修行会

23「魂のあか破れ衣をとりのぞき天の運化に開き光れよ。」- 植芝盛平

Original Dōka

魂のあか
破れ衣を
とりのぞき
天の運化に
開き光れよ

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“Wash off the spirit’s grime, cast aside the tattered robe; open myself to heaven’s transforming flow—and shine.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Wash spirit’s old grime,
cast off the tattered robe now;
remove it cleanly—

to heaven’s transformations—
open and let the light blaze!

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）

魂の垢（たまのあか）

破れ衣を（やぶれごろもを）

取り除き（とりのぞき）

天の運化に（あめのうんかに）

開き光れよ（ひらきひかれよ）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

tama no aka

yabure‑goromo o

torinozoki

ame no unka ni

hiraki hikare yo

Ueshiba Morihei

cVJML/cCCML Translation

“Purify, open/attune, radiate.”

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

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–023: Discard the tattered robe, & shine (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. (Original work published 1977) https://shugyokai.org/xj1k

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); kakekatoba simultaneously polishing a jewel (玉) and purifying soul-life (魂).

魂のあか / 魂の垢（たまのあか; tama no aka）— “the spirit’s grime”; aka (垢) is literal “grime” or “scurf,” but in religious discourse it readily shades into moral–ritual impurity. It resonates with Shintō ideas of kegare (穢れ, defilement) and the counter-practice of harae / misogi (祓／禊, purification). Ueshiba often frames inner training as purification rather than confrontation; hence “wash off” captures both the physical metaphor and the spiritual ethic; ‘grime of the soul’ evokes ritual/moral impurity; it resonates with Shintō concepts of kegare (defilement) removed by harae / misogi (purification).

破れ（やぶれ; yabure）— 連体修飾; from 破れる ‘to be torn’; set phrase.

破れ衣（やぶれごろも; yaburegoromo）— “tattered robe”; conventional image across Buddhist and medieval Japanese literature for worn, patchwork garments associated with mendicants and ascetics; as metaphor, it can signal humility or, as here, an old, constricting shell, habits and identifications, to be shed. Pairing it with aka creates a double image of removing both defilement and outworn coverings. Established poetic compound ‘tattered robe’; long‑standing poetic image of worn coverings; here it pairs with 垢 to suggest shedding outworn karmic shells and impurities before practice.

破れ衣や（やぶれごろもや; yaburegoromo ya）— “(this) torn robe—”. Classical waka often use 衣 (koromo/goromo) both literally and as ethical/ascetic imagery; や cuts the poem and intensifies the exclamatory pause (kireji), a usage attested for や/かな/けり in premodern verse (cf. Brower & Miner, 1961; cf. Shirane, 2005).

取り除き（とりのぞき; tori no zoki）— tori (連用形 of 取る ‘take’)＋nozoki (連用形 of 除く ‘remove’) → compound verb ‘to remove / take away’; continuative (連用形) of 取り除く; classical morphology allows the 連用形 to carry sequence before the next cola (cf. Vovin, 2003).

天（てん; ten）— heaven (space).

運化（うんか; unka）— Sino‑Japanese compound literally ‘transport / movement (運) + transformation (化)’. In East Asian discourse it denotes processes of movement-and-transformation; the compound is widely used in traditional medicine and cosmology vocabulary.

天の運化（てんのうんか; ten no unka）— ten/ama no unka; “heaven’s transforming flow”); unka (運化) evokes the movement and transformation of ki / qi—a classical East Asian notion of cosmic circulation by which heaven (天) generates and alters phenomena. Ueshiba repurposes this cosmological language in Aikidō to describe aligning oneself with the larger, life-giving circulation rather than imposing egoic will. Translating it as “transforming flow” keeps both motion and metamorphosis.

天の運化に（てんのうんかに; ten no unka ni）— ten / ame / ama (訓 ‘heaven / sky’; classical waka register), no (gen.), unka (漢語 ‘movement & transformation’), ni (格助詞 ‘to / into / unto’); to / under Heaven’s transformation.” 運化 (unka) is Sino‑Japanese “transport / transformative movement,” a cosmological term familiar from East Asian discourse on the dynamic movement and transmutation of energies (see kanpō usage of 運化 as “transport and transformation”). The phrase thus signals aligning the self with celestial process.

開き（ひらき; hiraki）— hiraki; “open [yourself]”; beyond its everyday sense, hiraki is also a term in Aikidō pedagogy for an opening movement/stance that creates space and connection. Here it signals receptivity to the celestial circulation just named.

光れよ（ひかれよ; hikare yo）— imperative “shine!”; closing exhortation is unambiguous: once purified and opened to the cosmic current, radiate. The dash before “and shine” in English mimics the rhythmic turn of Ueshiba’s Japanese, where the cadence gathers and then releases in the final imperative.

開き光れよ（ひらきひかれよ; hiraki hikare yo）— hiraki (連用形 of 開く ‘open [oneself]’)｜hikare (已然/命令形 of 光る ‘shine!’; yodan imperative ‑re)｜yo (終助詞 emphatic); imperative force via ‑れ (四段活用命令形) plus final particle よ as exclamatory urging; both are standard in classical/early modern usage (cf. Shirane, 2005; cf. Vovin, 2003).

Bungo inflection and diction. The segmentation exploits classical morphology (連用 ‑i linkage in 開き; imperative ‑れwith よ) and waka’s two‑hemistich structure. These features and the 31‑mora template are canonical for tanka. 

Native readings for waka register. Rendering 天 as あめ in line 4 follows court‑poetry convention (e.g., あまのがわ), and it preserves the 7 mora without forcing Sino‑Japanese rhythm; Kanjipedia documents あめ／あま readings used in classical compounds. Using native kun‑readings (天＝あめ / ama; 衣＝ころも) favors the waka register over mixed on‑yomi—exactly how classical poetry sounds on the page. Kanjipedia lists 天 with あめ／あま in compounds like Ame‑no‑gawa.

Lexical archaism. たま (魂) and ころも (衣) are native, premodern poetic lexemes; 破れ衣 is attested historically with the reading やぶれごろも.

Inflection. The poem’s verbs are analyzed in classical paradigms (連用形 開き, 命令形 光れ), and the final よ marks emphatic exhortation—precisely the 命令 usage described in standard bungo grammars.

Kami‑no‑ku / shimo‑no‑ku semantics. The 上の句 concentrates purification images (垢, 破れ衣, 取り除く); the 下の句 pivots to cosmology and imperative praxis (天の運化, 開き光れ). This distribution of image → realization mirrors the classical “setup / turn” movement described in standard treatments of waka rhetoric.

Shintō purification & kotodama. The poem maps neatly onto Shintō purification (misogi) and the belief in 言霊 (kotodama, “word‑spirit”), where utterance and vibration effect transformation. Scholarly work locates kotodama in early mythic discourse and later ideology, not merely in folk belief. Reads as a compact misogi liturgy—remove impurity (垢), cast off old coverings (破れ衣), open to the heavenly process (天の運化), then radiate (光れ). This maps onto Shintō kegare / harae / misogi concepts and their mythic paradigm (Izanagi’s ablutions).

Ōmoto‑kyō and Ueshiba. Ueshiba’s religiosity was strongly shaped by Ōmoto (Deguchi Onisaburō); studies in Japanese religions document kotodama practice and cosmological vocabulary (e.g., “transforming flow of heaven”) in that milieu, which illuminates phrases like 天の運化 and the poem’s call to “open and shine.”

Linguistics & historical register. Using native readings (あめ, ころも; vs. mixed on‑yomi) and classical morphology aligns the line with the classical written standard rather than a modern colloquial; overviews of historical Japanese explain why such bungo choices carry a distinct stylistic register that waka translations often try to recover.

天の運化 On- and kun- readings. has the on‑reading “ten,” but in waka/ritual diction the kun reading あめ (or あま) is standard and metrically natural. The line thus scans cleanly 7 morae as あめ‑の‑う‑ん‑か‑に. Kanjipedia and classical poetry practice support this choice.