Month: June 2020

Preface

There are only a few extant koryū bujutsu that date back to the Sengoku (‘warring states’) era. Despite claims to the contrary, none of them are pristine. Many claim founding dates that are historically inaccurate, often by many hundreds of years. Some claim founders who actually had nothing to do with the school in question. Still others have founders who may have initiated the ryūha, but they surely never imagined the current state of what they created—it has been altered over the centuries almost beyond recognition.

This is not fraud. The term 流 (ryū ‘flow’) means something quite different from ‘organization.’ Whoever truly created a school often gave credit to those who flowed into its creation, going back centuries, if not millennia. This could include one’s family lineage (the core of one’s identity), one’s inspiration (this could include deities, ancestors, even someone in a war tale or legend), as well as antecedent schools that were directly or indirectly related. For example, a large number of schools  list famous warriors or tutelary deities associated with Shintō-ryū (schools associated with a nexus of activity in the general area of the Kashima and Katori shrines), as these are generally considered to be the primordial martial traditions of Northeastern Japan. However, the technical parameters of a particular school may have very little to do with Shintō-ryū itself.

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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.” [1]

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. [2] 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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