I do Aikido.
Aikido is a recent martial arts form created from the ancient martial art Jûjutsu. Jûjutsu is still taught today and often called “Self-Defense”. The aim is to win a fight as quickly as possible. This is what the ancient warriors and rebels used when they lacked other weapons. Many clans had old secrete family traditions, and sometimes they also had even deeper secrets that only the head of the family knew. This explains why there are a gazillion styles and schools. This proliferation already existed in ancient Japan (and China, if we are talking about Kung-Fu).
The German doctor of medicine Erwin BAELZ teaching in Japan from 1876 to 1902 was very impressed with one of the old masters he saw and started training. At the time Germany and Japan had close connections and the medical university in Japan used German as the common language. Baelz suggested to his students that they also take up martial arts.
One of them was KANÔ Jigorô, who started his own dôjô 1882 at the age of 22. He started removing all hitting and kicking techniques, aiming to create a new sport fit for physical education in schools, where people could compete without fear of injury. Thus was Jûdô created. (-jutsu emphasises the technique while -dô emphasises the art.)
UESHIBA Morihei started his own dôjô 1927 after having mastered several martial art styles and joining the Ômoto kyô sect of DEGUCHI Onisaburo. He called his style Aikijutsu at first but changed the name to Aikidô in 1942. At the time there was a close connection between the Judô and Aikidô dôjô in Tôkyô. It became famous in 1955 when an Aikidô demonstration was done on the roof of a shopping center.
This is a short summary of various articles in *Das Lexikon der Kampfkünste* by Werner Lind, ISBN 3-328-00838-1.
In contrast to Judo, Aikido was never developed for competition. It retained the dangerous twisting of joints used to force your enemy to the ground. Aikido even retained some sword fighting techniques by sometimes using bokken (wooden swords) or the bô (a wooden staff). Due to religious beliefs of UESHIBA however, hitting and kicking was also removed.
As you can see, all these ancient martial art schools are not that ancient. There have been splinter groups, sects, students rebelling against their teachers and starting their own, masters trying to impress upon their students the importance of the *old ways*, money to pay, belts to earn, secrets to keep...
I’m just interested in Aikido because of the pleasure of moving around, twisting arms, rolling around – and all that without competition, without fights. *That* is the real difference.