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"Aikido Wa Ichiban Budo Desu" is supposedly a quote from 植芝 盛平, Ueshiba
Morihei (founder of Aikido).

Most people translate this as "Aikido is first and foremost a true Budo".

My question is: how are you supposed to write this using Japanese characters?
I came up with: 合氣道が一番 武道です but on the other hand my Japanese proficiency is
non-existent.

Can someone provide a proper "translation" (starting from the possibly mangled
phonetic version in the title... this is all I have at the moment) and
doublecheck if any japanese source shows this as a quote from Ueshiba?

* * *

A bit of clarification: "Aikido Wa Ichiban Budo Desu" has been banged around
on Aikido blogs (again, so far I have seen it mentioned only in Italy) for a
couple of years. Always written phonetically like this. I have been unable to
trace it to something more solid, so I hoped that if I could reverse engineer
it back to properly written Japanese I could look up a more creditable source.
It is completely possible that this is (another) completely bogus quote or
factoid (I suppose that Martial Arts are a rich source for this) or that it
was misunderstood/wrongly transcribed - I am ready to accept that this is
completely wrong, I am just trying to see how far I can go in proving (or
disproving) it.

* * *

Update: apparently the sentence was expressed by Ueshiba Kisshomaru (son of
Ueshiba Morihei) and it was written as "合氣道は、いうまでもなく本質的に武道である". Credit goes to
a [couple of answers I got on the Martial Arts
Stackexchange](https://martialarts.stackexchange.com/a/1632/831).

It may be possible that Morihei expressed the same sentiment (he often spoke
of Aikido as the "perfect" or "final" Budo) but there seems to be no written
record of someone actually saying "Aikido Wa Ichiban Budo Desu". I suspect
that this specific factoid started from western people training in Iwama (with
Saito Morihiro Sensei) so maybe this was someone who tried to express the
concept without having a perfect fluency in Japanese.
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translation quotes
How to write "Aikido Wa Ichiban Budo Desu"
Your transliteration's almost spot on. I'd go for this:

```

    合気道は一番武道です。
    
```

  * 氣 is the Chinese, outdated version of the kanji 気. Modern Japanese uses 気, so go for that one.
  * Both が and は are grammatically correct, but if you take your phonetic transcription (which says _wa_ ), you should go for は. There's a slight grammatical difference, but it is of no concern in this sentence. If Ueshiba Morihei said _wa_ , he said は.
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I agree with Frishert, but instead of `一番{いちばん}` I would use maybe
`最良{さいりょう}`, meaning "the best". `一番` is an adverb, therefore it needs to
modify a verb, (`一番早い`, `一番高い`) and `最良` is an adjective which modifies the
noun (in this case `武道`).

You end up with `合気道は最良の武道です`.

That being said, I can't tell (as a non-native) how natural that sounds to a
native speaker.
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合氣道が一番武道です is in fact possible, but it's a pattern you use for special meaning
(e.g. スーパードライが一番ビールです). I find it unlikely that 植芝 盛平 said that (not that I
know him personally or something, but this pattern is a bit copy writingy :p).

合氣道が一番の武道です sounds more likely. 合氣道は一番の武道です sounds ok as well. Both
合気道は最良の武道です and 合気道は最高の武道です sound natural but if I were you & can't find the
original quote, my bet will be on 合氣道が一番の武道です.
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