It is conventional to think of Japanese martial traditions through the lens of the bugei, systems maintained by the warrior class. This is incorrect on a number of grounds. First of all, some venerable systems were founded and maintained by goshi (yeoman), a class of armed farmers who were (with few exceptions) at the very bottom of the warrior class. Rather than serve as retainers to a feudal lord, they were directly situated in the countryside, to some degree independent of domain politics, but more directly influencing (and influenced by) the lives of the peasants. Yes, they were nominally within the warrior class – but they were really apart from the mainstream of bushi culture. Beyond that, by the mid-Edo period, ever increasing numbers of non-bushi entered the majority of ryūha. In fact, in many ryūha, the majority of members were non-bushi, and others were led, even founded by those of the peasant or merchant class. (That they later might receive a bump up in rank by their feudal lord to become bushi does not change the fact that they were originally peasants or merchants).
Additionally, there is the little studied phenomenon of martial dance/performance/ritual known by such names as bōnote (there are a number of other names). Often associated with Shinto shrines, and enacted publicly during matsuri, these were almost exclusively the provenance of lower classes: peasants, and possibly craftsmen and merchants. Some of them were passed down in ryūha form, complete with makimono, with keizu (lineage) and the like. Unlike the more austere, even stilted performances of bugei, the bōnote were dramatic, flashy, almost like a modern Chinese wushu exhibition. Nonetheless, to be skilled in bōnote required one to have skill managing weaponry, as well as physical agility and strength. Some of them were enacted almost as mini-skits. One also learned, through training, to work well with others in coordination. Some may look at bōnote and think that it is rather far from combative training, but in my view, probably no more or less so than the overly ritualized form of kata we see in classical bugei.
Both bugei and bōnote were aesthetically congruent with their social class. A peasant, unlettered and crude, would find himself acting absurd aping his betters (and if he didn’t, others would), were he to train in the manner of Ono-ha Itto-ryu or Yagyu Shinkage-ryu; similarly, a warrior wouldn’t be caught dead prancing around in the manner of peasantry. But then again . . . it is apparent to me that in the borderlands, the rural domains, there was surely cross-fertilization. Such farmer/warrior schools as Araki-ryu and Kiraku-ryu have dramatic techniques with chained weapons that are very similar to bōnote. On the other hand, it is likely that hundreds of years previously, peasant militia, trained by bushi adapted what they learned, combining it with various local shrine dances and that’s were bōnote originated – for example, one still extant bōnote tradition is called Shinto Katori-ryu bōjutsu (yes, that is the correct name). [NOTE: Most of this is speculation on my part – in the near future, there will be a guest blog, historically grounded, discussing bonote in detail].
And . . .
Throughout my time in Japan – and occasionally in off-hand statements in other people’s writing – I would notice references to a ‘family art.’ Beyond that, one would read the history of a school, and see a mention such as “there are no records before 1750, but it is believed that, previous to this, the x-family maintained this ryu as a family art,” with such names as Tominaga-kei bujutsu or Takuma-kei jujutsu. In other words, in addition to the bugei, passed down in ryūha style and the bonote of the peasant (and perhaps merchant) class, there was a third category of martial traditions ‘floating around.’
This truly is a rich subject to study – and it is something that should be researched soon, because it is unlikely that many family arts remain now, and in another generation, most will be long gone. To show how ubiquitous they once were – and how much may remain – this is the result of a single casual question on a couple of Facebook sites. Given how easy it was for me to acquire the information below, there may be hundreds of such family traditions still remaining. Perhaps even more. It is very likely that many families, particularly rural, may have remnants of arts, otherwise undocumented, passed down only within a family or among a small sector of a village (NOTE: I’ve edited these communications to fit this article).
Examples of Family Arts
I mentioned in Hidden in Plain Sight, one line of the ancestors of Saigo Tanomo (who were descended from Chinese women who served as maids (and more) to the Tokugawa), maintained a family sword art using a sword, shorter than a katana with a broader blade, more like a Chinese Dao.
Shiigi Munenori, a well-known budoka, who founded an organization called Ichigido, to contain all the many martial arts he studied and taught. Shiigi’s family were hereditary shrine guardians of Kashima shrine for millennia. Within his curriculum are a small system of bōjutsu called Kashima no bō, as well as some kaikenjutsu allegedly derived from Toda-ryu. NOTE: I’ve seen the Kashima no bō and it is among the most powerful and dynamic bōjutsu I’ve ever seen.
One of Hoki-ryu’s predecessors was something called Koden Juhatto, taught to Hoki-ryu’s founder Katayama Hisayasu by his uncle named Shoan (this would have been near the end of the 16th century). Since their extended family included Takeuchi Hisamori, who created a very famous ryuha bearing his name, I am laboring under the supposition that there was some sort of shared family martial practice that wasn’t called a ryu, or ‘formalized as such.’–Kevin Tsai
My kendo sensei occasionally will show us his sensei’s (Japan) ‘family’ kata. These differ from the traditional kata, and it was something passed on to him only verbally and through individual training with his sensei.—Richard Marsaglia
For the past 17 years, I have studied a ‘family ryuha’ called Mukushin-ryu, under the guidance of my teacher Ohashi Yukio (15th soke), of Obama City, Japan. While the lineage is incomplete, and hasn’t really stayed within a single family, it has been passed down as such. Mukushin-ryu was founded in the late 1470’s by Ohashi Kageyuzaemon, who was a high ranking student of Shugo-dai Kai Yoshihisa, a top student of Chujō Mochiyasu, 5th soke of Chujō-ryu. After the destruction of the Asakura by Oda Nobunaga, in 1573, Mukushin-ryu disappeared with it’s fourth soke. It is believed that some of those who survived the battle went into hiding, and maintained some aspects of the ryūha, maintain through oral transmission. It is believed to have reappeared in the late 1800’s, under the 11th headmaster, Muaki Chuzaemon. In 2001 Akimoto Masayuki named Ohashi Yukio Kenshin as the 15th soke. The school has very few records, and it is probably a combination of passed down tradition as well as reconstructed practices. –Peter Campbell
My teacher, Ono Yotaro, once posted on FB about an intriguing encounter he had. By profession, he is a landscaper. He redesigned the garden of Gangoji, a temple in Nara Prefecture. Because of that job, he become friendly with the head priest and was subsequently invited to perform shakuhachi (he was a former head of a shakuhachi ryu before he ‘retired,’ and passed it on to a student of his) and Takenouchi-ryu at its yearly Obon festival. At one such festival, he met a Buddhist minister and his wife, who lived off in the boondocks of Nara. They demonstrated a system of bōjutsu with their one single student. Intrigued, he visited them at their village, Yagyumura. So the story is that the Yagyu family, who ruled the area up to the Bakumatsu Era, were so busy with politics in Edo, that they entrusted general policing of their domain to the local gentry, farmers and commoners. Sort of like a ‘neighborhood watch.’ Out of that commoner’s group of security emerged a kind of bōjutsu, somewhat a ‘family’ tradition, but more like a community exercise, akin to the more ceremonial/performance kind of bōnote, but much more geared towards practicality rather than performance. (Interestingly, the very last kata of the entire series of Bitchuden Takenouchi-ryu bōjutsu, is very much like a bōnote kata. I suspect it was developed for public demonstration purposes). [Editor’s Note: This substantiates my theory of cross-fertilization between bugei and bōnote.] Ono sensei was intrigued and visited every now and then, and started to learn the kata from them because, outside of the couple—I don’t know what happened to their ‘younger’ deshi, which probably means he was well past his 50s himself—nobody in the village showed much interest at all. He visited them every so often, picking up kata, when he had time in his busy schedule, until first the husband, and then the wife passed on. Now that he’s retired and reflective of his life, he regretted somewhat not having the foresight to really preserve the system in earnest. It was stressed to him that it wasn’t a Yagyu family tradition, but a Yagyumura commoners’ tradition, passed on informally, without much of the trappings of ranking, certifications, levels, etc. It was simply taught to the civilians who volunteered to patrol the village for centuries, and then it pretty much faded away, possibly except for the notes that Ono sensei now has and his dim recollections.—Wayne Muramoto
The Intent of the Essay
I no longer reside in Japan. But many of my readers do. When I went there, I was looking to find something unique. To be sure, some of my readers simply wanted to train in something well-known – to follow in the footsteps of others. But there is a particular adventure in finding something otherwise lost, not in the manner of the ‘kata-collectors,’ who find elderly martial artists, who are alone, perhaps infirm, and cozen out some information on what was, for them, a treasure, and in the end, have acquired one more menkyo to put on their name-card.
Instead, I mean discovering something with clean motives, so that things, otherwise lost, will still live. Some of them were not be all that remarkable. A set of six jujutsu forms, (and three more partially remembered), all that remains of a family legacy. Nonetheless, the family systems were a part of Japanese martial history, a substrate of knowledge that few have considered. Time being short, keep your eyes open. And when someone – perhaps your teacher, perhaps a neighbor – mentions a family art, express interest. Tactfully, as always, for after all, this is Japan. But true interest. More than once. You may find something interesting . . . you may be taught something remarkable. And in the process, you will be offering a service, however small, to the culture that has welcomed you so that a small piece of it is not lost forever.
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