修行会

22「立ちむかふ剣の林を導くにこたては敵の心とぞ知れ。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka

立ちむかふ
剣の林を
導くに
こたては敵の 
心とぞ知れ

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“Standing and facing the forest of swords before me, to guide my passage—my small shield is this alone: the foe’s heart. Know it well now.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Standing and facing
the sword-forest before me,
to guide my passage

my small shield is only this—
the enemy’s heart: know it.

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）

立ちむかふ（たちむかふ）
剣の林を（けんのはやしを）
導くに（みちびくに）
小楯は敵の（こたてはてきの）
心とぞ知れ（こころとぞしれ）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

tachimukau
ken no hayashi o
michibiku ni
kotate wa teki no
kokoro to zo shire

Ueshiba Morihei

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

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–022: Their heart-mind, my little shield (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. https://shugyokai.org/81ia (Original work published 1977)

立ち（たち; tachi）— depart, stand, rise up, use up, rehearse, rising from a crouch to charge, conveys emphasis and formality (Jisho.org, n.d.); kakekotoba as 太刀 (tachi) which is a great sword used by calvary; see more expanded commentary in Space-Coyote (2026b) where it names “a stance before the cosmos, an ethical posture toward others, or a ritual act by which a place, body, or world is made fit for divine activity”.

立ちむかふ（たちむかふ; tachimukau）— “(I) stand facing (them),” classical mukau in conclusive form.

剣（けん; ken）— using けん for 剣 yields the orthodox 5–7–5–7–7; keeping the native つるぎ gives a classical, still acceptable one‑mora ji‑amari on line 2—well attested in waka practice.

剣の林（けんのはやし; ken no hayashi）— “a forest of swords,” i.e., a dense press of blades / multiple attackers; the compound echoes Sino‑Japanese imagery like 剣林 “forest of swords.” in war‐poetry and martial diction, hayashi “forest / grove” evokes a press of weapons—i.e., many blades before you. This phrasing appears in transmitted lists of Ueshiba’s dōka (didactic verses).

導く（みちびく; michibiku）— on “to guide”; Ueshiba often frames technique as michibiku—to lead/guide rather than collide: one “guides” the incoming force by leading the attacker’s kokoro. The verse makes this explicit: amid a mass of blades, what functions as your shield is not hardware but command of the opponent’s intent. (For context, a sister verse replaces “swords” with “spears” and says the small shield is one’s own heart, underscoring the paired disciplines of governing self and reading the other.) 

導くに（みちびくに; michibiku ni）— ni marks a conjunctive/gerundive nuance: “in order to guide / in guiding (my passage).”

こたて／小楯（kotate）— “little shield”; kotate (also attested as kodate) denotes a small shield or makeshift cover; historically a buckler or anything used as a temporary “shield.” classical dictionaries gloss 小楯／木楯 as a protective shield or even an improvised screen; note that “こたて” is an attested reading alongside “こだて.” Rendering it as “little shield/buckler” preserves both size and function. 

敵（てき; teki）— enemy (<啇 – stem/root|<冂 – upside down box)|古 – old, ancient, things past, simple, unsophisticated, history>|攵 – strike, hit; person + weed, govern, control, manage, nurture)>; kakekotoba on -te form + ki (Space-Coyote, 2026a).

敵の心（てきのこころ; teki no kokoro）— “enemy’s heart‑mind”; kokoro (心) in Japanese thought is not merely “emotion” or “intellect” but an integrated heart‑mind—the inner intention/attunement that animates action; “heart‑mind” expresses the martial point: your true protection is grasping and leading the adversary’s intention.

小楯は敵の心（こたてはてきのこころ; kotate wa teki no kokoro）— “(as for) the small shield, it is the enemy’s heart(-mind).” 小楯 (kotate) metaphorizes defense; in another Ueshiba dōka, 小楯 is 己が心 (“one’s own heart”), showing a didactic pair: knowing their heart vs. governing one’s own. 

心とぞ知れ （こころとぞしれ; kokoro to zo shire）— “know (this) as (their) heart,” with emphatic ぞ and imperative 知れ; cf. kakarimusubi usage of focus particles (ぞ, なむ, や, か, こそ) and their rhetorical effect in bungo (here ぞ focalizes kokoro; the closing 知れ is an imperative admonition formula “—know it!”).

Historical forms. 〜むかふ (終止形) and the emphatic ぞ are stock bungo features; 知れ is a straightforward imperative. Shirane’s reference grammar and university course materials cover these forms and their functions.

Lexical register. 小楯 (small shield) and the martial trope 剣の林 are premodern diction. Dictionaries list 小楯(historically also おだて) and 剣 with both つるぎ and けん readings, so either scan is defensible; I adopt けん for strict 31‑mora form while noting the common つるぎ reading and the acceptability of ji‑amari.

Elaboration by kakarimusubi. The ぞ particle induces focus (and in prototypical cases triggers attributive endings); in exhortative styles you also find set admonitory closures like …とぞ知れ (“know it thus”), fully idiomatic in bungo. Recent linguistics work discusses the information‑structural focus of ぞ.

Clause linkage with に. 導くに uses に as a conjunctive/gerundive linker (“in/for guiding”), a classical device visible across premodern prose and verse; see standard bungo references.

Moraic scansion. Waka/tanka counts in morae (not English syllables); prosodic studies and pedagogy sources confirm the canonical 5‑7‑5‑7‑7 with licensed departures (ji‑amari). The poem’s imagery and diction sit comfortably within this tradition.

Religious background. Ueshiba’s language draws on Ōmoto (Ōmoto‑kyō) Shintō and esoteric idioms (e.g., ichirei‑shikon, purification, aligning heart with cosmic order). Religious‑studies scholarship traces Ōmoto’s ideas and their influence on Ueshiba’s articulation of aikidō as a path of spiritual harmonization rather than destruction. 

Anthropology/sociology of embodiment. Studies of aikidō as cultural practice emphasize the transformation of combative techniques into relational pedagogy—“guiding” (michibiku) the encounter by attuning to the other’s intention (心). This poem’s metaphor—small shield = the (known) heart of the other—encapsulates that shift.