"I did not create Aiki.  Aiki is the way of Kami and was born through the order of Kami.  Aiki began with the creation of the  universe."

    Tanomo Saigo lived in a time of transition, to understand his influence on Daito it is important to understand the historical context.

    Two major events in japanese history transformed the way people approached martial arts in general.  The first was the instoration of the Tokugawa Shogunate which marked the beginning of the Edo era.  The second was the Meiji restoration which marked it's end.

    Tanomo Saigo was the first born of a large family.  They belonged to the very powerful Hoshina clan.  His father was an important retainer of the Aizu han and like all children of important families Tanomo was enrolled in the Nishinkan at the age of ten.  There he learned from Soemon Takeda, Sokaku's grandfather, Aiki in ho yo: the aiki system of yin ( ho ) and yang ( yo ).  He also learned Mizoguchi Ha Itto-Ryu, Koshu-Ryu Gungaku kenjutsu.  He became a master and a teacher of all these martial arts.  He was also a brilliant military strategist having learned the science of Koshu-Ryu.
 
 

     He became Jodai Karo (chief retainer) of the Aizu han.  When the Boshin war broke out the Aizu clan sided with the Shogun.  Tanomo lead his troops against the powerful Satsuma and Choshu clans at the battle of Shirakawaguchi.  The Aizu samurai were fierce  and able fighting men but they were ill equipped and they suffered a stunning defeat.

    The news reached Aizu and certain that Tanomo had been killed his entire family including wife and children committed seppuku.  Soon after on the 22th of September 1868 the Aizu surrendered.
 
 
 

    Tanomo then retired to the Tsutsukowake Shrine in Fukushima  and became a Shinto priest.  He also took the name of his ancestors and was known as Hoshina Chikanori or Hoshina Genshin.  It is there that he became a renowned teacher of the martial arts that he had mastered.  Among others, the one that would come to be known as Daito Ryu.

    It is to his most renowned student, Sokaku Takeda, that he said: "The time of the sharp edge is over".  The time of the samurai as a fighting man had come and gone but the spirit lives on.  Training in martial arts would no longer be done in order to serve a master but to better one's self and in doing so become a better, more compassionate human being.

    The extent of  Tanomo Saigo's technical teachings to Sokaku is speculative, opinions differ on this matter.  But it is certain that Sokaku was greatly influenced by Tanomo Saigo in his attitude and his adaptation to a world that was no longer the world of the samurai which Sokaku embodied so well.