Part 2 – Early Historical Record of Shiai Within Yagyū Shinkage-ryū

We will now look at mentions of shiai in the early historical record, stretching from the mid-1500s to the 1700s. One thing I did not wish to do with this series was just appeal to my authority as a practitioner. So I have tried to rely as much as possible on primary sources. These are available in Japanese due to the work of the late Imamura Yoshio, professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Education, in particular, his mammoth two-volume work Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū (Historical Materials of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū), which provided transcriptions of a great number of historical documents related to Yagyū Shinkage-ryū.

 Kamiizumi Hidetsuna

We begin with Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami Hidetsuna, founder of Shinkage-ryū. It is often claimed that he invented the fukuro-shinai. Though based in Kōzuke Province, he made a number of trips to Kyoto in the late 1550s and 1560s to demonstrate Shinkage-ryū and meet with those interested in heihō. Per a Owari Yagyū record [1], in 1563 Kamiizumi visited Kitabatake Tomonori, Governor of Ise, and asked if he knew anyone who would like to test their skills in a shiai (仕相). Kitabatake suggested Yagyū Munetoshi, a minor lord and heihō enthusiast in Yamato Province. A meeting was arranged at Kōfuku Temple in Nara, not far from Yagyū Village.

They decided to hold the shiai between Munetoshi and Kamiizumi’s student, Suzuki Ihaku. Their match had three rounds, all of which Munetoshi lost. We know that they used fukuro-shinai, because it is recorded that Munetoshi thought something was up, asked to compare shinai length and was surprised to find that Ihaku’s shinai was three inches shorter than his. This clearly takes the encounter out of the category of “duel” and clearly into the realm of shiai – a match to test their skills. Accordingly impressed by Kamiizumi’s art, Munetoshi asked to be taken on as a student. Kamiizumi and his students stayed in Yagyū Village for the better part of a year, training with Munetoshi and his family and retainers. We’ll come back to them in a bit.

Around 1570, Kamiizumi sent a letter to Marume Kurando Nagayoshi. Marume became deshi of Kamiizumi in 1558; they demonstrated before Shōgun Ashikaga Toshiaki in 1564. Marume eventually went to Kyushu, where he would initially teach Shinkage-ryū, and later founded Taisha-ryū hyōhō.

Kamiizumi’s letter contained the following lines mentioning shiai:

  • 九州において、他流の兵法皆打払われた由を聞別し満足至り。“I am particularly pleased to hear that all other schools of heihō have been driven out of Kyushu.”
  • 当月○○仕合停止せしむ可き旨、上意に候間、貴殿も仕合無用に候。“About shiai (仕合 ) being ceased on [unclear] of this month: as this is the desire of your lord, you have no need to do shiai .”[2]
Yagyū Munetoshi

Let’s return to Yagyū Munetoshi. Munetoshi was involved in the various conflicts of the Sengoku Period for the next ten years after meeting Kamiizumi., but he eventually retired at the rank of general in order to devote himself to heihō. About ten years after that, he wrote the Yagyū Kaken (Yagyū Family Constitution), in 1589. This document essentially laid out what he saw as the correct attitude to have one’s approach to his heihō.

Munetoshi writes of shiai in a negative fashion here, but what is interesting is the implications these statements hold. Some selected lines (my translation):

  • “What is most lamentable is being ignorant of inner teachings; rather, vain for glory in shiai, one not only brings shame to oneself, but being known for a certain Way, one thus brings difficulties to a teacher of a ryū of heihō. This is truly, truly the greatest of faults.”
  • “First, in this ryū, there should be no need for shiai. To elaborate: the most important thing is to not abandon all other ryū, but to discipline oneself in the Way, and attend to other ryū and inquire into them.”
  • “A man with one letter is the teacher of the man with none; do not overcome other ryū. Determine to overcome today the self of yesterday.”
  • “The ways of my house must not be passed on to vain people who do not diligently practice the Omotedachi, but instead enjoy shiai, and deride the ways of other ryū.” [3]

Omotedachi refers to first three kata one learned at the time, the quintessential, most representative kata of Shinkage-ryū.

What Kamiizumi’s letter and the Yagyū Kaken are referring to is obviously what is commonly called taryū-jiai, that is, shiai between practitioners of different schools. One can see here a certain ambivalence to this. On one hand, both Kamiizumi and Munetoshi engaged in shiai with other schools; that’s how Munetoshi joined the school, and Kamiizumi praises Marume for his success in the same. At the same time, when Marume’s lord puts a moratorium on such shiai, Kamiizumi is completely fine with that. Munetoshi, perhaps due to some incalcitrant student(s), has a very negative view of such shiai, at least when paired with a negative attitude towards other schools.

Munetoshi’s lament, along with Marume’s lord barring such shiai, points to a culture, or perhaps a subculture of shiai among late Sengoku bugeisha. I would go further to suggest that if you have shiai between ryūha, then you likely have shiai within ryūha as well, particularly when possessing the technology, such as fukuro-shinai, to make that feasible.

Munetoshi’s note about not practicing the Omotedachi is particularly notable. In a kata-only tradition, doing the kata is training in the school. If the kata were the only training methodology in Shinkage-ryū, then not training the Omotedachi would mean you are not training in Shinkage-ryū. It seems clear that Munetoshi is lamenting a bias in training, focusing on getting better at shiai at the expense of diligent practice of the kata.

In 1593, Munetoshi took lay orders and began using the name Sekishūsai. The same year, he wrote a collection of heihōka, poems about heihō. These are in the tanka short verse form, which is 31 syllables, in 5-7-5-7-7 meter. Here are three that I think are relevant to this discussion:

  • 仕相して打たれて恥の兵法と心にたへずくふうしてよし “Consider it shameful heihō to be struck in shiai; constantly innovate in your heart.”

This could simply be referring to the same kind of sentiment expressed earlier in the Yagyū Kaken, that it is shameful to be caught up in the glory of shiai. But another, and I think more likely, way to read it is as an admonition to reflect on why one might lose in a training shiai, and work to overcome that. I believe the latter half recommending constant innovation in the heart suggests this reading.

The next two refer to using a kodachi (short sword).

  • 無刀とるつもり位を稽古して小太刀のこころがんみ（玩味）して知れ “Train the spirit and distance of mutō-dori by savoring and knowing the spirit of kodachi.”
  • 兵法のあらそひくらいは、小太刀にてたがひの弟子ぜひしくらべよ “For spirit in a contest of heihō; measure with a kodachi the good and bad of each of your students.”[4]

The received understanding of this last one is that one should test one’s students’ “spirit” (kurai) using a kodachi. What is significant here is that, at this time, there were no official kata in Shinkage-ryū that used kodachi. The first kodachi kata was added to the school by Sekishūsai’s great-grandson, and then this was expanded on in the mid-Edo period. That suggests that what Sekishūsai is talking about is shiai using a kodachi. This is reinforced by a story about the 3rd soke, Sekishūsai’s grandson Hyōgonosuke.

Yagyū Hyōgonosuke

Yagyū Hyōgonosuke Toshitoshi was the third 3rd sōke of Shinkage-ryū, and is considered kaiso (founder) of the Owari Yagyū family. He was the son of Sekishūsai’s eldest son, and learned Shinkage-ryū at his grandfather’s knee. He became the heihō instructor to the Owari Tokugawa, in Nagoya, in 1615.

Hyōgonosuke was primarily the instructor of Tokugawa Yoshinao. Yoshinao was the 9th son of Ieyasu, and the first lord of Owari Domain. He received inka from Hyōgonosuke and so is considered the 4th sōke of Shinkage-ryū.

Kashima Dōen was a middle-aged doctor and student of Hyōgonosuke. He had trained in another ryūha in his youth, and so had some difficulty adjusting to the Shinkage-ryū way of doing things. As a result, he took copious notes about his training. As was the custom, he arranged for these notes, along with all documents related to his involvement in the ryū, to be collected and given to the Yagyū family after his death.

One of the entries in his training diary was as follows:

  • 寛永五年戊辰六月十九日の朝、師小太刀にて、我道円中太刀にて、位を視るぞ。“The morning of July 20, 1628, my teacher (Hyōgonosuke) with a kodachi, and I, Dōen, with a regular tachi, (he said) “I’ll look at your kurai.”[5]

Kurai wo miru zo (I’ll look at your kurai) was Hyōgonosuke’s phrase for doing a shiai with his students. Again, we can be pretty sure this is a shiai, because there were no kodachi kata in Hyōgonosuke’s day.

Another story of shiai in Hyōgonosuke’s day involves the grandson of Kamiizumi Hidetsuna, Kamiizumi Sonshirō Hideaki, who came to Nagoya serve the Owari Tokugawa. He asked Hyōgonosuke for a match, but first had to defeat Hyōgonosuke’s student Takada Sannojō. Sonshirō lost to Takada and became his student, also receiving training from Hyōgonosuke.[1] 

Yagyū Renya

Finally, we have stories of Yagyū Renya Toshikane, Hyōgonosuke’s third son. In those days, a third son might be expected to marry into another family or take orders to become a priest. But Hyōgonosuke’s oldest son, Kiyotoshi, was killed in the Shimabara Rebellion. Toshikata, his second son, and now heir, initially took over from Hyōgonosuke as heihō instructor, but Renya was so skilled at Shinkage-ryū that Toshikata stepped aside. Renya was the 5th sōke of Shinkage-ryū.

As Renya was renowned within the Owari Yagyū family, and there were a number of accounts about his skill that were told decades after his death. Not all of these are entirely reliable, but here are two that seem pretty solid.

It is related in Mukashibanashi (Stories of Old), a history of the Owari Domain, that at age 12 or 13, Renya would have shiai with the other children of Hyōgonosuke’s students, taking all of them at the same time. If any of other children struck him, he would give them money. He would come home with his arms swollen from welts, and when he struggled to tie his obi, his mother would turn away to hide her tears. [6]

At age 18 (1643), Renya become heihō instructor to Lord Mitsutomo, the son and heir of Lord Yoshinao. Two different accounts relate that upon Renya’s arrival in Edo, Mitsutomo arranged a gauntlet of 30-some opponents who did Shinkage-ryū or Ittō-ryū. It is written that Renya went “2 or 3 rounds each” (二三本つゞ). This suggests something very much like the modern kendo scoring system. It should be noted, though, that the earliest of the two accounts of this gauntlet was written in 1739, nearly a hundred years after it supposedly took place. Though even that indicates that friendly shiai were considered normal and believable as far back as 1739. [6][7]

This concludes the review of the early history of Shinkage-ryū. Again, I wanted to present these accounts as neutrally as possible, so people can make up their own minds, but I should note here that there is no question within the Owari Yagyū family that shiai was a part of training at this time. When there is commentary that Shinkage-ryū was banned from engaging in shiai because it was patronized by the Tokugawa family, it should be understood that this applied to inter-ryū contests, not to intra-ryū training.

In the next part, we will look at the more explicit use of training shiai in Shinkage-ryū in the 19th and 20th centuries.

References

[1] 柳生新陰流縁起 “Yagyū Shinkage-ryū Engi” (Origin of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū) (editor’s title), excerpted from the 後悔記 “Kokaiki” (Record of Regret), 1718, by Yagyū Toshinobu, published in Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, ed. Imamura Yoshio, revised edition 1995.

[2] 正伝新陰流 “Shoden Shinkage-ryū” (True Transmission Shinkage-ryū), 1957, by Yagyu Toshinaga, quoting 劍道の發達 Kendō no Hattatsu, The Development of Kendō, 1921, by Shimokawa Ushio.

[3] 柳生家憲 Yagyū Kaken, Yagyū Family Constitution, 1589, by Yagyū Tajima-no-Kami Munetoshi, reprinted in Yagyūkai lecture materials.

[4] 兵法百首 “Heihō Hyakushu” (100 Poems of Heihō), 1593, by Yagyū Sekishūsai Songon, published in Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, ed. Imamura Yoshio, revised edition 1995.

[5] 道円集 Dōenshu (Collection of Dōen), 1628, by Kashima Dōen, reprinted in Yagyūkai lecture materials.

[6] 昔咄 “Mukashibanashi” (Stories of Old), 1739, by Chikamatsu Shigenori, published in Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, ed. Imamura Yoshio, revised edition 1995.

[7] 連也翁一代記 “Renya-ō Ichidaiki” (Life of the Venerable Renya), 1847, Iinuma Moriyoshi, published in Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, ed. Imamura Yoshio, revised edition 1995.

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