Author: Ellis Amdur Page 1 of 11

I am prompted to revisit this topic after viewing this video of Tada Hiroshi, a remarkable 94 year old aikido instructor. For those who like order, you are in trouble. I will live up to my promise of ‘casual’ – this will go all over the place. I’ve got no final point to arrive at–this essay is more like a jazz improv on a basic theme, the latter of which might have been insipid to begin with. [NOTE: A few people contacted me that they were unable to see the embedded videos, so I’ve also put a direct link under each one.]

Neribo

Tada explicitly states that the idea of using this as a training tool came to him when he found this (or a similar) length of wood in his garden, a scrap left over from his gardener trimming posts to prop up trees. He doesn’t reference any other inspiration. Clearly, he is using it to contribute to the away he does aikido, yet one more training tool.

Let us compare what he is doing to this:

FengZhiqiang Stick 2

And this:

Chen Yu

If we just look at the bang, the Chinese name for the thick short-stick training tool, it would be easy to claim that Tada Hiroshi obviously derived his training implement from traditional Chinese practice. Even if this is true, Tada is clearly doing something very different from Feng Zhiqiang and Chen Yu. The latter two men clearly show exemplars of 六合 (Six Coordinations): the first three being a balancing of forces throughout the body (wrist & ankle, elbow & knee, hips and shoulders) and the latter being jin (intent-driven, whole body coordinated movement, utilizing gravity & ground forces), qi (a method of expressing power through the use of trained connective tissue and no rigid, localized tension in the muscles, cultivated through specific exercises that incorporate the breath) and tanden (the use of the midsection of the body – not “one point” – to distribute the force of the body through the limbs in perfect measure – imagine the tanden as the head of a “quintipus” – with the arms of this imaginary beast extending through the four limbs and the head). This way of using the body is sometimes referred to as Heaven-Earth-Man, although this term is also used to describe a myriad of other ideas. At any rate, if this subject is of interest, particularly regarding its relevance to Japanese martial arts, then, (ahem), I have a book for you. (with translation in French and a new versions in German and Portuguese – and possibly Italian and Spanish –  pending in 2025).

Tada is doing something different. Quite admirable, but different. Tada has always been an athlete, with a body that, even as a young man, reminds one of whalebone: flexibly stiff is the best I can describe it. He is known to have run for miles, and done thousands of suburi with a bokuto, and rigorous chanting/breathing exercises in the Ichiukai, a spartan method of training that combined misogi no kokyū-hō (a Shintō-derived chanting practice) and Zen-style meditation. Its main focus seems to be overcoming human frailty and lack of will: the spirit dominates the body. Tada also trained in Nakamura Tempu’s Shin Shin Toitsu. Nakamura was a bigger-than-life character, with more than a bit of Baron Münchhausen in his personality. The dubious aspects of his own autobiography aside, he was one of the first to bring concepts of yoga to Japan, before orthodox systems were accessible, and he developed a very effective method of breathing for health that influenced the famous aikidō instructor, Tohei Koichi, as well as Tada Hiroshi. A comparison of the way Tohei and Tada moved, however, will quickly show that they incorporated the lessons of Nakamura and the Ichiukai (which Tohei also studied) in quite different ways.

Koichi Tohei in Florida in 1967

Hiroshi Tada. Specia 1999

Tohei had the ability to relax his massive body so that, in essence, it was as if, at every moment in a technique the point of contact on his partner received him as if a large sack of potatoes dropped onto that locale. Tada is, exactly like he does with the “neri-bō,” twisting his limbs and twisting you. I never took ukemi from Tohei, but I did from several of his leading followers. And I did take a fair amount of ukemi from Tada, and I can testify from personal experience that my descriptions in this paragraph are accurate. Tohei scratched the surface of what I described earlier as Six Coordinations – in particular, his development of certain aspects of qi (ki in Japanese); Tada used the same methodology to become a magnificent athlete, still moving very well at the age of 94.

Returning To The Title

As I described in several chapters in Hidden In Plain Sight, the influence of Chinese martial arts principles upon the 17th century development of Japanese arts is undeniable. I won’t rewrite that history here, but suffice it to say that those principles became embedded in Japanese martial systems. However, no Chinese system (such as baguazhang or Shaolin Quan) of martial arts was transmitted, and the principles that were received (in partial fashion), were then adapted to the needs of various Japanese martial arts. The best metaphor is that the original teachings, such as they were, were digested and “in-corporated,” becoming something quite different from the original as the centuries passed. By the 19th century, there was lip-service paid within some Japanese arts of Chinese influence, but for the most part, no one could delineate exactly what was passed on. [The major exception was Akiyama Yoshin-ryū), which preserved a set of training exercises, called nairiki no gyō (“internal power exercises”) that they explicitly assert were derived from Chinese training methods, although it is clear that they were altered from their original form, whatever that was, to suit the requirements necessary to create an Akiyama Yoshin-ryū human.].

At the inception of the 20th century, the Japanese were largely ignorant of Chinese martial arts (not military arts, per se – remember, the Chinese and Japanese went to war in 1895, and there were any number of subsequent skirmishes before full-scale war again broke out with the Japanese attack first in Manchuria and then China itself in the 1930’s. During hand-to-hand combat, Japanese troops certainly got the experience of facing Chinese “big knife” sabres]. Kano Jigoro, the founder of jūdō, in one essay, wrote that the main distinguishing factor between the two countries’ martial arts is that Japanese martial arts focused on two-person training, whereas Chinese martial arts were almost exclusively solo training. It is unclear to me (or anyone) if Kano knew more, and he was trying to brush aside Chinese martial arts as being insignificant, or if his knowledge at the time was this sketchy. At any rate, some knowledge of Chinese arts had seeped into Japan. According to Andrea Falk, in Li Tianji’s, The Skill of Xingyiquan, “In 1914, a teacher from his (Li Cunyi) associate, Hao Enguang, was the first to introduce xingyi boxing abroad, into Japan.” [So many questions!!!: Did he just do a demonstration as part of some kind of cultural exchange, or did he have students? Wouldn’t it be a delightful twist of history were we able to find a guest list with some significant Japanese martial artists among his audience, who then “stole his technique!”].

This diffusion of information about Chinese martial arts into Japan was patchy.

Ueshiba Morihei, the famous teacher of aikidō, deeply resented his students practicing jūdō after hours, and yelled that them to stop practicing Shina martial arts. [A couple of layers here: Perhaps he was correct on an educative level that training in jūdō undermined what he was trying to teach in his version of Daitō-ryū, but beyond that,  he is trying to leverage control of his students’ behavior through racism. He actually referring to the fact that jūdō is derived from Yoshin-ryū and Kitō-ryū, the two jūjutsu systems that most prominently have accounts of Chinese principles incorporated at their origin, and Ueshiba, an arch nationalist, used a racist term (there is no argument about this) to refer to China]. Nonetheless, Ueshiba had some contact with Chinese martial arts: In 1936, he visited Takeda Hiroshi in Beijing, Takeda being a well-known Japanese student of tongbeiquan and he is known to have seen some Chinese martial arts during his visits to the colonialist Japanese-run Kenkoku University in the early 1940’s. [NOTE: rather than revive a dead-horse to flog yet again, these visits occurred several decades after Ueshiba had studied Daitō-ryū and consolidated his own version of that martial art, and there is not one scintilla of evidence of any change Ueshiba made in his methodology due to his visits to China].

Sawai Ken’ichi studied tachengquan (AKA Yiquan) in Beijing and brought back his adapted version of this art after the end of World War II. He later became somewhat influential behind the scenes of Kyokushin karate, due to his friendship with Mas Oyama, and some of the latter’s students studied with him. [NOTE: Sawai shared the same instructor, Wang Xiangzhai, as Wang Shujin (to be discussed below). Wang was far more well-rounded, having achieved expertise in xingyiquan, baguazhang and the Nanjing Synthesis form of taijiquan. Both Sawai and Wang taught students in the grounds of Meiji Shrine at roughly the same time, and friends of mine, who studied with Wang, said that Sawai would occasionally wander over and berate Wang for wasting time on “all that flowery crap; you should just do Yiquan,” and Wang would laugh and continue doing things as he chose.]

Taikiken (Yi Quan) Documentary

Ushijima Tatsukuma, the teacher of Kimura Masahiko, and a remarkable jūdōka in his own right, was stationed, as a military officer, in China during the Second World War (at least before his assassination plot against Tōjō Hideki, which he somehow survived, possibly due to the then Japanese admiration of the person who suicidally risks everything for the sake of something he truly believes in). In any event, previous to those events, he dropped by a shuai jiao training center and asked for some matches. He was defeated, 2-1, and the Chinese expected that they would suffer some serious consequences in revenge by the ruling Japanese. Ushijima, however, was an honorable man, and continued his association with them, without any payback.

Of course, there was also a general understanding that Okinawa karate was derived from Chinese southern shaolin, but this was merely a a shibboleth–there was no attempt to re-establish links with the mainland by either Okinawan or Japanese karateka until quite recently.

Shorinji Kenpō vs Satō Kinbei

There were surely other similar encounters, but Japanese knowledge of Chinese martial arts remained quite limited until the 1970’s. Proof of that is the curious case of Shorinji Kenpō vs Satō Kinbei. Shorinji Kenpō was created by Nakamura Michiomi, more commonly known as Sō Dōshin. Nakamura had trained to some level in Hakkō-ryū jūjutsu, a modern martial art derived from Daitō-ryū.

Vidéo Présentation Hakko Ryu avec Shodaï Okuyama

Nakamura served as a kind of espionage agent in China before and during the 2nd World War. It is unclear to me if he was a member of a kikan (a kind of ad hoc information-gathering group associated with ultra-nationalist organizations like the Kokuryūkai (Amur River Association), or if he was employed by the Japanese military. This is purely anecdotal, but I was informed by someone “connected,” that Nakamura posed as a jintan salesman. Essentially, he would have been itinerant, going from village to village, selling this herbal medicinal candy. When he left, he’d paste a jintan advertisement near the village gate, ostensibly to indicate to other salesmen that the place had already been visited. In fact, if it was place on one side (left or right, I don’t remember), this would indicate to the Kenpeitai that he hadn’t noticed any resistance sentiment, but if it was on the other side, it indicated that they should further investigate, something that would have been terrible for the entire village, as not even a particular suspect was identified. In any event, Nakamura came back to Japan after the war.

The hagiography that used to be published essentially said the following: while in China, Nakamura met the last abbott of the Shaolin Temple, who said that he had no successor and bequeathed his art to Nakamura. And that this was the last martial art remaining in China–everything else was extinct. When Nakamura returned, he saw post-war occupied Japan, a morass of corruption, black-markets, and yakuza protection rackets (this, at least, was true) and he began to fight to protect the innocent, eventually opening a dojo for young people, and one thing led to another and he expanded. He asserted that his art was not for fighting alone, it was a religious endeavor, which he referred to as Kongo Zen. It is recognized as a religion, which provides significant tax benefits, something many organizations in Japan take advantage of (heck, America too). The art is a unique mixture of obviously Hakkō-ryū (thus Daitō-ryū) derived joint techniques, and a unique pugilistic style, which looks absolutely nothing like any Chinese martial art.

Way of the Warrior BBC series ep 1. Shorinji Kempo

Satō was another interesting person. He was kind of a Zelig of Japanese martial arts, claiming certification in more arts than I can count. Let me just say that opinions about him varied, and people can be quite prickly in his defense. That said, he was a pioneer in making contact with Chinese martial artists in the 1960’s, in particular Wang Shujin.

Wang Shujin Documentary Extracts

Satō became very instrumental in exciting the interest of young Japanese in Chinese martial arts practices, primarily regarding practitioners who lived in Taiwan. At one point, he publicly condemned Shorinji-Kenpō, saying that their claims to be a successor (the sole-successor!) of Chinese martial arts was untrue. Shorinji-Kenpō responded by claiming that taijiquan was an exercise system that had never been a martial art, and that Satō had fabricated claims that xingyiquan and baguazhang even existed. They counter-sued each other, pioneering, if nothing else, the now common practice in Japan of taking martial arts claims to court. The courts found in Satō’s favor, although, to my knowledge, no money was awarded. Subsequently, the Chinese community of Yokohama sued the Shorinji-Kenpō organization, and the courts required them to refer to themselves, officially at least, as Nihon Shorinji-Kenpō. In a very astute set of political moves, Nakamura and his daughter visited the site of the Shaolin monastery–a tourist attraction with monks installed by the Communist government. They posed for photographs, billing this as a ‘return home.’ Shorinji-Kenpō donated substantial sums of money, among other things bankrolling the wonderful 1982 movie, Shaolin Temple, with Jet Li (notice the very last scene of the movie, where Jet Li is teaching young monks and they are doing Shorinji Kenpō techniques.) At this point, those old conflicts are therefore moot.

This illustrates several points:

• That Shorinji Kenpō could even have made their preposterous original claims (they leave their story far more vague in present times) illustrates how uninformed the Japanese public, including the martial arts public was in the 1960’s and 1970’s regarding Chinese martial arts
• Money and facts on the ground can change history – when I asked the head of the Beijing martial arts organization about Shorinji Kenpō in the early 1980’s, he made a face, shrugged, and said that they had been very helpful to Chinese martial arts in a difficult period after the Cultural Revolution – millions of yuan of help.

AND – it’s actually an excellent modern martial arts practice, that serves to help many children get out of the house away from their computers, learn some moral teaching and some meditation.

A Final Illustration

Satō’s involvement with Wang Shujin (as well as others such as Jibiki Hidemine and a number of non-Japanese associated with Donn Draeger) was a foot-in-the-door, in regards to authentic knowledge of Chinese martial arts becoming known in Japan, as well as a second scholar/popularizer, Matsuda Ryuchi. The real boom, however, started with Shotokan karate, and specifically, with its great practitioner, Kanazawa Hirokazu. Among the students at the Shotokan was a Chinese gentleman, Yang Ming-shi. Yang, known as Yō Mei-ji, in Japan, was assumed to be a successor of the Yang family lineage of taijiquan. At least in the early years, he never said anything one way or another, letting people assume as they wished. In fact, he just shared a surname. He began teaching his adaptation of the Communist Chinese governments state mandated “24 standard form,”  which, at the time, most Japanese believed was the traditional Yang form. Thanks to Kanazawa, to his book, and to the zeitgeist, it and he became enormously popular. Again, this illustrates that only an uninformed public would find his version plausible. As per this video.

結城靖博　楊名時太極拳解説付き演舞【背面】（音楽：金大偉）

Which can be compared to this:

Early Yang style Taijiquan demonstrated by Niu Chunming [with English Captions]

Nonetheless, the result of Yang Ming Shi’s presentation and dissemination of his form, a purely amateurish version of the government 24 four taiji form, however, was clearly positive. First of all, if one steps away from the concept of martial arts and fighting, what is really wrong with what is done in this video? It keeps people happy, it’s surely good for “beauty and health,” as Yang’s book title suggests, and the people who are attracted to it–and stay with it–are right where they belong.

But what this also evoked was people in Japan wanting more. Prompted, in part, by Matsuda and other’s books, and outreach to the Mainland, a number of Japan/China Friendship Organizations grew up, bringing over top Chinese martial artists. At this point, you have people who simply study to learn various pattern drills, both modern wushu and traditional, and others who are committed to learning in as much depth as they can. Most people are quite happy to achieve what is in the Yang Ming Shi video. A few would like to achieve what we see in the videos of Feng Zhiqiang, Chen Yu and Niu Chunming. And for these people, the opportunity now exists, if they find the right teacher and if they are willing to, as the expression goes, “eat bitter.”

So, How About Tada Hiroshi?

I said I’d go all over the place, and I think I’ve kept my promise. Personally, I lean to the idea that his neri-bō was parallel evolution on Tada’s part – he saw a stick in the garden, and training maniac that he has always been, saw a way that he could do rigorous practice indoors as if he had a longer weapon–and, of course,  further develop his incredibly seizing techniques. [Tada has always been, in my view, among the most precise practitioners in slipping one hand or arm past the other to get perfect leverage on the other person. Most other aikido practitioners are crude in comparison: either roughly grabbing or depending on big-movement destabilization of the other person to have time to grab them for the joint lock]. Given the integrity with which Tada has always presented himself, it’s hard to imagine he wouldn’t give credit where its due–and at this late date, there’s nothing to hide anyway. His own teacher, Nakamura clearly stated that he learned his yoga in India, and Tada’s junior, Tamura Nobuyoshi openly claimed (and taught) his version of baduanjin which he learned from a book.  [It neglects pretty much all the components requisite in orthodox baguanjin, but Tamura stated that the version he did contributed to the development and maintenance of his aikido].

Taking the other point of view, however,, Tada lived as a young kid in Manchuria, during the Japanese occupation. The bang (short thick stick),in question, was not merely an internal strength training tool. It is a main training tool of shuai jiao,  the ubiquitous indigenous wrestling style of China, including versions in Manchuria where Tada lived as a youth. It is unlikely, in my view, that Tada would have seen an internal strength version of the bang, but quite possible that he would have seen shuai jiao. [And aside from anything else, through this reference, I have an opportunity to refer the reader to an incredible compendium of YouTube videos on shuai jiao training methodology.]

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The Shiai-Seihō and Aliveness in Yagyū Shinkage-ryū Practice

Let us now consider at how Yagyū Shinkage-ryū is practiced, particularly in relation to levels of “aliveness.” The Yagyū Shinkage-ryū curriculum is broadly divided into two groups: the honden (original teachings) and the gaiden (supplemental teachings). The honden are the tachi devised and passed down by Kamiizumi Hidetsuna and Yagyū Munetoshi (including beginner’s versions of two of these forms devised by 5th soke Yagyū Renya and 6th soke Lord Tokugawa Mitsutomo). The gaiden are made up of the shiai-seihō devised by assistant instructor Nagaoka Fusashige, plus some unique forms developed by Renya.

Let’s say that a young man named Tarō has joined Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. In his first couple of training sessions, he learns: reihō, how walk (more-or-less) with his shinai held overhead, how to do a straight cut with both feet, how to do a diagonal cut with his right foot (right to left), and then his left foot (left to right). Then he learns how to do gasshi. This is the most essential gokui of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, and the hardest thing to do right, so naturally it is the very first thing he learns how to do. Very quickly, he’s taught the five parts of Sangaku En-no-Tachi. This is a beginner’s version, with all exchanges happening from that shinai overhead position. As soon as he knows the basic shape of this, he’s moved on to the first shiai-seihō. This is Airaito Hasseihō: eight distinct seihō to teach fundamentals. For the next six months, these two kata are going to be pretty much all his training. (Some other lines might include the beginner’s version of Kuka no Tachi at this stage, but the idea is still the same.) In the honden he will polish the mental/spiritual side (kurai) while practicing timing, and the subtle interaction of cutting lines. In the shiai-seihō, he will work on energetic, whole-body movement while honing his senses of timing and distance. Nagaoka wrote in his commentary of the shiai-seihō that, “I have included the rocks with the jewels, to encourage 博文約礼 hakubun-yakurei (correct behavior by broad learning).”

In this initial phase, the beginning student’s practice is what we call torigai 鳥飼, which means “bird-handling.” Uchidachi’s shinai will never strike Tarō, but Tarō’s shinai will always strike the uchidachi. The idea here is to train a conditioned response. One might think that he is learning how to “do it right,” but “correctness” is less of a concern than doing it with whole body and spirit. Better to make a mistake doing it with all that you are than timidly and pedantically trying to “do it right.”

Eventually, as Tarō starts moving well, carrying himself with confidence and dignity, he learns the next shiai-seihō forms: fourteen with Tarō in seigan against an uchidachi with shinai overhead, and then another eight with Tarō in gedan against uchidachi with shinai overhead. In our line, this is where he learns the beginner’s form of Kuka no Tachi. At this point, his seniors start practicing with him in a way we call torigai higiri. Higiri can be written in two ways: 間斬り “cutting openings” or 非斬り “cutting what should not be.” Having gotten into the habit of doing things with all his body and mind, now Tarō starts working on getting the technical aspects right, because uchidachi’s shinai will strike him if the technique is not properly performed. The important distinction between this stage and later stages is that the uchidachi is not specifically trying to hit Tarō, other than in the sense of cutting to one or another particular target. Rather, the hits could be considered “self-inflicted.” If Tarō does not do the technique wrong, he will not be hit. His uchidachi is simply fully cutting to a particular target. Although Tarō begins to be struck on his hands or legs, it’s not especially painful and skin scrapes aside, it’s rarely injurious. Again, the goal is creating a further conditioned response: ignoring being struck, staying in the moment, and continuing the kata.

Tarō’s practice continues, and sometime after a year of regular training, he learns the standard version of Sangaku En no Tachi, with cuts starting from a chūdan or gedan position. He’s learned to make these kinds of cuts in the various shiai-seihō, so it is not a big shift to start doing the form in this way. Now his seniors start practicing in a way called higiri. Here Tarō’s uchidachi really begins to stress-test him. Targets become variable. If his uchidachi see an opening or they see Tarō starting to rely too much on the expected form of the kata, they may break the kata to strike where he has left himself open.

Tarō’s uchidachi begin to alter timing and distance, making Tarō adjust. Particularly in the shiai-seihō, his uchidachi try to push Tarō out of his comfort zone, so that he can see where he needs to improve. And while being struck in earlier stages didn’t really hurt, being struck here hurts a lot. At this point, Tarō’s conditioned response has been trained enough so that even while his brain registers that a hit really smarts, he doesn’t even flinch.

The ability to properly watch his uchidachi and respond if they bend or even break the kata is important, because sometime 2 to 3 years after joining, Tarō starts learning how to do the uchidachi side. Initially, he will practice uchidachi with others of roughly the same level, and they are not as precise or controlled as the veterans he’s been practicing with until now. At the same time as he is learning uchidachi for the shiai-seihō that he already knows, he’s also learning new shiai-seihō. These new shiai-seihō are especially helpful, as often they are set-up the opposite of the earlier shiai-seihō he learned: shidachi with shinai overhead against uchidachi in seigan or gedan. Essentially, he is learning from the other side, as shidachi, counters and responds to the techniques that he’s now receiving as uchidachi. But not in sense of “If A, then B,” but rather, “here are multiple possible ways of dealing with something A-like.”

Four to five years in, Tarō learns both the shidachi and uchidachi side of the standard version of Kuka no Tachi. This is significant because, until now, his practice with his juniors has been under the watchful eye of a senior. Now, however, he’s considered a shidosha, someone who can be trusted to practice with a junior on his own. At the same time, his practice with other shidosha moves to the higiri-jiai stage. This means that both shidachi and uchidachi are on the look out for openings, and may break the kata if applicable. But in the case of the shiai-seihō, is it breaking the kata if one simply slips into another kata?

Let’s look at a practical example. In the 2nd seihō of Airaito Hasseihō, shidachi and uchidachi approach. Shortly before entering into cutting distance, shidachi surreptitiously slips their foot into range, and quickly strikes at uchidachi’s upraised forearm. Shidachi follows up by advancing a few steps, pushing uchidachi back. It is incumbent that shidachi stay in contact with uchidachi as uchidachi retreats rather than getting stuck in place or running out of steam. The reason why is demonstrated in a later shiai-seihō, where the set-up is exactly the same with shidachi striking first and driving uchidachi back. But in the latter seihō, uchidachi shoots back to create enough distance do a retreating cut at shidachi’s hands. Shidachi must now switch from driving uchidachi back, to cutting down this new attack. Between two veteran practitioners, familiar with these seihō, it is nothing for uchidachi to slip into the later seihō if he deems shidachi’s cut and advance does not sufficiently prevent him from doing so. Ideally, shidachi should be able to naturally respond to it, as trained. And that response may not necessarily be from the same seihō!

Practically, one may not see many such variations over the course of a practice. At that point, practitioners are so aware that it could happen that they practice so it doesn’t happen. Their practice is infused with the tension of this potentiality. The standard “shape” of the kata is not the goal of the practice, but simply the end result of both practitioners fulfilling the particular parameters of that kata. The infrequent, but not uncommon, variations are themselves entirely valid shapes.

It should also be noted that while these various stages have been clearly delineated through the example of Tarō’s practice above, in actuality the boundaries are not so distinct. From the beginning, Tarō has been told to look out for openings in his uchidachi, and even to strike them if he sees them. Depending on his relationship and affinity with various seniors, as well as the particular thing being practiced, his torigai practice was leavened with torigai-higiri, or even straight higiri to illustrate a particular point, or to point out his own inattention/reliance on the expected shape of the kata.

Please note that although it is ostensibly expected, as weel as the ideal form of practice, higiri-jiai can be a fraught affair. Trust is needed, for both safety and for the maintenance of personal relationships, particularly among peers. There is a fine line between good-faith demonstration of an opening, and “cheap-shotting” someone. Some people, finding it a little too intense to do among their peers, or reluctant to do it with seniors, end up only doing a kind of torigai-higiri.

We can see how Yagyū Toshinaga, within this framework, saw another step to bridge higiri-jiai to full-on shiai: you can set up shiai within particular shiai-seihō parameters—say, jodan vs chudan or jodan vs jodan and either with specified targets, or any target whatsoever.. And you can also see Nagaoka Fusashige’s goal: you can have entirely open shiai, where the strategies, targets, and techniques, are heavily informed by shapes vigorously trained in the shiai-seihō.

Entirely open shiai is not officially practiced in mainline Yagyū Shinkage-ryū in modern times. Should it be?

I don’t it think necessarily needs to be. First of all, modern kendō is an outlet for people who really just want to engage is a kind of free practice, unbound by any parameters of kata-geiko.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that maintaining the integrity of the honden and gaiden requires intensive effort. Perhaps it is a matter of entropy, but even doing kata in the manner described above, some people, with the best of intentions, have a tendency to do the kata in a mannered way, or, in desiring to do the kata “right,” they do not imbue it with the life it needs. This is not necessary proof that free-style shiai is necessary. I fear that, as Yagyū Toshimichi suggested, if we split our limited time between kata and shiai, that entropy would increase, particularly if the shiai came to be seen as doing it “for real”. I go back to Nagaoka-sensei’s preface to the shiai-seihō in Part 3, and note that even back then, shiai were enough of an issue that he actually created more kata.

In the meantime, higiri and higiri-jiai provide a degree of “aliveness” for feedback, particularly in the shiai-seihō. And finally, by diligently working to maintain the process described here, a framework exists to return to shiai if desired.

In conclusion, Yagyū Shinkage-ryū Heihō is a Sengoku era ryūha extant today with a focus exclusively on kata, but which has nevertheless been strongly associated with shiai in its practice since its beginning. Its dedicated use of the fukuroshinai allows it to create a spectrum of “aliveness” throughout the training process. It is probable that similar ryūha existed throughout the Edo period. Yagyū Shinkage-ryū can be seen as an exemplar of the type of ryūha in the Meiji period that, when faced with the change of kendō from distinct “proprietary” styles to a more homogenized “open source” paradigm, chose to maintain a primary focus on its kata in order to preserve its particular character.

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Part 3 – Later Historical Record of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū

There is little written about Yagyū Shinkage-ryū as it was in the 1700s. Renya’s nephew Toshinobu succeeded him as head of the family and instructor to the Owari Tokugawa. He took the ryū into the 18th century, and then passed it on to his son Toshitomo, who then passed it on to his son Toshiharu.

Nagaoka Fusashige

One of Toshiharu’s students was a man named Nagaoka Tōrei Fusashige. Nagaoka inherited from his father the position of shihan-hosa, assistant instructor to the sōke. Nagaoka’s official post in the Owari Domain was to train martial arts, particularly Shinkage-ryū, and to write about them. Toshiharu was succeeded by his son Toshiyuki, but Toshiyuki died at a relatively young age, and was succeeded by his teenage son, Toshihisa. But then Toshihisa also died at age 20, when his own son, Toshishige, was still a baby. Toshiharu’s younger brother, Toshimasa, together with Nagaoka, kept things together until Toshishige could come of age and grow into his role as sōke.

One thing Nagaoka noticed was that people were struggling in shiai. His solution was to devise more kata. He referred to these kata as seihō (勢法) to distinguish them from the original kata of the ryu, which are called tachi 太刀. The sei refers to ikioi, which means force and momentum, but also carries a nuance of the natural course of things. Hō refers to methods and principles. In the preface to his description of these seihō, Nagaoka wrote:

There are many beginners who do not understand the way to achieve victory in shiai, and then go headlong down the wrong road. So I, Fusashige, have devised seihō in the broad outlines of shiai, with the teachings of the past masters, based on the forms of certain victory in the old [armored] style and new [unarmored] style, and give them to my fellows in order to begin their study. [1]

What are the shiai-seihō and what makes them different from the tachi so that they can aid the learner in shiai? Most of the tachi (Empi no Tachi being the notable exception) are split into distinct parts which are made up of one or two exchanges between the practitioners. The shiai-seihō typically feature three or four exchanges chained together, some even have eight or nine, and some of them have effectively no upper limit, bound only by physical space and uchidachi’s wherewithal. They are also dynamic: within these multiple exchanges, attacks and responses come from high and low, from left and right and from far out and close in, with both shidachi and uchidachi moving forward or back. After the new practitioner has learned the first three shiai-seihō, totaling thirty distinct sections, they have acquired the basic skill to respond to an attack from any angle, to any target on their body. Finally, they are highly permutable. Different seihō share similar parameters, so that one can flow into another, or the response in one might be used in a different, but similar seihō.

Nagaoka’s description of Gasshi, the very first part of the first shiai-seihō, is also very interesting from the perspective of historic shiai. (Here is a description in case the link above should ever break; shidachi and uchidachi start standing roughly thirty feet apart, and with shinai held overhead, both approach the middle. They stop at a point with both just a little outside striking distance. Uchidachi takes a big step forward with their right foot, cutting straight. In response shidachi does the same, a big step forward with their right foot, cutting straight. The slight delay in shidachi’s response allows them cut over uchidachi’s cut, deflecting it to the side as shidachi’s shinai lands on uchidachi’s head. Both then step back, and do it again, this time cutting with the left foot.)

Nagaoka writes: “In the past, this was a type of higiri-jiai. Now we use the winning form of this shiai as a seihō.”[2]

I will talk about the meaning of higiri in the next part of this series, but there are three clear takeaways from these statements by Nagaoka. One is that shiai was a part of regular practice, and indeed that even beginners engaged in it. Two, we see issues with shiai being addressed with more kata. Third, with the statement “Gasshi is a type of shiai,” we can see that there are multiple parameters for shiai. It can be as open as a modern kendo shiai, or as limited as both practitioners in jōdan, both cutting straight against each other.

Yagyū Toshichika

Moving on, young Toshishige eventually grew up and inherited the ryū and the hereditary position as heihō instructor. His son was Yagyū Sangorō Toshichika, the 19th sōke of Shinkage-ryū, and the last heihō instructor to the Owari Tokugawa. He oversaw the transition of the ryū from the Bakumatsu to the Meiji Era.

In 1868, Lord Yoshikatsu, the last lord of Owari and 18th sōke of Shinkage-ryū, opened the Meirindō, one of the early public schools of the Meiji era. As part of the school he also opened the Shidaibu Dōjō, and invited practitioners of various ryūha to do uchikomi-jiai. Toshichika was appointed the dean of kenjutsu instruction for the dojo. According to Yagyū Toshinaga in his book Shōden Shinkage-ryū, the Shidaibu Dojo was devoted purely to shiai. [3]

The dojo project deteriorated after various edicts, such as the Haitorei, which ended the era of the bushi as warriors, and made the various ryūha ostensibly obsolete. In later years, the Butokukai would be established to promote the training and transmission of classical and modern budō as a whole, but at that time Toshichika had decided to devote himself to purely passing down his family tradition of Shinkage-ryū.

I think what we have here is a major decision point for Shinkage-ryū. We can see the general trend towards shiai-centric practice, as well as an impetus towards involving multiple ryūha. Toshichika was intimately involved in that movement, at least as far as the Meirindō and Shidaibu Dojo were concerned. But either because of the experience, or in spite of it, Toshichika decided to step out of these movements, and focus on maintaining the essential character of Shinkage-ryū. We can imagine that had he chosen differently, Shinkage-ryū might have only survived in a few kata or pieces of kata in modern kendo.

On June 19th, 1885, Toshichika and his cousin Toshihiro traveled to Yagyū Village in Nara, and asked for a shiai with any of the former retainers of Yagyū Domain. I think it’s an interesting point that they did not offer to train or demonstrate kata, but that they wanted to see the vitality of the ryū in Yagyū Domain through a shiai. [4]

Yagyū Toshinaga

In 1913, Toshichika opened the Hekiyōkan Dōjō in Tokyo, and began teaching Shinkage-ryū to the Imperial Household Police. Toshichika’s son, Toshinaga, accompanied Toshichika to Tokyo, and was named sōke in 1922. He took over the Hekiyōkan after Toshichika retired back to Nagoya, and later opened the Kongōkan Dōjō, where he practiced until returning to Nagoya in 1935. While in Tokyo, he also taught kenjutsu to the Konoe Shidan (Imperial Guard).

In 1935, Yagyū Toshinaga gave a weeklong lecture series at Kokushikan University. These lectures were collected into a book called Kendō Hachikō, (Eight Lectures on Kendō). Kendō here is meant is the broadest possible sense as including modern kendō and classical schools. And here we can see Toshinaga’s image of ideal training, informed by his experience in Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. [5]

1. SWORD METHODOLOGY (剣法, kenpōi) is focused on the individual student, either on their own or as the shidachi of paired practice.
2. SWORD TECHNIQUE (剣術, kenjutsu) operates in the realm of mutual practice (no distinct uchidachi/shidachi).

Toshinaga broke down his conception of training as follows:

• Kata here is written with the kanji for marudachi 丸太刀. The significance of this is that these represent the “classical” forms, the ones that act as containers for the founders’ insights. The exemplar of this would be Shinkage-ryū’s Sangaku En-no-Tachi 三学円之太刀. It is contrasted with seihō.
• Higiri (lit. “cutting openings”) is a level of paired practice wherein uchidachi bends or breaks the kata to strike shidachi when they leave an opening. Higiri-jiai is an advanced level where both uchidachi and shidachi do this. I will discuss this further in the final article in this series.
• Shiai-seihō references the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū sets of kata under the same name, but as I understand it, Toshinaga is here suggesting similar seihō created for general use, rather than the specific shiai-seihō of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. Here Toshinaga shows how they can act as a bridge from the higiri-jiai of the kata to fully open shiai. Essentially, you would have two participants doing a shiai under the parameters of the shiai-seihō, both as part of intra-dojo practice, and then in a inter-dojo environment.
• Kiriai, then, is how he classifies fully open shiai between two competing individuals, in both an intra- and inter-dojo setting.
• Finally, you would have the same kind of progression with battō, though I must confess that I am less certain of how that would work. I’m not sure if we’re talking shiai versions of the kumitachi, side-by-side competitions like you see today, or perhaps even actual free draw-and-strike against an opponent type situation.

This series of lectures show that even into the 20th century, shiai was considered an important aspect of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. Toshinaga would go on to shepherd Shinkage-ryū through the war and post-war years, eventually founding the Yagyūkai in 1955, before dying in 1967.

Yagyū Nobuharu (Toshimichi)

Toshinaga’s son, Nobuharu brought Shinkage-ryū to the 21st century, and accepted the first non-Japanese into the ryū that we know of. I want to wrap the historical examination by looking at his experience training during his teen years, as described in the book Dai-Sempai ni Kiku:

• “After practicing seihō they would don bōgu and try to actually strike each other with those techniques. About twenty primary school-age children would come to the dojo every Sunday, and [Toshimichi] was responsible for guiding them through basic practice. “[Nobuharu says,] ‘There was a spirit of, Let’s get some bōgu on and go at it freely, for real. Now I no longer have the old dojo, and time is limited, so we first work on the most important things.’” [6]

The old Nagoya dojo, part of the Yagyū manor, burned down in the fire-bombing of Nagoya in March of 1945, and the land was later appropriated by the city of Nagoya as part of the rezoning and reconstruction efforts. It was at this point, after the war, roughly four hundred years after the founding of the ryū, that Yagyū Shinkage-ryū moved to a kata-exclusive model. Nevertheless, it maintains a path to shiai, both in the content of the shiai-seihō, and also in how all kata are practiced. I will explore this path in the final part.

References

[1] 新陰流兵法外伝 Shinkage-ryū Heihō Gaiden (Shinkage-ryū Heihō Supplemental Teachings), date unknown, by Nagaoka Fusashige, published in Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, ed. Imamura Yoshio, revised edition 1995.

[2] 新陰流兵法外伝 Shinkage-ryū Heihō Gaiden, ibid.

[3] 正伝新陰流 Shoden Shinkage-ryū, (True Transmission Shinkage Ryu), 1957, by Yagyū Toshinaga.

[4] 正伝新陰流 Shoden Shinkage-ryu, ibid.

[5] 剣道八講 Kendō Hachikō (Eight Lectures of Kendō), 1998, by Yagyū Toshinaga, ed. Yagyūkai.

[6] 大先輩に聞く Dai-sempai ni Kiku (Listening to our Great Seniors), 2005, by Taya Masatoshi.

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Note: If any of my readers here find themselves grateful for access to the information in the essays published on this site, you can express your thanks in a way that would be helpful to me in turn. It would be most welcome if you were to purchase one or more of my books, be it those on martial traditions, tactical communication or fiction. In addition, if you have ever purchased any of my books, please write a review – the option is there on Amazon as well as Kobo or iBook. To be sure, positive reviews are valuable in their own right, but beyond that, the number of reviews bumps the algorithm within the online retailer, so that the book in question appears to more customers. 

 

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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Note: If any of my readers here find themselves grateful for access to the information in the essays published on this site, you can express your thanks in a way that would be helpful to me in turn. It would be most welcome if you were to purchase one or more of my books, be it those on martial traditions, tactical communication or fiction. In addition, if you have ever purchased any of my books, please write a review – the option is there on Amazon as well as Kobo or iBook. To be sure, positive reviews are valuable in their own right, but beyond that, the number of reviews bumps the algorithm within the online retailer, so that the book in question appears to more customers. 

 

Part 1 – Introduction

With this series of articles, I would like to address a certain dissatisfaction with the common debates one sees online regarding koryū, kata training and sparring or what is called “aliveness.” These are typically framed in very binary ways, something I find incongruent with both my own experience of practice, my understanding of the history of koryū in general, and Yagyū Shinkage Ryū Heihō (YSR) in specific.

• This part will be an introduction to the argument I am addressing, the terms with which I will address it, a very general look at the history of shiai in classical Japanese martial traditions, and some of my own conclusions and speculations.
• Part 2 will be an examination of the appearance of shiai in the early historical record of YSR. Fortunately, the historical record is relatively well-preserved, and has been printed in a number of different modern sources.
• Part 3 will look at the modern (post-Meiji) history of shiai in YSR.
• Finally, in Part 4, I would like to present the YSR approach to kata and free training, specifically through the lens of what we call the “shiai-seihō,” or “shiai-gata.” I’ll note that this material is adapted from private presentations I’ve made elsewhere.

I suspect that on the whole much of what I am talking about is present in other traditions, if not expressed or thought about in exactly the same terms. So, I want to stress that the ultimate goal here is not to boast about the specialness of YSR, but rather to hopefully inspire further study of these ideas in other traditions, and encourage a re-examination of commonly held assumptions.

Let’s begin by defining our terms. I’ll be using the term shiai throughout the series, mostly because that is the term used in the Japanese sources I have. What do I mean by “shiai?” Let’s first define its ostensible counterpart, kata-geiko (form training), as two-person practice utilizing certain pre-set parameters, the end result of which expresses one or a few predictable shapes. This would include very simple drills such as pad work, uchikomi-geiko in jūdō and kendō, and of course the more sophisticated kata of koryū.

Shiai is an engagement between two people with non-lethal intent, typically with semi-or full-contact, for the purpose of training or testing of skill, utilizing spontaneous expression of technique within set parameters partly or wholly outside the parameters of kata-geiko. This includes point-matches, non-point matches, jigeiko and kakarigeiko in kendō, randori in jūdō, “free practice,” and “sparring.”

I believe these can be seen as a spectrum rather than discrete items. Indeed, of the examples given above, kendō’s kakarigeiko in particular seems to straddle the line. I hope to provide another, more detailed example in Part 4.

Having defined our terms, let’s now look at the argument. The following represent ideas that I have often run into in discussions online, and even in printed material. The general argument can be summed up as this:

“Koryū didn’t spar. The masters of the old days didn’t have friendly matches; they had duels. The primary training method of koryū was kata-geiko. Later, in the mid-19th century, matches with bōgu became popular, which lead to the development of modern kendō, and Kanō developed his randori and shiai-system for modern jūdō.”

I have no desire to to rehash the old “jutsu vs. dō” discussion, but I think it is fair to say that, in general, classical schools are seen as kata-centric, conservative, and focused on either battlefield combat or dueling. Modern budō, then, is seen as shiai-centric, relatively innovative, and focused on physical and mental fitness. In terms of history, kendō and jūdō are seen as new innovations of the Meiji era, distinct from classical schools, many of which have died off. It is also generally assumed that the classical schools that remain are representative of their respective eras.

All of the above strikes me as perfectly reasonable given the information that we have had available to us. The problem, however, lies in that very last assumption, that extant classical schools are representative of their eras. It underpins everything else. But I would submit that we have a survivor bias issue. Extant classical schools, far from exemplars of Edo period and earlier ryūha, almost assuredly represent only the most conservative traditions.

It’s believed that there were some one thousand four hundred martial arts ryūha existing by the time of the Meiji Restoration. Together, the Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai and Nihon Kobudō Shinkōkai account for less than eighty. While not every extant ryūha belongs to those organizations, it’s unlikely that there also exist sixty-some other traditions needed to get us to even 10% of the number that once existed. I suspect that many, probably even most pre-Meiji kenjutsu and jūjutsu schools had a strong shiai tradition, perhaps even being shiai-centric, and that these schools eventually became subsumed into kendō and jūdō.

In my opinion, the real primary difference between classical and modern budō is not necessarily based on its approach to real combat, but rather that classical budō was proprietary, while modern budō is largely open-source. And rather than a break at an inflection point in Meiji, I think there was simply a gradual shift from the classical paradigm into the modern one. Certainly, some events accelerated this shift, particularly the modernization of Japan in the Meiji era.

The thrust of this series will be kenjutsu, but let’s take a quick look at other schools.

• And as far as jūjutsu, you have the very obvious example of sumō as one way that the grappling arts engaged in shiai. And far as I’ve been able to determine, the randori of Kano’s jūdō was taken from Tenjin Shin’yō-ryū (founded in the 1830s).
• In terms of sōjutsu, there’s the very obvious example of Owari Kan-ryū. It was founded in the late 17^th century, before the invention of the kind of bōgu that it currently uses, so its shiai tradition may date back to the invention of bōgu as we now have it.
• With naginata, at first glance, this seems to actually fall very much in line with the general argument. Maniwa Nen Ryū, for example, has shiai for its kenjutsu practice, but not for its naginata practice, as noted in Ellis Amdur’s Old School. However, a researcher named Maehata Hiromi has noted that some woodblock prints show wooden naginata vs practice spears, as well as short shinai fixed to naginata hafts, so perhaps there actually were shiai at one time. [1]

Even just taking a very broad view of kenjutsu history, we find the following:

• The fukuro-shinai was invented sometime in the mid-16th century. Extant schools that use the fukuro-shinai today include Shinkage-ryū, Nen-ryū, Kashima Shintō-ryū, and Tatsumi-ryū. These are all very old schools.

• Historically, we know that there were shiai in Shinkage-ryū and Nen-ryū. Might this not suggest a much more widespread use of shiai among bugeisha?

• Bōgu dates back to the 18th century, in particular with Jikishinkage-ryū and Nakanishi Ittō-ryū.

• The modern yotsuwari shinai dates back to the 19th century with Ōishi Shinkage-ryū.

• And then you have the Three Great Dōjō of the Bakumatsu era (the Hokushin Ittō-ryū’s Genbukan of Chiba Shūsaku; Shintō Munen-ryū’s Renpeikan of Saito Yakurō; & Kyōshin Meichi-ryū’s Shigakukan of Momonoi Sunzō). Each represented a different koryū, while also being known for shiai. The All Japan Kendō Federation draws a straight line from them to modern kendō.

This is a very potted history of kendō, but I think we can already see the basic arc of kendō history stretching back centuries, interwoven with the history of koryū. I think I could go far enough to say that kendō as something distinct from koryū is, for all intents and purposes, actually a post-war idea!

Of course, it is no great revelation that the popularity of shiai at the end of the Edo period led to modern kendō. The case I want to make is that this interest in shiai goes back centuries further. We have shiai in schools dating back to the 16th century. Or, alternatively, older schools at least adapting to new fukuro-shinai technology. I would argue that where there are fukuro-shinai, there is almost certainly shiai. I personally think that they are a great tool for kata practice, but they are not a necessary one. Particularly in pre-bōgu days, they must have held a strong lure for those who wished to test their skills in relatively safe conditions.

Then, at turn of the 18th century, we have bōgu development. I think this indicates demand during at least the 17th century. And Maniwa Nen-ryū’s bōgu suggests alternative models that never caught on.

Of course, once these tools were created, development was rapid afterward. Therefore, rather than kata vs shiai being a distinction between classical and modern budō, I think that shiai should be part of the conceptual image of koryū. as much as two-man kata and battōjutsu. Not necessarily present in every extant school, but at one time pervasive enough to be the norm.

References

[1] 「薙刀（長刀）」から「なぎなた」へ Naginata kara naginata e “From Naginata (as weapon) to Naginata (as sport),” Kobe College Studies, 2006. (Link to PDF, article in Japanese, abstract in English)

 

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VISITING OTHER RYŪHA: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In the Edo period, unless one were a dignitary of a feudal domain, there were few reasons for a practitioner of a ryūha to visit another ryūha other than to make a challenge. Once safety equipment had been developed, this was not necessarily a hostile action, but it was, as I have described elsewhere, always potentially so. If one intended to ‘cross-train,’ this usually followed a match—the loser trained with the victor. Perhaps the most likely exception to this was if a young man became acquainted with a venerable warrior. An example of that is recorded in the internal records of Takenouchi-ryū.

. . . , the family lost its castle to an alliance of Oda Nobunaga and the Hashiba clan.[2] They fled to an adjacent valley in Owari in 1571, . . . . The Takenouchi were welcomed by the Shimizu lord, Shinmen Iga no Kami. Takenouchi Hisamori, the founder the ryū, then a seventy-eight-year-old man, became the guest of a thirty-one-year-old warrior, Shinmen Munisai Taketo. Takenouchi-ryū records state, “They did not see each other as competitors or enemies but instead paid each other respect as teacher and student.” Hisamori taught him kogusoku—in his school, close-combat, particularly incorporating the use of a dagger in grappling. Munisai was described as a diligent student. [Amdur, Old School, p. 174].

This, however, was not the norm. The idea of visiting another ryūha to observe their practice, with no intention of requesting an opportunity to enroll in the school, is a modern one. This is true even among dōjōs of the same ryūha. Were a student of a ryūha to travel: be it across town or to the next domain and request to train, it would very likely be viewed as an attempt to shame the ‘host school,’ to show that the visiting student, an exemplar of his teacher, was learning things better than what the host school had to offer.

That we are able to visit other schools in modern times, even being invited to practice for a day to experience the character of the school indicates a remarkable change in the nature of traditional schools. For the most part, we do not regard each other as enemies, even rivals. On the one hand, this is positive: knowledge shared can be for the benefit of all, and this is a phenomenon most likely in peaceful times. On the other hand, we run the danger of dulling the sharp edge of distinction, that which makes each school unique as a fighting art, an edge that is honed by adversity rather than amity.

VISITING FAMILY

Historically speaking,  ryūha exclusively headed by sōke, lineal headmasters who managed a single dōjō, was a rather unusual phenomenon. Instead, most koryū-bugei certified various individuals as licensed instructors. In this system, once one was certified, one left to set up one’s own school, no more beholden to one’s teacher than a PhD graduate is beholden to his or her graduate school advisor. They were independent, and they would establish schools in various locations under the same name, with no reference or communication back to a headquarters.  The idea of shibu-dōjō (支部道場, ‘branch schools’) under the aegis of a central authority was quite uncommon until modern times. This is true even in modern martial arts. The Aikikai, the mainstream organization of Ueshiba Morihei’s aikidō, allowed the opening of its first branch dōjō, the Kuwamori Dōjō, (where certified instructors of the headquarters were dispatched to teach) in 1951.

As I have discussed elsewhere, when one became the student of a teacher, one was bound by strict, universally understood rules, grounded in feudal culture. In such a culture, the idea of visiting other schools of the same ryūha, led by other teachers, either junior or senior to one’s own, would have been a fraught subject, even if done so bearing a letter of introduction from one’s own instructor. It might have been interpreted as an implicit message that the student found his own teacher lacking, and either the teacher was trying to get rid of him or wanted him humbled or, conceivably, that they were visiting as a kind of challenge, to throw down a gauntlet, so to speak, demonstrating that what they learned from their own instructor was superior. It should also be remembered that travel was not a simple matter in the Edo period; one needed official permission to leave one’s domain, so the idea of casually visiting another faction of one’s own school to augment one’s understanding of what one received from one’s own teacher was unlikely. In other words, a visit was always meaningful.

To be sure, in the late Edo and early Meiji period, when the bulk of training involved forms of freestyle competition, be it armored fencing with split bamboo sword replicas or jūjutsu matches, people frequently visited other schools, be they other ryūha or one’s own. Then, the challenge was explicit, but not always hostile. One might also stay and train, sometimes for long periods of time, because, for the most part, people were studying increasingly generic methods of martial arts practice. Competitive practice, which eventually became kendō and jūdō, began to create universal martial arts, quite different from sectarian, hermetic ryūha.

Withal, the old ryūha still survive, and they do so by maintaining an old, even archaic, perspective. With that in mind, how should one visit another dōjō within one’s own ryūha?

AS A GUEST

Why would you go visit another dōjō, when you are training in a perfectly good school already? Of course, with the easy access of travel in modern times, it is quite plausible that you will find yourself in an area where such a dōjō is located. Aside from meeting fine people, the most important reason to train in another dōjō should be to broaden your understanding of the ‘possibilities’ of one’s ryū. At the same time, you should be fiercely loyal to your own dōjō and your teacher. This may seem contradictory, but it is through such tension that we learn.

Properly speaking, you should request that your teacher contact the dōjōchō (head of the dōjō) where you want to visit (I’m using this generic term because not all dōjō are headed by shihan). Your instructor will introduce you, so to speak, and tell the dōjōchō a little about you, and probably discuss your skill. He or she might specifically request that the dōjōchō teach you something specific that they are especially skilled.

When you visit, it is a nice gesture to bring a small gift, a small representative souvenir from your home town. Something too ‘special’ or expensive will make the recipient uncomfortable.

Some dōjōs seat their students by seniority and others do not. The problem is that various schools have different rules as to where seniors and juniors sit. In business settings (including the Japanese military) the junior always sits closest to the door, with the seniors the farthest away. One of my informants wrote, “In one of the schools I attend in Japan, they follow that system with the seniors lining up farthest from the door, which places the juniors toward the right. The other school has the seniors line up closest to the door with the juniors to the left.” Because this is both confusing and somewhat fraught, it is quite acceptable to ask a senior of the dōjō what the rules are concerning this or any other point of etiquette or expected behavior.

If the dōjō does have a seniority-based seating system, a senior member or the instructor will then, either recollecting the introductory letter or by asking questions in present time, will move you to the appropriate spot. Of course, that lets his/her own students know your approximate skill and status. It is also a mild challenge–any healthy-minded student of the dōjō you are visiting will wonder if you are really worth being placed in a position above him or her. In other schools, you will be placed in a position of honor, representing your teacher, so to speak, and you can then engage in a duel of politeness where you struggle to go to a lower position.

When you start training, maintain your technique in exactly the form you have been taught by your own teacher. That denotes loyalty to your own dōjō. You should not be trying to ‘sync’ with their style. If there is a point in the kata where the differences in technique are so great that you and your training partner cannot continue the kata, you should, mostly silently, rework it together so that you can continue. I would recommend that you defer slightly—you are a guest after all, and through this process, you will learn another perspective on doing things. However, if the two of you are really unable to achieve some way to execute the kata, the instructor will surely come to help, partially to make things work and partially out of curiosity as to what you are doing. An instructor who is not ‘tracking’ you as you train is not doing his or her job.

Your training partner should NOT correct you, unless they are either shihan-dai or shihan. If they do not hold a teaching license, simply state that you have come to learn from “X sensei,” and you will wait for his/her corrections. Then offer to carry on with training. (By the way, if the dōjōchō (head of the school) is neither shihan nor shihan-dai, they are still, in fact, a de facto shihan-dai nonetheless—he/she is authorized to teach, after all).

When the shihan or shihan-dai does correct your technique or offer other advice, meticulously follow whatever he or she has said. Don’t argue. Don’t defend the way your teacher taught you (you might be wrong and your defense dishonors your teacher, because the other shihan might then think that your teacher is incompetent, having taught you what you claim). Do NOT show any frustration or defensiveness; show nothing but interest, and strive to execute what you’ve been taught. However, if the instructor says, “Try that on me,” do so to the utmost of your ability; you and the instructor will thereby learn the merits of what you have learned, however imperfectly, from your own teacher.

If the students of the dōjō you are visiting pressure you on the dōjō floor, do NOT simply accept being pushed around. Execute your techniques with more power, cut bigger, move with more speed and grace. You MUST defend your teacher’s honor by displaying what you have been taught with all the power and skill you possess. I am NOT talking about getting into a fight or even an argument. Rather, match the best your training partner is offering and be a little better. To put this on a personal note, I simply hate the image of a budōka as a modest, unassuming person who, when faced with any sort of disrespect, bows deeper because, “I was at their dōjō, and I didn’t want to be pushy or seen as arrogant.” . . . Or, “I thought I’d be best representing you by being polite.” Absolutely the contrary! I regard it as unacceptable if the students of another dōjō push my student’s around, much less those from another ryūha. Again, I’m not talking about a fight or even a shiai. I am simply stating that a good student will show his or her best skill and power when visiting another dōjō. It is through your actions that the dōjōchō has some idea of the skill of the teacher whom you represent. What I say to my own students is, “Give me the opportunity to apologize for you ‘not knowing your own strength,’ or ‘being a little hot-blooded. .  .'”  After all, we are doing a martial art, and there should be some heat, some competition. As long as it doesn’t degenerate into violence, it makes all of us stronger.

AS A STUDENT OF THE HOSTING DŌJŌ

When you practice with a guest, strive to maintain technique as you learned it from your instructor, and at the same time, treat your guest with respect. What I mean by this is strive to be as powerful as possible without crushing your training partner—he or she is not your enemy, and he or she may be inferior to you in skill. Part of your training is to figure out, immediately, how good he or she is, and try to be a little better.

Your guest, if behaving properly, will strive to offer respect to your instructor by not clinging to the way he or she was taught to a degree that it is impossible to practice together. Therefore, because they may be a little deferential, there may be openings in their defenses, and if you are too powerful, you may injure them. In this case, however, it is not because you are necessarily better; it is possible in a free-fight, they would annihilate you. Rather, their timing and combative spacing are off because they are striving to do the best they can of what they learned from their teacher, and simultaneously, striving to fit in with the way kata are done in your dōjō. Therefore, gradually work up to 100% speed and power: get to know each other first at weapon’s length and then bit-by-bit, move faster and faster.

If there is a clash of technique and understanding of the kata is making practice difficult, or dangerous, signal your instructor and get some help on how to work together.

AS AN INSTRUCTOR

You have been honored by your fellow instructor that he or she sent you their student. Do not hesitate to correct their technique, according to your perspective, to make what they are doing more powerful. At the same time, do not try to remake them. If I send my car to a new mechanic, I hope that he or she will retune my car to a higher performance, and this is true even though the new mechanic is a specialist on German cars and I’m driving a Maserati. I do not, however, want them to rebuild the chassis, or replace the engine.

Keep an alert eye on your guest(s) and who they are training with. Your task is to enhance your own students’ skill through contact with this guest and return the guest to his or her own instructor more powerful, more skilled in some aspect of the martial tradition that you both share.

If, for any reason, a NEW guest student acts in a way that you do not like, in this case it IS the your responsibility to correct their behavior. However, if they train more than several classes, it is now the senpai of your dōjō’s responsibility to put them in place.

Both sides should come away from such encounters believing that they learned something new AND affirmed that their own way of doing things is the best that there is. [Yes, I am being a little humorous here, but ‘best’ is a complicated question, one that I do not choose to answer it here. Suffice it to say that anytime a fellow shihan or their student shows me something that is superior to my understanding of the way I do things, I will strive to incorporate it into my own skill set].

I think the most valuable part of such ‘cross-training’ among “dōjōs of the same family” is that it can lead you to question techniques that you, hitherto, were very comfortable. For example, if you are executing a technique in such a way that it works perfectly against an opponent moving backwards, but it doesn’t work when the opponent moves forwards and there is no immediate adaptation to deal with the opponent’s forward movement, there is a problem. There are only four answers: 1) you have to figure out some way of ensuring the opponent will ALWAYS step backwards at a certain point; 2) The absurd –  “Will you step backwards and not kill me by stepping forwards?”; 3) you will have to refine your technique so it lives up to its ‘promise,’ 4) If you are a shihan/shihan-dai, perhaps you will have to retool/rework the technique so that it has real integrity. Waza should work when the opponent does something contrary to what one intends; any technique that commits you to a vulnerable position from which you cannot retreat or adjust is problematic. Through this type of training, I have been spurred to adjust spacing, timing, angle of attack and defense, power and speed, all from training with an ‘imperfect’ training partner. This is how we keep our practice alive, rather than 井の中の蛙大海を知らず [“A frog in a well that has no conception of the sea.”]

Purchase Ellis Amdur’s Books On Budo & De-escalation of Aggression Here

Note: If any of my readers here find themselves grateful for access to the information in my essays, you can express your thanks in a way that would be helpful to me in turn. If you have ever purchased any of my books, please write a review – the option is there on Amazon as well as Kobo or iBook. To be sure, positive reviews are valuable in their own right, but beyond that, the number of reviews bumps the algorithm within the online retailer, so that the book in question appears to more customers. 

 

 

In an earlier guest essay on Kogen Budō, I wrote:

It is important to draw a distinction between “military inspired” arts, practiced by a military class focused on unarmored dueling, versus military arts practiced by a professional class that drilled and maneuvered in mass formation, on exercises or expeditions.

This is a distinction, ill-considered in a lot of commentary, even though it concerns changes most all kobudō underwent during the Edo period, much less where we find ourselves well into the 21st century. Considering this, I will examine several arts with which I have a passing familiarity, and hypothesize about how their current, very divergent, incarnations could have been more closely related much earlier in time. I then describe some of the psychological considerations arise when undertaking an ongoing practice and, in my case, how I hope to practice sword methods as a form of mindfulness and self-cultivation without losing sight of the origins of the arts flowing down to the current day.

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In 1985, at Waseda University, Ellis Amdur gave a Japan Martial Arts Society presentation on “Self-Defense in Japan.”  There, he quoted a Buddhist precept, “Do no unnecessary harm.” This phrase, which I have never forgotten, was reinforced by what I was told by my Tatsumi-ryū seniors. It has become part of my personal ethos ever since. For example when they explained the duties of a kaishaku, I was told that he should act at his own discretion, and not wait for the person committing seppuku to stab himself in the stomach. Rather, the kaishaku should cut the person’s neck immediately when he leans forward to pick up the dagger or short sword which will have been placed before him. Placing the blade at an appropriate distance from the person to be executed will ensure that his neck is at the optimum distance and angle for the kaishaku to cut.

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