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.

Katchu Kenpō

“Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”

— The Skeleton in Armor, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What we call koryū are practices surviving from combative training of several military castes (i.e., primarily bushi, but also gōshi and sometimes armed monastics) before 1868, when the Tokugawa Shogunate ended with the Meiji Restoration. Despite these antecedents, the majority you will find today are focused on unarmored single combat as opposed to armored combat in group formation.

Some groups still maintain skills at wearing armor to this day. When thinking of armored swordsmanship, Yagyu Shingan-ryū Heihōjutsu comes to mind, which regularly demonstrates wearing antique armor. Their movements, which can look a bit formalized when practiced in cloth uniforms, allow for the efficient use of the body while wearing armor. Another example is the Satsuma-han Heki-ryū koshiya kumiyumi, which practices in group formation in armor, with patterns of movement that allow for ranks of archers to cover each other as they draw and fire.

Most koryū, however, adapted during the Edo period to a focus on unarmored combat. Some schools may preserve older, armored, version of kata, but it is not clear to me they put the level of emphasis on armored combatives that Yagyu Shingan-ryū or Satsuma-han Heki-ryū do. Some branches of Owari Yagyu Shinkage-ryū and Hikita Kage-ryū maintain practices of field weapons such as odachi and have postures (kamae or kurai) that are based on how one might effectively move while armored. They also maintain older version of core kata that stress an armored style of movement. For example, a movement of cutting one-handed from long range while balancing on one leg in an advanced kata might be substituted for a closer range movement using two hands.

During certain festivals, members of Katori Shintō-ryū in Japan wear armor, but it is not clear to what extent wearing armor during practice is a regular occurrence. The first set of paired sword kata in Katori Shintō-ryū (Omote no Tachi) is meant to be katchu kenpō (armored sword methods) while the second (Gogyō no Tachi) is explicitly taught as suhada kenpō (unarmored sword methods), but many lines of the art practice the first set at such a rapid pace that the connection to armored combat is, at least to me, lost.[1]

This shift to primarily unarmored training is not surprising. The last large-scale battle before modern times was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1638. Aside from minor skirmishes in putting down peasant insurrections, the Edo period was peaceful, up until the Boshin War of 1868-69, which saw the end of the samurai. Most kenjutsu ryūha thus adapted to several hundred years of peace (Pax Tokugawa) and were not concerned with armored combat or combat en masse. Feudal domains often had official schools for bushi that taught several arts side-by-side. A bushi might then be licensed in those martial arts and this could include cognate instruction on group movement and military strategy, which would have been taught in an academic sense. Martial traditions that had no official domain imprimatur were less likely to preserve associated practices like how to wear and care for armor, how to maneuver while fighting along other bushi. Due to these shifts over time, even though koryū are associated to a military caste, I am not sure it is a good idea to call them “battlefield” arts, even when field weapons such as naginata or yari are employed.

The example of having different version of kata to explicitly work on armored patterns of movement seems logical, but the next step of taking the time to train in armor is rare. Were one to actually train to fight in armor:

  • The easiest part of maintaining a connection to armored combat is understanding where to target on an opponent wearing armor. This kind of knowledge might survive quite well in a practice like Katori Shintō-ryū Omote no Tachi. However, as most people practice today, their pace of movement is too fast, their stances too upright, and their footwork and body maneuvers (tai-sabaki)are too large for use in armor.
  • Understanding general patterns of movement that would not work well while wearing armor is absolutely requisite, but beyond that, there must be a focus on posture and moving in a way that would best keep the armor from incumbering one’s movement. Even unarmored, long field weapons such as the spear can become entangled in one’s clothing if used improperly.
  • Martial skills such as how to don and remove armor properly, and how to care for it would also need to be cultivated. In previous era, the care and maintenance of armor would have been taught both in domain schools as well as within one’s family.

Suhada Kenpō

If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. In order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further, and I cannot forgive you. There’s no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I’ve gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There’s no other choice. Shameless now. Nameless now. Nothing now. No one now. But my soul must be iron, cause my fear is naked. I’m naked and fearless, and my fear is naked. – Henry Rollins.

Each tradition went through its own unique changes during Pax Tokugawa. While koryū are indeed strongly connected to the past, it is a mistake to think these arts are handed down to us unchanged. As one example, let us consider Jikishinkage-ryū, an art that was taught in several areas in Japan. At the end of the Edo period there were several distinct lines of practice, as Jikishinkage-ryū followed a shihan system of transmission where advanced teachers could operate largely independently of one another.[2] Its main presence in Tokyo during the late Edo period was a populous dojo run by Sakakibara Kenkichi, where a focus on competitive practice (shiai) wearing armor similar to modern kendō was emphasized. This type of classical or transitional fencing (leading to gekiken and then modern kendō) is in practice far from the earlier armored kata of katchu kenpō. But, when we look at the kata of Jikishinkage-ryū, much of what we find in Hōjō, the initial kata, can be adapted directly to armored combat. Even the more dynamic Tō no Kata has many sections that are evocative of older armored kenjutsu, especially as practiced in Kashima Shintō-ryū, but then, there are other movements (springing backwards at the end of many kata) that are nonsensical from an armored perspective.

Jikishinkage-ryū thus finds itself to be an art influenced by the social changes that took place with the end of the feudal era but may preserve some strong echoes of the past. If it is indeed, as sometimes claimed, the true or direct Shinkage-ryū, how might its practice be restored to something more akin to its earlier practices?

The curriculum of Jikishinkage-ryū has been significantly pared down over time, having abandoned such practices as jūjutsu, naginatajutsu and sōjutsu (spear). Analyzing its practice from the context of tactics found in related arts can be useful in understanding its intent. I have done this through leveraging my earlier practice of Katori Shintō-ryū, as well as benefiting from discussions with practitioners of Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Araki-ryū, and other arts over the years. Chinese internal martial arts are another important influence for me, because the emphasis on posture, balance, and movement I have cultivated in internal martial arts has been largely compatible with the practice of Jikishinkage-ryū kata. I would be remiss, however, in not pointing out that over time my own kata practice has changed due to this latter influence.

While a core practice of Jikishinkage-ryū kata, interpreted through the lens of other arts (e.g., Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Katori Shintō-ryū, Taijiquan), may arguably be a practice that is more fertile than the rote performance of kata for historical preservation (especially if we practice tameshi-ai to get feedback on our endeavors), it would be a mistake to think in doing so we are somehow reviving the past. What we end up with is something old and something new, an idea I will return to towards the end of this discussion.

Time only moves forward, except in our minds.

Each art needs to answer for itself how its movement through time preserves, changes, improves, or decays its core—a question that is primarily established in how the art is embodied by its practitioners. How the results relate to what may have existed in the past might also be informed by examining related traditions through the lens of what we ourselves have received. For example, if we examine different surviving lines of Shinkage-ryū, we can attempt a partial matching between the traditions of Jikishinkage-ryū and distantly related arts like Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Taisha-ryū or Komagawa Kaishin-ryū. Their precise commonality, however, is obscured by time. What is “direct” or “correct” may be more about politics and social conflict between practitioners of these arts in ages gone by, and less about their current incarnations.

In Jikishinkage-ryū, Hōjō is the first formal set of kata; it is taught in four parts, each modeled after a season of the year: spring (wood), summer (fire), autumn (metal), and winter (water). The parts are connected via systematic walking methods called unpō, coupled with specific breathing practices (kiai) expressing each Taoist element. Connecting these kata is the fifth season, the Taoist element of Earth, which symbolizes the shift from one season to the next. The aforementioned breathing practices map yin and yang (inyō) in their outer and inner manifestations to each of the seasons. All of this is an embodiment by the practitioner of the five elements (wuxing or gogyō ) prominently figured in Taoist philosophy. Hōjō is believed to have originally have had five kata, but the fifth (called Enren) was moved into the end of the second part of its curriculum, called Tō no Kata; the connected walking and breathing practices were introduced in its place to connect the remaining four into a continuous whole. This relates to two different mappings of the five elements to the seasons of the year. Earth can represent harvest time (between summer and autumn) or the change between each pair of adjacent seasons (spring to summer, summer to fall, etc.).

In Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Sangakuen no Tachi is also a set of five linked kata, three sharing similar names to Hōjō (Ittō-Ryōdan, Uten-Satten, Chōtan-Ichimi) with small variations, save for two called Zentai Settetsu (“cutting nails”) and Hankai Hanko (“half open half closed”). It is often the first formal kata taught in Yagyu’s Honden curriculum, and Sangakuen no Tachi and Hōjō  are thought by some to originally be versions of the same practice. However, the corresponding kata have diverged quite a bit over four hundred years, to the point where there is little outward (omote) similarity between them. The very important Jikishinkage-ryū principle of hasso-happa, described below, is absent from Yagyu Shinkage-ryū kata, and I believe unique to the art (and possibly encoding Chinese influences on Jikishinkage-ryū).

History And Divergence

Jikishinkage-ryū traces its origins back to Matsumoto Bizen no Kami, who claimed to receive a divine transmission he called Kashima-Shinden, after a period of retreat at Kashima shrine. In a dream, he received the teachings of tengushō (“teaching bequeathed from the tengu”)[3] from the deity Takemikazuchi (建御雷/武甕槌), and upon waking used a straight limb from a cherry tree to practice what had been revealed to him.[4]

Matsumoto Bizen no Kami is said by Jikishinkage-ryū to have taught Kamiizumi Ise no Kami Nobutsuna, the founder of Shinkage-ryū. (NOTE: Other lines of Shinkage- ryū reverse this relationship, with Matsumoto learning from Kamiizumi instead). Kamiizumi had many students, among whom was Okuyama Kimoshige, who learned from Kamiizumi relatively early in the latter’s teaching of Shinkage-ryū. He was thought to be around the same age as Kamizumi’s top student, Jingo Muneharu, and roughly 40 years older than Yagyu Munenori and Marume Kurando. If this is true, it could very well be the case that he received an earlier version of Kamiizumi’s teachings, closer to what Matsumoto Bizen no Kami taught.

Okuyama himself taught Ogasawara Genshinsai Minamoto no Nagaharu. Genshinsai was on the wrong side of a serious political dispute at the beginning of the Edo period and exiled himself in China for many years. He was strongly influenced by studying some kind of Chinese polearm, around same time Yagyu Shinkage-ryū and Taisha-ryū were emerging as unique arts. That experience may partially explain Jikishinkage-ryū ‘s unique character compared to other Shinkage-ryū surviving today. These lines were already likely quite divergent by the early 18th century, when Yamada Ippusai began calling his approach the true or correct (jiki) Shinkage-ryū, to contrast it with what he felt were the changes Yagyu Shinkage-ryū had undergone. Ippusai is said to have rearranged the core curriculum of Jikishinkage-ryū into its current organization around five sets of kata (Hōjō, Tō no Kata, Kodachi, Habiki , and Marobashi) in the 17th century. By the time of its 14th headmaster, Sakakibara Kenkichi, the bodyguard to the shogun and keeper of Edo castle. a great emphasis was placed on matches with shinai, over the performance of kata.

In Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Enpi no Tachi is one of the core kata of the art. It is believed to contain the essence (gokui) of Shintō-ryū as transmitted by Kamiizumi. It thus may be helpful in turn to observe and analyze versions of Katori Shintō-ryū kata sets such as Gogyō-no-Tachi or Shichijō-no-Tachi to better understand Enpi-no-Tachi. In principle, Okuyama may have learned an early version of it during his tutelage by Kamiizumi, but today (possibly due to the reorganization conducted by Yamada Ippusai during the Edo period) it is not found in Jikishinkage-ryū. It may well be that Enpi was further refined after Okuyama’s time of study with Kamiizumi, and the early students received elements of that practice arranged in a different manner.

Enpi no Tachi is said to be hard to learn if one is not already skilled with the sword. In Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Sangakuen-no-Tachi and Nanatachi are sometimes said to be practices developed to help explain or elaborate on Enpi, and may be taught as preparatory practices, before one learns the core set. Sangakuen-no-Tachi and Nanatachi are said to contain counters to portions of the introductory curriculum of Shintō-ryū kata called Itsutsu-no-Tachi and Nanatsu-no-Tachi respectively.

However, Yagyu Shinkage-ryū and Katori Shintō-ryū are so different to one another in the current day that it is hard to see a direct relationship where a specific movement of one art allegedly counters another found in the other. Perhaps the Shintō-ryū kata were rearranged at some point, combined into long flowing sequences of engagements instead of practicing in sets of five or seven distinct kata that would more directly correspond to the tactics in the Shinkage-ryū kata. It is also possible that the role of uchidachi in Yagyu Shinkage-ryū evolved to being more generic during the practice of Sangakuen and Nanatachi, instead of more fully modeling an opponent practicing Katori Shintō-ryū.

Nonetheless, Yagyu Shinkage-ryū and Katori Shintō-ryū relate in other ways; therefore, it may be interesting to examine a specific technique common to both traditions, which is not found in Jikishinkage-ryū. There is a movement in Katori Shintō-ryū’s Gogyō no Tachi where an opponent’s blade is briefly grabbed; this happens also in Enpi no Tachi but is done by uchidachi instead of shidachi. The implication is that Yagyu Shinkage-ryū contains a counter (on the part of shidachi) to the action (performed by uchidachi). Both styles differ in how their kata continue, one moving towards the opponent, the other style moving away.

The blade-grabbing movement in Katori Shintō-ryū is a movement found today in the set called Gogyō no Tachi, which is an unarmored dueling set (i.e., suhada kenpō). Enpi no Tachi has both unarmored and armored versions in some surviving lines of Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, and it is interesting to note that Katori Shintō-ryū does not grab the opponent’s sword in the version of its Omote no Tachi commonly taught, which is said to be armored combatives (katchu kenpō), even when performing the similar torii-dome (gate block) half-sword movement.

If we take anything at all away from this narrative, it is that the relationships between lines of a prototypical art (Kamiizumi’s Shinkage-ryū) and its parents (Shintō-ryū, Nen-ryū, Kage-ryū) as they existed four hundred years ago are today, quite unclear, despite each art’s individual claims as to how they relate, especially when founder’s claims of divine revelation (e.g., Tenshinshō-den, Kashima-Shinden, etc.) are taken into account, which may also be exoterically regarded as a culturally accepted mechanism to describe one’s own creativity.[5]

Practice And Unification

If Yagyu Shinkage-ryū Sangakuen no Tachi is derived from Enpi no Tachi, and it either helps explain it or prepares a student, who is not already a high-level swordsman, to learn it, then where is Enpi in Jikishinkage-ryū, given Hōjō and Sangakuen use many of the same kata names? In Jikishinkage-ryū, the older version of Hōjō is currently practiced in a set called Habiki , referring to training with swords, either live blades or those possessing a rebated edge. Habiki, called Koryū no Kata in the Naganuma line of the art, contains wrapping motions called maki that are also found in Enpi no Tachi, and has counters to some common movements found in Katori Shintō-ryū Omote no Tachi. So, parallels and points of comparison exist.

It is plausible, therefore, that Hōjō and Sangakuen are derived from a proto-Enpi that had principles such as maki introduced above but was not yet organized into its current form. The older Habiki set is performed in a continuous flowing manner, more akin at times to how Enpi no Tachi or advanced variations of Sangakuen are performed in Yagyu Shinkage-ryū. Two other similarities are that Enpi, in some advanced versions, contains low squatting stances reminiscent of sumō called sonkyo, and Habiki contains one-legged balancing postures during cutting actions. Both are awkward positions to recover from and develop strength and balance in the exponent; examining video footage of Habiki will quickly denote the relative skill of adherents by how stable they are as they cut with full force in that balancing posture.

In both the case of Sangakuen and Nanatachi, these explanatory kata are said to develop skill at defense in the Shinkage-ryū practitioner, whereas in Jikishinkage-ryū a dominant approach is cultivated where the exponent is largely on the offensive. Shinkage-ryū’s Kuka no Tachi (nine teachings) is said to be about learning how to attack and is claimed to contain methods of defeating the upper-level teachings of three popular or important ryūha from the 16th century: Shintō-ryū, Nen-ryū, and Chujō-ryū (which eventually developed into Ittō-ryū). However, it is not easy today to see which of these ryū the uchidachi role corresponds to in each of the kata in the set, due to arts again evolving over time, and uchitachi performing their role in the unified stoic manner typical of Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, without shapeshifting into manifestations of the different ryū named above.

There are small portions of Kuka no Tachi that can still be found in Jikishinkage-ryū Tō no Kata, but one must look very closely and consider that the fundamental body mechanics of both arts are, today, quite different. Jikishinkage-ryū maintains predominantly square hips, rarely adopting the oblique stances common to Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, Katori Shintō-ryū, and modern arts like Aikidō.

Another difference is that the organization of Jikishinkage-ryū has Hōjō placed as an introductory set that is largely divorced from tactics at the omote level, whereas Yagyu Shinkage-ryū’s Sangakuen no Tachi is considered tactical in nature. One could use movements from Sangakuen directly in combat, versus its movements being a component needed to build up to some later training, as is largely, but not entirely, the case is in Hōjō. I mentioned above the concept of Sangakuen as an introductory kata that prepares a person for or informs/explains Enpi no Tachi in application, so in each case the emphasis is a matter of degree. Perhaps both should be regarded as preparatory forms: Hōjō may be to Habiki as Sangakuen is to Enpi.

We have not discussed the extensive Gaiden curriculum of shinai kata in Yagyu Shinkage-ryū, as what I am trying to convey are similarities and differences amongst the oldest kata sets in the two arts, and I am less familiar with the Gaiden, despite learning several of them from Kato Kazuo of the NY Yagyukai in the mid 1990’s when I lived in Queens, New York, and attended a workshop he held in Port Washington. Similarly, both lines of practice contain small sword (kodachi) practices that are quite different from one another, and even more so from Katori Shintō-ryū kodachi.

The discussion above talks about some of the limitations within the contemporary practice of Japanese combatives, at least if one purports to preserve or recreate the experience of armored field combat, something exceedingly rare after the beginning of the 17th century. It is very difficult to cross-reference the practices of older arts that claim to stem from armored combat, as they exist today, even when one art claims to have teachings that relate directly to (defeat) those of another. It is my thesis that all these arts have changed dramatically over time and generally do not provide great insight into medieval armored combat, either for observers/analysts or their practitioners.

Current historians of Japanese martial history assert that bushi wore armor, more to survive arrows and, in the 16th century, bullets rather than edged weapons at close range. This is borne out by the fact that available statistics of casualties in field combat in Japan were caused by arrow, bullets, or in the case of sieges, rocks. How different were the practices of that time, compared to ryūha surviving today?

For contemporary practitioners of martial arts, there is a benefit in how these arts have evolved, in that unarmored dueling presents one with a great and immediate danger, divorced from the hypotheticals of considering imagined armor (whether a blow would get through, how quickly one might be able to move, what movement would be constrained). Training implements such as bokutō and shinai allow for safer practice, and thus more intense engagement during training (for arts that maintain intense practice and are not overly ritualized). But all those choices (implement, intensity, ritual) have effects on how we unconsciously perceive the danger around close combat in these imagined scenarios. We too often become desensitized to the dangers associated to edged weapons, despite the rituals we preserve around blade handling and etiquette. The reality is that we are unarmored, naked in the face of danger, and too often our mindset is not cultivated in a manner that recognizes the danger we would be in, armored or not. Maintaining a practice associated to katchu kenpō today, while informative, can also be a distraction.

Heihō

故戰道必勝，主曰無戰，必戰可也；戰道不勝，主曰必戰，無戰可也；進不邀功，退不避罪，唯人是保，而利合於主，國之寶也。視卒如愛子，故可與之俱死。

If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbids it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler’s bidding.

The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.

Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.

– Sun Tzu

It is important to look beyond kata, and tactics, and consider what lies underneath, driving the organization and performance of these arts today. In my opinion, Ogasawara Genshinsai did not simply change sequences of movements within the art he learned in Kashima. It is my belief that his time in China at the beginning of Pax Tokugawa fundamentally rewired his approach to kenjutsu and resulted in something new. It later was changed by famous kenshi like Yamada Ippusai and became (perhaps overly) focused on unarmored dueling, but even with those changes, they preserved some of Jikishinkage-ryū’s strength development practices.

Ogasawara was said to have mastered polearms while in China. From my study of Chinese martial traditions, I am aware that heavy kwandao much too massive for use in field combat, were used as part of entrance exams to the Chinese military service in order to prove one’s raw power. Performing fixed routines of movement with heavy kwandao and being able to draw and shoot a bow with a heavy draw accurately, were both required as part of these exams. In Jikishinkage-ryū today, we do not see use of the naginata or nagamaki (a heavy, large, naginata) but instead use heavy furibō (a large octagonal implement weighing between 5lbs and 10 lbs) as training implements. It is my belief that the body training useful at the time for wielding heavy kwandao may be what Ogasawara brought back to Japan from his time in China, as opposed to specific tactics, and those methods were later adapted to implements like the furibō to develop a powerful cutting ability in Jikishinkage-ryū practitioners. Jikishinkage-ryū’s emphasis on breath training and specific methods of movement needed to preserve one’s postural integrity while manipulating a heavy object may also have arisen because of this influence.[6]

I am finding within my own practice, albeit incomplete, that Jikishinkage-ryū’s five kata sets (again, one for each Taoist element) can be aligned with or associated to important mental concepts found in Zen Buddhism (見性): Hōjō as shoshin (beginner’s mind), Tō no Kata as mushin (empty mind), Kodachi as fudōshin (immovable mind), Habiki as zanshin (remaining mind), and Marubashi as senshin (enlightened mind).

The Taoist and Esoteric Buddhist concepts of the three treasures (sangen or sancai) of Heaven (Ten), Earth (Chi), Humanity (Jin), as well as Spirit (Shin/Shen), Mind or Intention (I/Yi), and Intrinsic Energy (Ki/Qi), as well as the principles of complementarity (inyō/yin-yang) and the five Taoist elements (gogyō /wuxing) I find all to have meaning in a Shinkage-ryū context. These mappings happen when we examine individual kata in each named set, as well as the relationship of the kata sets to one another. I believe these mappings are something Jikishinkage-ryū and other lines of Shinkage-ryū have in common, but the mapping is more explicit and clearer in Jikishinkage-ryū than other arts, because its practice is albeit cryptic, less ornate. There is less to sift through to notice what lies beneath.

It is for these reasons I feel that examining martial arts from China, both so-called internal and external, which make many of these concepts explicit and primary in their practice versus hidden or obscured, is so beneficial to the practice of Shinkage-ryū, and I also see no conflict in examining and analyzing one line of Shinkage-ryū from the perspective of another. Jikishinkage-ryū, in my opinion, cultivates a hard form of internal power and, therefore, can be regarded as a hard form of internal martial arts, when practiced correctly. In particular, Jikishinkage-ryū develops a direct form of explosive power regardless of what direction one is moving in combat. In fact, its first kata is named hassō happa (“exploding in all directions”), which sets the theme for the rest of the art. Sometimes the essence of an art, the most important thing, is encoded in the first thing you learn.

For me, there is only Shinkage-ryū. Towards that end, it is the psychological and spiritual aspects of my practice that have become more and more important to me over time. I benefit from the philosophical basis of Shinkage-ryū in ways I would not have appreciated earlier in my martial arts career. I now view my daily sword practice as a form of shugyō, a practice devoted to the cultivation of the body, mind, and spirit through mindfulness and austerity. Shinkage-ryū often uses the word heihō to describe its practice: it is ultimately a form of strategy, which is expressed in daily practice using the sword. Overly intellectual or analytical practice, without forging the body and spirit, misses something key in all of this.

If I ever had to use my skills to preserve my own life or those of others, I would be expressing kenjutsu in that moment. However, within my daily practice, I view my own self as an enemy to progress, more proximate and dangerous to me than any other human being, much less a swordfighter. In this light, Jikishinkage-ryū as shugyō seems to be the best thing upon which to focus. Others will come to different conclusions, but for me, over time, my practice has brought me a sense of peace and well-being and I hope to convey those benefits to others as best I am able. I cultivate an ability to act selflessly when required but seek to restrain my base impulses so that I can do so from a place of mindfulness.

In that way, I seek to practice heihō, in the sense of Shinkage-ryū and the famous teaching of Iizasa Choisai, founder of Katori Shintō-ryū. I take at least that much from my early training into my current practice:

Heihō wa heihō nari (兵法は平法なり) – The art of war is the art of peace.

Shugyō

“If enduring the coldness of the eight austerities one lies in the snowdrift of one’s sins, looking up at the great emptiness of the character a 阿, they will see the light of Vairocana.”

— The Robe of Leaves by Gyōchi (1778–1841) of Tōzan-ha Shugendō.

I moved to Seattle in 2016 and have had the privilege of working with a few talented individuals on both Chinese internal martial arts (mostly taijiquan and xingyiquan) as well as classical Japanese swordsmanship (specifically Jikishinkage-ryū). I appreciate those opportunities greatly as each person I have worked with is a talented martial artist, and I learned from interacting with each of them. While I prefer Jikishinkage-ryū to other arts, there are very good sources of instruction in the Seattle area for koryū that have continuing associations with lineal heads of their respective arts inside or outside of Japan (or in some cases, are those heads themselves), and my path is somewhat different, having trained in an unofficial line of the art.

I examine Jikishinkage-ryū from many perspectives, and as a result my practice is both something old, and something new. Tactically, I consider related arts and their kata as various lens through which I can examine my own practice. Psychologically, I find benefit in understanding the expression of Taoism in Jikishinkage-ryū’s organization, as well as my teacher’s understanding of esoteric Buddhism, especially regarding Marishiten, even though surviving lines of Jikishinkage-ryū in Japan do not put an emphasis on esoteric practices (mikkyō). Somatically, my own practice of internal martial arts has influenced my swordsmanship. I find my movements and emphasis on breathing and kiai to be different at times than what I see in other Jikishinkage-ryū.

Given the totality of influences on my art and how long ago the group I trained with last trained in Japan, I feel I have myself diverged more than simply training unofficially, in the shadow of the tradition. I have in total, over time, moved towards something others, even my colleagues, might call heterodox. All my strengths I credit to others. My weaknesses in turn are solely my own responsibility. This may have worked for me, but what kind of example am I, in turn, to others? Keiko (practice) also can mean “reflecting on old things”. I think that is the spirit in which I train, but others should choose their own paths.

After many years, I understand better why, when the first generation of westerners who returned from Japan were asked for advice in interviews, many of them repeatedly admonished a desire that others who are not qualified simply do not teach, instead of sharing an incorrect understanding of koryū. I can limit the damage I might do to others in walking this path with my own incomplete understanding by not teaching, however tempting it may be, more than is strictly necessary to maintain my own practice.

There are surely those who know Jikishinkage-ryū more completely than I, and more directly, in its original context, without my integration of internal martial arts ideas into my expression of the art. But at some point, a person should stop adding obligations to new groups, and stop leaving old groups, and deal with their own karma of what they have done, and what they know, and try to know it as completely as they are able, and then use it for something positive.

In my own practice, I feel it is important to cultivate a virtuous mind (zen-i 善意) and try to increase my abilities with the positive goal of purification as part of the ongoing process of shugyō. Training is an offering, and a connection back towards something greater, from which mind, time and space all arise. Making an offering of one’s practice, with humility, and maintaining a virtuous mind is what I strive for, and the most important tradition that I am a part of. This puts much less emphasis on whether I am practicing the “correct,” “direct” or “true” Shinkage-ryū, and instead is focused on my own experience and discernment. For me, it is enough to train. It is up to the official lines of these arts to transmit things to the next generation, to the best of their abilities, unchanged or not.

Ellis Amdur was of great help to me in the process of shifting from modern invention to deeper traditions, in addition to those I trained with in Washington, DC before moving to Seattle. I appreciate being able to share some of my perspective on Jikishinkage-ryū here. My descriptions of the arts above are based on my own conversations, training, and incomplete understanding, but I hope I have conveyed the richness that can be found when we examine arts as they relate to one another, the context of both their origins and practice, and how they might provide benefit to both self-preservation and self-cultivation, despite any errors or inaccuracies in the discussion above.

[1] In addition, there is a subtler phenomenon, where successive sets of kata inform and enrich the earlier ones, despite these characterizations. This is true both to my knowledge in Shintō-ryū and Shinkage-ryū.

[2] For those interested, some densho of Jikishinkage-ryū can be found at Waseda University online: https://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ke05/ke05_01032/ke05_01032_0001/ke05_01032_0001.html

[3] Shinkage-ryū versions of Tengushō: Suhada version (with hop on one leg) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ix3G95-QY; Katchū version (with low centered posture) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2AMRIIlcFQ

[4] For source material in Japanese, see: Ishigaki, Y., Secrets of Jiki Shinkage Ryū and Yamada J., Kashima Shinden Jiki Shinkage-ryū, 1929. English language information on the history of different Shinkage-ryū can be found in Hall, D., The Encyclopedia of Japanese Martial Arts, Kodansha, 2012.

[5] Yagyū, Toshinaga (1957, 1989) Shōden Shinkage-ryū. Kōdansha, reprinted by Shimazu Shobō, ISBN 4-88218-012-X.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamiizumi_Nobutsuna#cite_note-Gencho-1

[6] It is also interesting to note that at least in the Jikishinkage-ryū line of Kawashima Takashi (川島 堯), some senior members also studied Heki-ryū Sekka-ha kyujutsu to greater or lesser degree.