Can Study Groups Work for Koryū?

Traditionally Speaking

There is an image today of koryū as small isolated groups of a few students, headed by one headmaster, engaged in a many decades-long pursuit of martial perfection. Something like this can be true today—many people remain students of a teacher for almost a lifetime. I know of individuals who have trained for fifty years without ever receiving certification of full knowledge of the school or a teaching license. But I do not think that this is true to the original nature of koryū bujutsu. Of course, in the aforementioned case, the students in question may simply be incompetent or not suitable, in their instructor’s eyes, but it may also be due to something else—a fundamental change in the nature of martial ryūha within Japan.

It is undeniable that classical martial traditions are best taught by direct, personal instruction from a master instructor (shihan). However, shihan were not so uncommon in the past—there was (legitimately) ‘one on every block’. Remember all the word really indicates is a ‘certified instructor.’ Not only that, there were often many shihan of a single ryūha.

Ryūha Were Not Hidden Away Hermetic Cults

The concept of a ryūha taught in one location by one person, the only individual competent to pass on the essence of the school, was rather unusual in the past. Before the Meiji era, instructors’ primary goal was to teach as many worthy students as possible, and thereby spread the influence of their own school. It made political sense—and it was profitable. Remember, the ryūha were commercial ventures: were one to achieve an official position in a feudal domain, one received a salary. If one opened up a machi-dojo (‘town dojo’), one earned a living. Bushi received a kind of continuing education credit when they achieved each certification, thereby increasing their rice stipend from the domain. Commoners accumulated social capital—something one still sees today in kuro meishi (name cards covered with black ink – the enumeration of each martial arts certification).

On the shihan’s side, by increasing the curriculum, one also made money by selling each rank. In this process, various ryūha created many fully certified people, who could then go elsewhere and teach the same material, starting their own lineage of students, often losing all contact with their own teacher, other than putting the instructor’s name on their own lineage chart. Nonetheless, even though ‘graduated shihan’ did not send money home to their teacher, his or her name spread along with the ryūha – in feudal Japan, an honor-based culture, one’s name was the most important capital one owned.

This essay is one of many that has been revised to make the writing itself more graceful, but more importantly, to incorporate my own developing perspective on this subject. It is now part of my new book, Roots Still Cracking Rock: Refections On My First Fifty Years Within Classical Japanese Martial Traditions, which in addition to revised essays from this site, contains new work as well.