修行会

134「松竹梅錬り清めゆく気の仕組いつここに生るや身変るの水火。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka

松竹梅
錬り清めゆく
気の仕組み
いつここに生るや
身変るの水火

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“Pine–bamboo–plum: as one tempers and purifies, the mechanism of ki—whence does it arise? The water‑and‑fire by which the body is transformed.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Pine, bamboo, and plum,
tempering, purifying—
structuring of ki;

whence does it come to birth—YA!?
the body transformed—water, fire.

Morihei Ueshiba

文語; 歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）¹

松竹梅（しょうちくばい）
錬り清めゆく（ねりきよめゆく）
気の仕組み（きのしくみ）
いづこに生るや（いづこになるや）
身変るの水火（みかはるのみずひ）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization¹

shōchikubai
neri kiyome yuku
ki no shikumi
izuko ni naru ya
mi kawaru no mizuhi (alt. suika)
Ueshiba Morihei

口語; 現代仮名遣い

134「松竹梅——練り清めていく気のしくみが、ここに生まれるのだ。身は水と火によって変わる。」— 植芝盛平 (口語訳)

Kōgo Romanization

“Shōchikubai——neri kiyomete iku ki no shikumi ga, koko ni umareru noda. Mi wa mizu to hi ni yotte kawaru.” — Ueshiba Morihei (Kōgo Translation)

Notes

¹ Lines 1 and 5 show ji‑amari (extra mora), a well‑attested license in waka/tanka prosody. Brower & Miner detail such metrical variation (e.g., 6 in a 5‑mora position, or 8 in a 7‑mora position) as traditional practice rather than error.

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

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–134: Pine, bamboo, & plum (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. (Original work published 1977) https://shugyokai.org/zyzn

松（しょう; shō）— pine.

竹（ちく; chiku）— bamboo.

梅（ばい; bai）— plum (winter plum; prunus mume).

松竹梅; 歳寒三友（しょうちくばい; shōchikubai）— three friends of winter; the auspicious triad in Japanese aesthetics and ritual culture (resilience, renewal, longevity); three-tier ranking system (e.g., for menus, for sake), so it naturally evokes both plants and graded excellence. Pine (松, shō; longevity, stability, and steadfastness) is the highest rank, Bamboo (竹, chiku; strength, integrity, and humility due to its hollow center) is the middle rank, and Plum (梅, bai; beauty, nobility, and courage for blooming in the winter) is the lowest rank.

錬り（ねり; neri）— knead[ing]; temper[ing]; forge[ing]; refine[ing]; drill[ing]; train[ing]; polish[ing]; used in martial (鍛錬) and mental/spiritual refinement.

清め（きよめ; kiyome）— [V 連用形 of 清む/清める kiyomeru “to purify”]; continuative of 清む / 清める “to purify”, central verb for ritual purification harai / misogi in Shintō.

～ゆく（yuku）— classical 行く as an auxiliary “to go on ~‑ing”, marking ongoing progression; note the classical use of “行” (gyō) embedded in 修行 (shugyō).

錬り清めゆく（ねりきよめゆく; neri kiyome yuku）— “to temper and purify (as one proceeds)”, “(as one) goes on tempering and purifying (it / themselves)”; echoes tanren (forging / refinement) and kiyome / misogi (purification) central to Shintō-inflected budō; neatly fuses martial forging and ritual purification, exactly the blend that religious‑studies work notes in Ueshiba’s pedagogy: aikidō training as both bodily tanren and misogi of the self (Greenhalgh, 2003; Picken, n.d.).

気（き; ki）— the ubiquitous “vital force / breath / energy” concept in East Asian cosmology; Ueshiba treats it as both cosmic and psycho‑physical (Ueshiba, 2008).

仕（し; shi）— scholar, official, civil service; adviser, guard, minister.

組（く; ku[mi]）— weave, thin wide silk band, organize, form, group, team.

仕組み（しくみ; shikumi）— structure; construction; arrangement; contrivance; mechanism; workings​.

気の仕組み（きのしくみ; ki no shikumi）— “the workings of ki”; shikumi = the mechanism / arrangement; “the structuring / mechanism of ki” – the hidden architecture of energetic functioning in aikidō and the cosmos; Ueshiba often frames Aikidō as aligning with the cosmic structuring of ki. Grammatically, this is the topic / focus of the question that follows: 気の仕組み（は）いづこに生るや…?

いつこ / いづこ / （itsuko / izuko）— classical interrogative “where? whence?”, very common in waka (e.g. 春霞たてるやいづこ… etc.).

生る（なる; naru）— “to come into being / to bear fruit / to sprout” (not the copular “to become”).

や（ya）— exclamatory / interrogative particle that in waka functions as a kireji, creating a cut and emotional emphasis (Brower & Miner, 1961; Shirane, 2005).

いつこに生るや / いづこに生るや（いづこになるや / いづこになるや; itsuko ni naru ya / izuko ni naru ya）— “behold, here it bears its fruit”; rendering 生る (naru, “to bear fruit / to come into being”) as a moment of arising / presencing “here”; “whence does it arise?”: emends itsu‑koko‑ni to classical izuko‑ni (see §4), aligning with waka idiom (cf. 古今和歌集: 春霞たてるやいづこ…). The verb 生る (naru) here is “to come into being/bear forth,” not “to become”; when combined with the prior, “Where does it arise? – Here, as this happens…”. That ambiguity is part of the poem’s resonance: it asks whence ki’s structure comes, but points implicitly to a specific “here/now” in the closing line.

身（み; mi）— body (originally a pregnant woman); person, but also “self” in a deep sense (often with spiritual overtones in Shintō discourse).

変る（かわる; kawaru）— change, strange, odd, transform.

身変る（みかわる; mi kawaru）— “the body changes / is transformed”.

水火（みずひ; mizuhi）— water-fire; The graph pair 水火 is a classical way to indicate the elemental dyad of water and fire, ubiquitous in Shintō and Onmyōdō; in Ueshiba’s writings 火水 is sometimes glossed いき (iki, breath), linking it to respiration and misogi (Hardacre, 2017; Ueshiba, 2008); reading as mizuhi keeps the native / kundoku flavor; suika is a plausible Sino‑Japanese reading that would reduce the mora count, but the native‑style reading more clearly recalls Shintō vocabulary; water and fire are planar- and field- orthogonalities, beyond point[ed[ness]]).

身変るの水火（みかわるのみずひ; mi kawaru no mizuhi）— “the body’s change—water, fire”, “the water‑and‑fire by which the body is transformed”; suika / mizu‑hi (“water–fire”) names the primal dyad whose purification and dynamism transmute the body—common in Shintō, Onmyōdō, and Ueshiba’s own language of misogi and transformation.

Acceptable variation: Classical tanka allows ji‑amari / ji‑tarazu (over / under by ≈ 1–2 moras) without breaking form; Brower & Miner and subsequent scholarship document such flexibility. Lines 1 (6 moras) and 5 (8 moras) fit that tradition.

Classical morphology: The segmentations use ren’yō‑kei continuatives (neri, kiyome, yuku), the exclamative/interrogative particle や, and classical 生る—all standard bungo features. For forms, see Shirane (2005) and Vovin (2003/2002).

Normalization of いつここに → いづこに. “いづこ” (“where”) is idiomatic waka diction and metrically restores 7 moras; numerous Kokinshū exemplars use いづこ in the 4th line exactly this way. This is why editors of Ueshiba’s dōka present いづこに生るや as the bungo reading.

Historical kana & Sino‑Japanese/kundoku options. Writing 変る (かはる) and using ゆく for 行く are historical‑kana conventions. Lexemes like 仕組み and 水火 admit both Sino‑Japanese readings (e.g., suika) and native kundoku (mizu‑hi)—choosing among them to balance meter/semantics is normal in waka exegesis. See Shirane (orthography, kundoku) and Frellesvig (historical development).

Kotodama / breath and “fire–water”: Elsewhere in the corpus Ueshiba writes 火水（いき） with furigana “iki, breath,” demonstrating the semantic cluster that links misogi, breath, and elemental polarity—classically legible in Shinto‑inflected diction. Leaving 水火 here as mizuhi / suika respects the exact graphing in poem 134 while staying within that lexicon. [Yes, it’s fun.]

火水 orthogonality. Sui and ka are orthogonal, as evidenced in complete set of waka, and practice; two dimensions (actually more) providing a top-right jump operator driven quadrant containing a phenomena of steam (cf. etymology of the kanji for ki) where the rice is a [redacted].

松竹梅 / “Three Friends of Winter”. In Japanese visual and literary culture, shōchikubai symbolizes endurance and renewal—pine evergreen, bamboo resilient, plum the first to bloom—frequent in New Year auspiciousness and literati aesthetics. Reading the opening line as a triadic emblem (rather than mere botanical list) is culturally anchored.

Shintō purification (禊 misogi) and ki. Ueshiba’s language fuses martial tanren (鍛錬) with Shintō purification. Religious‑studies work on misogi/harae explains water and fire as principal purifying media—precisely the dyad named at the close of the poem. Thus, “as one tempers and purifies, the workings of ki … water–fire” reads as a ritual‑cosmological arc (misogi → arising of ki → transformation).

Aikido cosmology & diction. Ueshiba’s The Secret Teachings of Aikido and related discussions frame aiki through elemental orthogonalities rather than opposites (fire / water), breath, and cosmic structure (shikumi), matching the poem’s lexicon.

Yoin. The poem never says outright “the ki mechanism arises from water and fire in misogi of the body,” but strongly implies it. Ending on the compact phrase 身変るの水火 leaves us to contemplate: (a) what kind of transformation?, (b)
what concrete practices of fire and water?, and (c) how exactly is “ki” structured through them? This kind of suggestive, “unfinished” ending is exactly the 余韻 valued in waka aesthetics: meaning continues to resonate beyond the closing mora (Brower & Miner, 1961; Carbullido, 2013).