Month: June 2020

Historical accounts concerning  Japanese martial traditions often describe various forms of duels and other ‘oppositional matches.’ The further one goes back in history, the more remarkable these duels sound, but one must look at them with some degree of skepticism, the same way we should regarding stories of the American frontier where one or another hero ‘wrassled’ a grizzly bear or an alligator. For example, Araki Mataemon, a legendary master of Shinkage-ryū allegedly had a duel against thirty-six opponents—at least, that was the story in a Kabuki drama of the period. However, I recall a news article in Japan in the 1970’s, where an old document was found in a family’s storehouse (these kura, sometimes sealed up for centuries, have remarkable historical records and artifacts) that purported to be an eye-witness account of the duel. As best as I recall, Araki faced two enemies. The three of them faced off, swords clenched, trembling, unmoving for a L-O-N-G time. Eventually, one man’s nerve broke, and as he turned to run away, Araki cut him down. The other man ineptly attacked and Araki killed him too.

It is at this point that some definitions are in order, because there were a number of force-on-force encounters that individuals could engage, short of warfare or duels. In fact, most adversarial encounters with weaponry in the Edo period did not result in death, though it was always a possibility.

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Very early on, Donn Draeger told me that these old traditions were and are vibrant ‘living entities.’  Not only are they worth preserving, saving, but they have significant vital lessons applicable to the fighting man of today’s world.  – Hunter Armstrong  (1)

Koryu is not only the actual martial techniques, but also the principles that underpin them, and, surprisingly many of these principles are absolutely relevant to modern times. – Ellis Amdur (2)

Therefore, teaching bujutsu in police academy is very effective way to influence the society.  I would say, you know, police need to posses their weapons, also they need to possess bujutsu as well. – Kurota Ichitarō  (3)

Two decades ago, I read an article in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts entitled “Striving for Realism: Concerns Common to Martial Arts and Law Enforcement Training.” The article discussed problems common to martial arts training and police defensive tactics in terms of ‘realism.’ It offered perspectives on key concepts in the classical martial tradition that converged with the training needs of law enforcement, and made the observation that “Inadequate training, unmindful of zanshin, will result in the reactive under- or over-estimation of circumstances and/or the perpetrator. Poor decision making based on exaggerated skills or impairment of technique due to self doubt confronts both the martial arts student and the LEO.” (4)  Twenty years later, we are all aware that little has changed.

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When naginatajutsu was first taught as a specialty amongst Japanese weaponry is unknown. To start with, the claimed founding dates of almost all martial ryūha are dubious.  Many claim a founding date hundreds of years previous to their actual inception. This is not dishonesty; in earlier periods of Japanese history, lineage was as much a spiritual sense as it was historical data. Therefore, lineage records often mixed generations of non-practicing family members, teachers of other ryūha who influenced the development of one’s own, and famous warriors of the past whom the founder regarded as inspirations.

It is likely that the genuine founding dates of naginata-specialty ryūha was in the mid-Edo period. Yazawa Isaō, a 16th generation instructor of Toda-ha Bukō-ryū (now properly known as Tenshin Bukō-ryū) then at Nihon Joshi Daigaku, wrote in 1916 “It is not clear when naginatajutsu began to be taught as a single discipline. I have gone around to the few remaining martial arts instructors of the former domains of Japan, and examined the various military manuals they own. Upon reviewing these I discovered the oldest school of naginata is the Shizuka-ryū.”

Most of the schools she enumerated in her article are long extinct, but even a superficial consideration of remaining naginatajutsu schools will show something curious—many of them include the kusarigama (‘weighted chain and sickle) within their curricula; for example, this is true for Shizuka-ryū, Bukō-ryū, Tendō–ryū, and Jikishinkage-ryū. Given that the naginata-specialty schools became associated with women within a few generations of their creation (certainly by the late Edo-period), I have wondered at the association of these two weapons.

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