work published 1977) https://shugyokai.org/9fbr
伊都（いつ; itsu）— archaizing spelling, used in mythic diction (e.g., Itsu‑no‑Ohabari). In modern Shintō discourse, itsu is associated with 厳 (itsu/izu) as in 厳（いづ/いつ）の御魂, one aspect of the “one soul; four souls” doctrine (一霊四魂) important in Ōmoto, the religious matrix of O‑Sensei’s thought. Thus 伊都魂 ≈ “the Itsu‑mitama (厳の御魂)—the severe/activating spirit”, and its union with 瑞の御魂 yields 伊都能売の御魂 (Izunome no mitama).
をの (ono) points to archaic おのこ／をのこ ‘man, male; fellow’, a classical masculine term.
凝り （こり; kori）— means physical stiffness (especially in shoulders) and by extension ‘hardening, knot, lingering discomfort or bad aftertaste’; textbook example of kakekotoba: the sound kori evokes both “stiff shoulders” and “lingering bad feeling,” now raised to the level of spirit.
靈（たま; tama）/ 身魂（みたま; mitama）— tama / mitama “spirit / soul,” a core Shintō term in O‑Sensei’s dōka (cf. adjacent poems with 身魂). The line “のこり靈を祓ふ” invokes harai purification—banishing clinging or residual spiritual pollution—central to Shintō rite.
こり靈（こりたま; kori tama）－“stiff / knotted / lingering spirit”.
こり靈 — kori-tama” shows up in Shinto genealogies, like ‘Tsunu-kori-tama-no-mikoto,’ meaning “congealed soul.” It’s also used in ‘Hotsuma Tsutae’ to describe a “clouded spirit.”
こり靈はらう （こりたまはらう; kori-tama harau）— “(He) performs harai of the knotted spirit” – i.e. he ritually releases stiffness and lingering unease in the soul. This nicely bridges: (a) body stiffness, knots in muscle / fascia (普通の kori), and (b) lingering resentments of soul, karmic aftertastes, clinging spirits.
祓・禊（はらう; harau）— also harai / misogi; the verb harau (“to purge/cleanse”) in the poem evokes Shintō purification rites (harai) and the related practice of misogi (ablution), key frames for Ueshiba’s ethic of training as spiritual cleansing (國學院大學, 2010).
魂（たま; tama）— spirit [which goes to heaven, ascending as opposed to 魄 which descends to earth]; spirit; mood; lofty spirit of nation or people (云 – to say, rain[, cloud]; 鬼 – man with ugly face, tail; overawe, terrorize, to return, to deceive; peculiar).
伊都魂 （いつたま; itsu‑tama） — here omits the honorific mi of 御魂 (mitama), but contextually still points to the “itsu aspect” of spirit—i.e. the strict, cutting, corrective facet of the four‑soul doctrine.
を （o） — keeps 伊都魂 tightly bound to the following 下の句, so syntactically we have somewhat compressed structure.
伊都魂（いつみたま; itsu mitama）— Ueshiba’s compressed way of invoking 厳の御魂 / 伊都能売の御魂, the austere, corrective aspect of the four‑soul doctrine that straightens what is bent and burns away impurity. In this poem the Itsu‑soul is what the “Itsu man” both cultivates and expresses after purification.
光（ひかり; hikari）— “light”; in both Shinto and Ōmoto discourse often marks the realized presence of kami, purity, and right ordering of the cosmos.
中（なか; naka）— is literally “inside / midst / center”; 中に emphasizes that the soul is not merely touched by light but placed within it.
光の中に（ひかりなかに; hikari naka ni）— “within the light”; “Light” is a recurrent marker for divine order/clarity in Ueshiba’s texts; the translation sets the spirit within light to mirror the locative –の中に and the poem’s imagery of enthronement inside luminosity.
たける / 猛る（takeru）— “to rage, be fiercely alive, be valiant”.
武（たけ; take）— bu/martial (stop[ping] spear[s]).
雄武び / 雄叫び（おたけび; otakebi）— O‑Sensei’s striking ateji for おたけび “war cry, roar,” standardly graphed 雄叫び makes a visual pun between otakebi (roar) and 武 (bu, martiality); earliest attestation wotakebi appears already in the Kojiki.
たける雄武び / たける雄叫び（たけるおたけび; takeru otakebi）— The closing compounds accent takeru (“fierce / valiant”) and yūbu (“manly / martial valor”). Rather than flattening this into a single adjective, the tanka lets the energy flare in the final line (“in martial valor ablaze”) to echo the poem’s crescendo of spirited strength. The closing image is not a wild, angry scream but a fully purified, light‑suffused war‑cry—the eruptive manifestation of martial spirit as divine alignment, consistent with Ueshiba’s insistence that real budō is an expression of universal love and harmony rather than destructive violence.
Lexicon & register. Harau (祓ふ), tama (魂 / 霊), and hikari (光) are all core Shintō / norito vocabulary, so their clustering in a devotional tanka fits the ritual register (cf. Sadler, 1976; cf. Breen & Teeuwen, 2010). Using 霊 as tama is parallel to 言霊 kotodama (“word‑spirit”), where 霊 is read dama/tama by rendaku; this is exactly the kind of elastic overwriting of kanji readings that kotodama‑minded authors use.
Upper and Lower Phrase. Ueshiba’s original compresses actions into two phases, which the tanka mirrors: Upper phrase (上の句): identity and act of cleansing. Lower phrase (下の句): placement and resultant potency — within light / valor ablaze (光の中に／たける雄武び). This preserves the poem’s movement from purification to light enshrined to martial radiance, a trajectory consistent with O‑Sensei’s Shintō‑inflected budō thought and practice.
Historical orthography & forms. I restore 祓ふ, treat 猛る (takeru, Yodan verb) adnominally before 雄叫び, and keep historical kana / kyūjitai flavor, matching bungo norms.
Archaizing logographs. Reading 伊都 as itsu accords with classical usage attested in mythic names (Kojiki). This undergirds Itsu‑mitama theology reflected in Ōmoto materials.
Ōmoto influence. O‑Sensei’s dōka are steeped in Ōmoto doctrine (Deguchi Onisaburō), especially 一霊四魂 and 厳瑞合一, in which 厳（伊都）の御魂 signals the severe / activating aspect of spirit. The poem’s arc—harai (purification), hikari (light), otakebi (valorous outcry)—tracks a ritual‑ethical transformation consistent with Ōmoto/Shintō soteriology.
Kotodama & budō. The shout (おたけび) is not mere bravado but a kotodama act—voice as efficacious spirit‑sound—central both to ritual norito and to budō performance (kiai). Studies on kotodama and Shintō language ideology illuminate this nexus.
Aikido historiography. Scholarly work (Breen & Teeuwen; Stalker; Greenhalgh; Aikido Journal) documents O‑Sensei’s religious entanglements; the dōka articulate a spiritualized budō where purification and illumination ground martial efficacy.
Kakekotoba. こり靈 / 残り霊 ambiguity (still visible in the continuous original のをのこり靈…) lets kori resonate as both “stiffness” and “remnant,” which is very much in the spirit of waka punning, where sound continuity overrides morphological boundaries. 雄武び as a visual pun on 雄叫び embeds 武 (bu, martial) in the war‑cry, a classic ateji move characteristic of modern esoteric writers who want the graphemic layer to carry doctrine (cf. Poulton, 1996).
解説; Commentary
この第114首は「伊都のをの／こり霊はらう／伊都魂を／光の中に／たける雄武び」として、まず上の句で――伊都（itsu）のをの＝厳（いづ）の御魂を帯びた「伊都の男」が、自分にまとわりつくこり霊を祓い清める――という場面を描いています。ここの「こり霊（こりたま）」は、注が示すように肩こりのような身体の凝りと、残心としてこびりついた嫌な感じ・わだかまりという「残りの霊」を一度に呼び出す掛詞で、harai／misogi の文脈で「残存する濁りを洗い流すこと」を意味する。その上で、「伊都魂（itsu‑tama）」――厳の御魂としての「ただしさ」の側面――を「光の中に」据え直し、最後に「たける雄武び」として、怒号ではない光に満たされた武の雄叫び＝清められた武の気合へと収束させる筋道が説明されています。
六つのプライマーに糸戻しすると、この歌の動きがそのまま合気の骨組みをなぞっているのが見えてきます。プライマーの第一原理〈武＝宇宙原理〉の視点からは、「伊都魂を光の中に」とは、宇宙の秩序そのものとしての「厳の力」を闇ではなく光の側に立ち上げること。プライマーの第二原理〈人との合気〉にとって「こり霊を祓う」は、相手や場との関係のなかに残ったしこり・ねじれを、身体と心の両方からほどいていく合気的ハライになります。プライマーの第三原理〈心魂一如〉は、身体の凝りと心の澱を同時に祓うことで、姿勢（形）・声（雄叫び）・内側の意思（魂）が一線にそろう状態を支え、プライマーの第四原理〈和合美化〉は、その「たける雄武び」が破壊の吠え声ではなく、場を整えて美へ向かわせる「武の声」であるかを測る物差しになる。プライマーの第五原理〈体＝道場／心＝学び手〉の観点では、「こり霊はらう」が日々の稽古＝体をゆるめ、残心を洗い流しつづける修行として落ち、プライマーの第六原理〈「至愛」の源に順う〉に照らせば、「伊都の男」が振るう厳しさも、愛に裏打ちされた「正す力」として発動しているかどうかが問われているわけです。
直前の三首とのつながりを踏まえると、第114首の位置はさらにくっきりします。第111首は「天地の精魂凝りて十字道世界和楽のむすぶ浮橋」で、天地の精魂が凝り固まって生まれた十字道を、注が強調するように「一点の交差」ではなく、天地タテ軸×四方ヨコ軸という無限スパンのフィールド同士が交わり続ける「十字の場」として描きました。第112首は「いきいのち廻り栄ゆる世の仕組たまの合気は天の浮橋」で、そのフィールド全体を流れる「息いのち」の循環のなかで、「たまの合気」が天の浮橋として諸フィールドを織り上げると述べ、第113首は「一霊の元の御親御姿は響き光りてぞ生れし言霊」と、その無限フィールドで御親の御姿が響き・光ることで「言霊」が生まれると締めました。第114首はその上で、この十字道という場の中に立つ「伊都の男」が、自分の内外に残ったこり霊を祓い、厳の魂を光のフィールドの内部に据え直し、その全場の震えとして「たける雄武び」を発する瞬間を描いていると読めます。ここで鳴る雄叫びは、点としてのセンターから搾り出す声ではなく、天地と世界のフィールド全体が整い、その無限の交差としてほとばしる合気の声である――「Knotted Spirit Purged Bright」という英題は、まさにその「こり霊なき武の叫び」を指しているのでしょう。
口語要約のひとこと
「伊都の男は、こり固まった残りの霊を祓い、伊都の魂を光の中におさめて、たける雄叫びをあげるんだ。」
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Appendix I: Change Modification Log
21 DEC 25 - Applied Phase V styling to waka.15 DEC 25 - Update quotes to Japanese and added links to commentary.17 NOV 25 - Phase IV completion; commentary added.15 OCT 25 - Phase III completion.30 SEP 25 - Initial Phase III start.14 APR 20 - Initial notes transferred.