修行会

158「むらきもの我れ鍛えんと浮橋にむすぶ真空神のめぐみに。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka

むらきもの
我れ鍛えんと
浮橋に
むすぶ真空
神のめぐみに

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“Many-layered heart, I will forge and temper, on this floating bridge—binding with true-emptiness—through kamis’ favorable grace.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Many‑layered heart,
I forge and temper, with will,
floating bridge, on it—

binding true‑emptiness,
kamis’ grace, through and amidst.

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）

村肝の (むらきもの)
我れ鍛へむと (われきたえんと)
浮橋に (うきはしに)
結ぶ眞空 (むすぶしんくう)
神の惠みに (かみのめぐみに)

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

murakimono
ware kitaemu to
ukihashi ni
musubu shinkū
kami no megumi ni

Ueshiba Morihei

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

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–158: Heart bound with true-emptiness (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. https://shugyokai.org/5knm (Original work published 1977)

むらきも（murakimo）— internal organs; amassed feeling; build-up (of thoughts) [archaism]; pillow word for 心; a classical makurakotoba used especially for 心 (kokoro, “heart, inner feelings”) in Man’yōshū and later waka. Literally “village‑liver / entrails” evolking the deep, many‑fold viscera, so “many‑layered heart” or “heart of manyfold depths” (Gotō, 2019; cf. Brower & Miner, 1961).

むらきもの（murakimo no）— 村肝の; a classical makurakotoba (“pillow‑word”) that conventionally modifies こころ‘heart / feelings’; by extension it can color the first‑person speaker (“I, of a many‑viscera(ed) heart”), here functioning as an archaizing poetic cue.

我（われ; ware）— me, my, we, us, our, stubbornly hold to one’s opinion, to kill, tilted.

むらきもの我れ（むらきものわれ; murakimo no ware）— self-centered; selfish; rioters.

鍛え（たえ; kitae）— 鍛ふ “to forge, temper (metal, body, character)” + auxiliary む (volitional / intention) gives 鍛へむ — “I will / shall forge (myself)”.

鍛えん — 鍛え<ん|る[Tokyo pitch accent]> – forging / tempering / working out / training.

と（to）— marks an internal intention / thought: here, “with the resolve that I will forge [myself].” In bungo, V‑mu + to can express determined inner resolve.

我れ鍛へむと（われきたえんと; ware kitaen to）— 鍛へむ is the classical auxiliary む (often written ん) with volitional / intention sense (“I will / shall forge”), attached to the verb 鍛ふ “to temper / forge (oneself)”; the ren’yōkei 鍛へ + auxiliary む expresses volition / intention in bungo; In martial‑arts discourse, “forging the self” is standard rhetoric for ascetic training and embodied transformation (Donohue, 1991; Tan, 2014).

浮橋（うきはし; ukiha shi）— pontoon bridge (temporary bridge over pontoons).

浮橋に（うきはしに; ukihashi ni）— the “floating bridge” evokes the Ame‑no‑Ukihashi (“Floating Bridge of Heaven”), the mythic span on which Izanagi / Izanami stand to shape the world in Kojiki; within Ueshiba’s discourse it marks the stance / axis for aiki (Stein, 2024; Stevens, 1995); means at once “on the floating bridge (of Heaven)”, “in the precarious, mediating stance of practice”, and [redacted]; in Takahashi (1986) Ueshiba‘s oral teachings 祈 is the foundation and the great bridge called “the floating bridge of heaven” (p. 48).

むすぶ / 結ぶ（musubu）— to tie, to bind, to close, to “bear (fruit)”; to confirm, to conclude, to close tight, to purse, to unite, to ally, to join hands; as a religious keyword it resonates with musubi (generative “binding” power of creation; Kokugakuin University, n.d.), a central theme in Shinto vocabulary and Ueshiba’s poetics; kakekotoba as musu (産す) + bu (武).

真（しん; shin）— spoon / fork + ancient food vessel; divination; true; truth; true, genuine, real, actual; clear, distinct, sharp; really, truly, very, quite; portrait, image; natural disposition.

空（くう; kū）— empty; void.

真空 / 眞空（しんくう; shin kū）— ‘true emptiness; vacuum’; In modern Japanese it is the technical term for “vacuum,” but in religious and martial discourse Ueshiba uses it to denote an ultimate, fertile emptiness (śūnyatā‑tinged “void‑ki”) and speaks of 真空の気 (“ki of true emptiness”); Ueshiba writes of 真空の気 (shinkū no ki), “the ki of emptiness,” in his late metaphysical vocabulary (linked to śūnyatā).

結ぶ眞空（むすぶしんくう; musubu shinkū）— an be read two ways (a quasi‑kakekotoba effect): (a) “[I] bind to true emptiness” (眞空を結ぶ — shinkū as object), and (b) “the true emptiness that binds [all things]” (結ぶ眞空 — shinkū as head noun of a relative clause); This stacked reading echoes the dual sense of musubi as both act (“binding”) and power (“creative binding”), a typical waka‑style semantic layering (Brower & Miner, 1961).

神（かみ; kami）— divine; divinity; god(s).

めぐみ / 惠み / 恵み（megumi ni）— blessing, favor, grace; mi‑megumi is the honorific form used of divine blessing.

めぐみに（megumi ni）— for the benefit of; blessing; one’s wife.

神の惠みに（かみのめぐみに; kami no megumi ni）— “in / through / by the grace (favor) of the kami” assigning the forging and binding to divine beneficence rather than egoic force (i.e., willpower) but in divine beneficience—very typical of Ueshiba’s late religious rhetoric, shaped by Ōmoto and wider Shintō cosmology (cf. Breen & Teeuwen, 2000; Stalker, 2008; Stein, 2024)—a common frame in his dōka. Ending on 〜に (dative / locative) rather than a finite verb produces a soft, open grammatical closure—an example of 余韻 (yoin, lingering resonance) in waka aesthetics, where the poem dissolves into an unspoken continuation “within” that grace (cf. Brower & Miner, 1961).

Orthography & morphology. Using historical spellings (鍛へむ, 眞空, 惠み) and the volitional auxiliary む (modern ん) is standard for bungo renderings; む conveys first‑person resolve in context (“I shall forge [myself]”).

Pillow‑word usage. Using 村肝の (murakimo‑no) to open a 31‑mora poem is straight out of Man’yōshū‑style diction, where it regularly prefaces 心 and emotions (Gotō, 2019; Manyō examples like 4‑720). Such pillow‑words are a hallmark of classical waka, functioning both as formulaic ornament and as semantic cue; Brower and Miner (1961) treat this as a central device of court poetry.

Kami‑no‑ku / shimo‑no‑ku architecture. The poem crisply divides: resolve and place (ware… kitaemu / ukihashi ni) in the upper phrase, then metaphysical binding and grace (musubu shinkū / kami no megumi ni) in the lower phrase—a classical rhetorical turn described in waka poetics handbooks.

Intertextual mythic toponyms & concepts. Ukihashi (Kojiki), musubi (cosmogonic “binding”), and divine grace are standard court‑poetry resources repurposed here to a budō theology—a pattern entirely at home in classical diction.

Shinto cosmology reframed as practice. Ueshiba repeatedly invokes Ame‑no‑Ukihashi (“Floating Bridge of Heaven”) as the necessary stance for aiki.

Emptiness and ki. Late Ueshiba discourse speaks of 真空の気 (shinkū no ki)—a “ki of emptiness / true void”—a theological-metaphysical overlay drawn from new‑religious and esoteric currents (Ōmoto, Shingon-inflected vocabulary) that scholars continue to parse.

Anthropology of Aikidō as culture. Ethnographic and cultural‑anthropology studies show how Aikidō communities encode such religious language and mythic images (ukihashi, musubi, kami) into pedagogy and identity formation—precisely the kind of framing that this dōka performs.

Ōmoto inflection. Ueshiba’s closeness to Deguchi Onisaburō and Ōmoto’s mythopoeic universe helps explain the poem’s diction (divine grace, cosmic binding, void); Ōmoto studies offer the historical backdrop.

Other sources. This dōka is found in 武産合気 (Takahashi, 1986, p. 40), yet is「むらきもの我れ鍛えんと浮き橋にむすぶ真空神のめぐみに」 which preserves き in 浮き.

Shugyokai note. The floating bridge is exactly as it is conceptualized! Ema ho! Not description language, conception language. It’s also in the structure of the kami-no-ku—shimo-no-ku, and… limitless expressions of the principle of takemusu aiki, rather than overshadowing exemplar(s).