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119「大御親七十五ツの御情動に世のいとなみはいや栄えぬる。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka¹

大御親
七十五ツの
御情動に
世のいとなみは
いや栄えぬる

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“The Great August Parents, their seventy five-voices’ affective stirrings—the workings of these worlds ever increasing in prosperity.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Great August Parents;
their seventy‑five voices’
affective stirrings—

all the workings of these worlds
ever more flourishing, indeed.

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）¹

大御親（おおみおや）
七十五つの（ななそいつつの）
御情動に（ごじょうどうに）
世の營みは（よのいとなみは）
いや榮えぬる（いやさかえぬる）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

ōmi‑oya
nanaso‑itsutsu no
go‑jōdō ni
yo no itonami wa
iya sakaenuru

Ueshiba Morihei

Notes

¹ 字余り (ji-amari) one extra mora count in line 3; allowed in waka verse (tanka-textbook.com, 2022).

Translation, Notes, Commentary, and Research by Latex G. N. R. Space-Coyote

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–119: Seventy-five sounds move in flow (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. https://shugyokai.org/omsb (Original work compiled 1977)

大（おお; ō）— great.

御（み; mi）— honorific prefix; in historical grammar it functions as a bound morpheme marking reverence toward the referent. NINJAL’s (2017) historical corpus treats ミ（御） as a prefixal element with numerous sacred exemplars (御子, 御言, 御手洗, etc.); indexes sacred dignity. In Shintō vocabulary mi‑ marks kami and imperial referents (mi‑koto, mi‑tama), a usage Shimazu (n.d.) treats as an honorific title / prefix for divine persons and attributes.

御親（みおや; mi‑oya）— “August Parent(s)”; here evokes primordial parents Izanagi and Izanami progenitors associated with purification and the birth of myriad deities (including those above). Calling them “august Parent(s)” honors the source of cosmic order that bujutsu should mirror. 

大御親（おおみおや; ōmi‑oya）— “Great Parent”; Ueshiba uses Shintō/Ōmoto-inflected language—Ōmioya signifies the august “Great Parent” deity. Scholarship on Aikidō’s religious matrix documents Ueshiba’s close ties to the Ōmoto movement (Deguchi Onisaburō) and its vocabulary. Rendering Ōmioya as “Great Parent” follows that usage. (イエ, 2012; Oomoto, n.d.).

七十五ツの / 七十五声（ななそいつつ; nanaso‑itsutsu）— “Seventy‑five sounds”; refers to the classic kotodama (“word‑spirit”) schema that expands the fifty basic syllables with twenty voiced and five semi‑voiced sounds (50 + 20 + 5 = 75). This numeration is attested in early modern kotodama theory and remains central in Shintō‑derived discourse later drawn upon by Ueshiba. Kotodama—the belief that spiritual power resides in sounds/words—frames Ueshiba’s use of “voices / sounds” as cosmogonic forces rather than mere phonetics. (see 國學院大學, n.d.b); “Seventy‑five stirrings” and kototama. In Ōmoto‑style kototama theory, creation unfolds through 75 sacred sounds / voices (七十五声). Ueshiba’s poems and discourses repeatedly align cosmic creativity and martial technique with these sound‑patterns; hence “seventy‑five stirrings (of the august heart)” renders 七十五ツの御情動 idiomatically, keeping the kototama resonance without over‑literalizing jōdō as “emotion”.

御情動（ごじょうどう; go‑jōdō）— ‘august emotions / affective stirrings.’ Jōdō is the standard term for “emotion / affect,” often defined as quick, intense, bodily‑implicated feelings. The honorific 御 marks them as divine.

世（よ; yo）— generation, many spanning generations, era, period, time, epoch, dynasty, regime, year, age, world, earth, people (atemporal) (three leaves on a branch).

營み（いとなみ; itonami）— “activity, conduct, livelihood, ritual practice.” classical dictionaries gloss both everyday work and religious activity; phonologically it echoes 糸 ito (“thread”) and the verb 営む “to run/maintain,” intersecting with Ueshiba’s previous dōka 118, which uses 経綸 (“cosmic weaving / ordering”) creating an associative hinge between “worldly activities” and “threads of cosmic order,” functionally similar to kakekotoba even if not a textbook pun.

世のいとなみ（よのいとなみ; yo no itonami）— “workings of the world”; Itonami denotes the conduct / activities of life and society; translating as “the workings of this world” keeps the broad scope; the world’s doings / enterprises / affairs (classical itonami: work, activity, religious observances).

いや（iya）— 彌/弥; adverb ‘ever more; increasingly’; cf. set phrase 弥栄 (いやさか) ‘ever‑increasing prosperity’.

栄（saka）— honor, glory; flourishing, prosperous; lush, luxuriant.

…ぬる（nuru）— classical perfective auxiliary ぬ (連体形), “has / does indeed V; is in the state of having V.” Here 栄えぬる ≈ “(has) flourished.”

Kami‑no‑ku and shimo-no-ku. The English tanka above mirrors the conceptual break: Upper invokes the cosmic source (Ōmioya + 75 stirrings); Lower turns to effects in the human / cosmic realm (the world’s workings prosper). This keeps the poem’s theological arc, familiar in Ueshiba’s dōka where creation, word‑spirit, and ethical praxis are one continuum.

Archaic numerals. Rendering 75 as ななそぢ（七十路）あまり いつつ → ななそいつつ follows attested pre‑modern counting (so/soji for decades), widely used in classical poetry and prose.

Honorific morphology. Using 御 as go‑ (kango prefix) is classical, while mi‑ is a liturgical / Shintō honorific seen with nouns of reverence; either can be justified in poetic diction.

Adverb いや (彌). The intensifying adverb “ever more” is standard in pre‑modern diction and undergirds the auspicious compound 弥栄.

Perfective ぬ（連体形：ぬる）. The completion / result nuance (sakae‑nuru) is canonical bungo.

Prosody: The verse is scanned 5–7–6–7–7 (third line ji‑amari). Such one‑mora expansions are routinely permitted in classical waka/tanka practice.

Register. Kyūjitai (營／榮) and the neutral literary copula/auxiliary system are characteristic of bungo as taught in modern reference grammars.

Semantics: Pivoting from divine affect to human affairs (“世のいとなみ”) mirrors the waka habit of yoking the numinous and the mundane via an elegant hinge (here the case particle に), a technique discussed in classical poetics surveys.

Kotodama & “seventy‑five voices”. In the Ōmoto/kotodama paradigm influential on Ueshiba, creation unfolds through the patterned voicing of 75 “voices” (七十五声)—an expanded arrangement beyond the schoolroom gojūon, typically rendered as AOUEI × 15 consonantal columns. The poem’s 七十五 and the shift from 声 (voice) in adjacent dōka to 御情動 here suggest a move from phonation to the divine affective motions that generate and order the world.

Ōmoto theology & “Great Parent”. Ōmoto frames the ultimate deity as a Great Origin / Great Parent (Ōmotosume Ōmikami), and Ueshiba’s religious formation within Ōmoto is well‑documented. Reading 大御親 as that primordial source is consistent with Ōmoto discourse.

Kotodama in religious studies. Scholarship has traced kotodama from early mythopoetics (Man’yōshū) through Edo nativism to modern new religions and nationalism; as a religious‑semiotic concept, it posits a non‑arbitrary bond between word/voice and being. This background clarifies how “divine emotions” could be thought to efficaciously bring about “worldly prosperity”.

“Worldly undertakings prosper”. The collocation 世の営み is classical, and いや栄えぬる voices an auspicious, performative wish / statement, akin to 弥栄 invocations in Shintō contexts.

Intertextuality as a waka device. Dōka 118 immediately before this poem states that “the Great Deity brought forth seventy‑five voices and bestowed the weaving of the world.” 119 shifts from 声 “voices” to 御情動 “divine affect,” deepening that image from sound to felt motion. Classical sequences in imperial anthologies often work this way—each poem subtly transforms a key image or word from the previous one.

Yoin (余韻) via the perfective ぬる. Ending on 栄えぬる leaves us with a completed yet ongoing state of flourishing. Because ぬる is attributive, the line grammatically invites an implied noun (“世の営みは、いや栄えぬる〔もの〕”), so there is a slight semantic openness—exactly the kind of lingering “after‑resonance” waka poets prize. The phrase echoes Shintō shout slogans like 弥栄 (iyasaka, “everlasting flourishing”), used in nationalist and new‑religious contexts in the modern era.