In a recent blog, I questioned the mythos around the founders of various traditional ryūha. However, beyond the question of whether the founder truly created his martial system in the archetypal manner that is the usual account, there are several other questions:

  • Did the putative founder actually have any role, direct or indirect in the creation of a particular fighting system?
  • Did the founder even exist?

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.