by Manon Soavi & Romaric Rifleu

Part 1: The investigation

Throughout their history, all martial traditions have been caught in the tension between evolving to adapt to the world and preserving their past skills. It is actually thanks to the alternation between these two poles that a tradition can continue; followers themselves are divided between those who modernise and those who delve into the origins. We need to get rid of any idea of hierarchy between them in order to appreciate the necessary work that each follower brings to this dynamic.

An example of this can be found in Western music with the research carried out in the 1990s by certain musicians on the manufacturing of instruments during the Baroque period. Their research led to a qualitative rediscovery of a repertoire that had been neglected because it was difficult to perform correctly on 20th-century instruments. Other musicians, on the other hand, such as Beethoven and Liszt, pushed the limits of the instruments of their time and led piano makers to modify their instruments, thus giving birth to the piano of today.

Miyamoto Musashi was one of those who, in order to create his two-sword school, modernised a martial tradition by ‘a reorganization of existing knowledge of technique’ ¹ coming from his familial jitte² school and own fighting experience. For us, this development is a thing of the past. A past that, on the one hand, we must keep alive through practice and, on the other hand, is nourished by the qualitative rediscoveries of certain researchers. The aim of this research is to provide a better understanding of the riai of a given martial tradition – that is, of the coherence of its principles. With the developments and contributions of each generation, one sometimes tends to lose sight of the riai. This is precisely why there are times when some adepts turn to the past to rediscover the roots of a school’s principles. This is the kind of work we want to discuss in this article on Musashi’s two-sword school.

Of course, the legacy of Miyamoto Musashi – like, incidentally, the legacy of Aikido itself – is historically controversial, with each branch claiming to be more authentic, more important, more realistic, and so on. In the same way that each of Ueshiba O Sensei’s disciples received his teaching at a different point in the master’s evolution and passed it on in their own way, so Musashi’s disciples received and passed on things that were similar but over the years became different. Once again, instead of looking for a hierarchy between these schools, these branches, instead of looking for a single truth, we can choose to nourish ourselves with the completeness that these differences bring in order to make Musashi’s art something alive.

Tatsuzawa Kunihiko senseï

When we were lucky enough to start studying Musashi ryū with Tatsuzawa sensei more than fifteen years ago, we knew almost nothing about the world of ancient Japanese schools. We had already been practising Aikido for about ten years, but we did not know what we were getting into, because these schools are not just a repertoire of ancient techniques and archaic weapons, they refer to a universe, a culture, a “cosmovision” you might say.

Tatsuzawa Sensei is Professor Emeritus of International Space Law and Vice Rector of Kyoto Ritsumeikan University. Descendant from a samurai family, he studied his family school, Jigo ryū, from an early age, before becoming a 10^th master of Ioriden Niten Ichi ryū and the 19^th master of Bushūden Kiraku ryū. The latter is a 500-year-old koryū that includes jūjutsu, iai, nagamaki, bō, tessen, kusarigama, kusari-fundo, yari and chigiriki. A martial tradition rich in around 180 katas, which represent a genuine dive into feudal Japan.

As a 10^th generation master of Ioriden Niten Ichi ryū, Tatsuzawa sensei teaches several branches of what is known as Musashi ryū: Sakonden Niten Ichi ryū, Ioriden Niten Ichi ryū and Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū. These three branches correspond to three periods in Musashi’s life: Sakonden in his youth, Ioriden in his middle age and Santo-ha at the end of his life. In the Musashi ryū, this ensemble forms a curriculum based on the traditional system of transmission by levels – Shoden, Chūden, Okuden. Each level allows you to deepen your understanding of Musashi ryū by discovering a branch and its specificities (without confusing them).

Tatsuzawa sensei explained that his own master, Hirakami Nobuyuki sensei, had carried out extensive research since the 1970s to find the forgotten traces left by various students of Musashi, which had finally enabled him to gain a better understanding of the power of Musashi’s kyokugi (lit. prowess, performance, art, ability).

Miyamoto Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1642) is an almost legendary figure in Japanese popular culture. He lived at a turning point in the history of his country, at the beginning of the Edo period. Japan was emerging from feudal warfare and beginning to stabilise around a strong power, but also a very rigid social structure. Tokitsu Kenji, in the research book he dedicated to him, says: ‘Because of the extension of his art into so many domains and the way in which he explored the limits of the knowledge of his time, Miyamoto Musashi reminds us of Leonardo da Vinci’³. Indeed, Musashi was also a painter, a sculptor, a calligrapher, and left a written work that occupies an important place in the history of the Japanese sword. He wrote several treatises on strategy, the most famous of which is Gorin no sho [The book of five rings], a compendium of the art of the sword and a treatise on strategy.

Living at the beginning of the Edo period, before the Tokugawa family’s policy of closing and stabilising Japan, Musashi also seems to have been a pivotal figure, the bearer of very ancient martial traditions and at the same time aware of his posterity and of a very different future, where some guidance would be needed. ‘[The strategy of combat] as well as reflection on it constitutes the basic background of Musashi’s life and conferred on it several dimensions. It was his constant reaching toward creating an expression of his art in writing that gives a unique quality to Musashi’s work.’ ⁴

Hirakami⁵ Nobuyuki has been researching the martial arts and the history of science and technology in the Edo period⁶ since the 1970s, and is passionate about the various schools of Miyamoto Musashi’s successors. He recalls his early days when he was already practising kendo: ‘The first person to teach me Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū was Komatsu Nobuo Sensei in Kobe, who lived near my parents’ house. I rode my bike there and we’d train at his house and in the park next door’.

Hirakami sensei was already a practitioner of two other koryū (old schools), Jigen ryū and Shibukawa ryū, so he was very intrigued by the fact that there were so few katas in the transmission he received from Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū. Although it is true that Musashi was critical of schools that accumulated many different techniques, five katas still seemed very few to him. He felt that he lacked the elements to understand this martial tradition in more detail, which led him to look further afield.

The School of the End of Musashi’s Life: Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū

The Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū branch is transmitted by the students of Musashi’s last years and is the most widespread today. Hirakami had the opportunity to meet a shihan of this school, Inamura Kiyoshi, who had studied with Aoki Kikuo Hisakatsu before the war. He had therefore benefited from the transmission of Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū forms that were prior to post-war modernisations and dated back to the end of the Meiji era. Again, there were only five two-sword katas, but Hirakami learned from him that the tradition of the twelve one-sword katas had been added after Musashi whereas the katas with only one kodachi (short sword) had been added by Aoki Sensei after the Second World War.

This encounter gave Hirakami a better understanding of the ancient forms of the Musashi tradition. The forms of the Meiji era were different from those developed after the war. By comparing both, he was able to see the additions and modifications made in the post-war techniques of the Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū. The discovery that there were other, older forms was a first step in his research that encouraged him to continue.

These katas, handed down from generation to generation, had a unique style and atmosphere that could not be found in Santo-ha Niten Ichi ryū. I was fascinated and wanted to learn this unique form at any cost. Akimitsu Sensei told me that he would be happy to accept my request for initiation and that I could come at any time.’ ⁹

Note by the way that the use of fukuroshinai did not originate in Musashi’s time, but was a later development¹⁰. Here again we find the tension between preservation and innovation. Practising with fukuroshinai, although a modern contribution, allows us to get closer to the real fighting distances, something the bokken does not really allow; it also allows us to strike genuinely, without fear of injuring or killing our partner. What we have here is a pedagogical choice made by the masters of this lineage.

The School of Musashi’s Youth: Sakonden Niten Ichi ryū

Continuing his research into the lines of transmission, Hirakami was fortunate enough to find a copy of a historical document on Musashi’s swordsmanship, dating from his youth. It was a book called Niten ryū Kenjutsu Tetsugisho: inside it was clearly written ‘Niten Ichi ryū’ and it also contained a copy of Gorin no sho. What was original was that the book contained a description of nine two-sword katas with very detailed commentary. Hirakami then realised that it was a document containing specific technical forms passed down through the lineage of Fujimoto Sakon from the Owari region.

The content was fairly easy to understand, although very different from that of the Niten Ichi ryū transmitted in modern times – yet with possible overlaps with current katas transmitted in other lineages. The restoration of these katas took Hirakami several years and, after several unsuccessful attempts, nine katas were restored: five omote katas and four ura katas.

The “Edo” style

What Hirakami sensei observed as a result of his research was that these Iori and Sakon lineages had characteristics that he recognised as typical of the koryū of the Edo period, characteristics that have more or less been lost in modern budō such as Judo, Karate-do and Aikido. These characteristics were not kept in the creation of modern budō because they did not correspond to the Western “cosmovision” imported after the Meiji Restoration and reinforced even further after the war. Budōs were then built mainly on the model of Western sports. They were rationalised in terms of names, katas and dan systems. In the same way that modern Western architecture imposed itself on the building of hospitals, schools, airports, etc., this way of “managing” in a systematic way imposed itself on traditional martial arts.

In order to survive in a new world, on the ruins of ancient Japan, the transmission of the Musashi schools modernised by distancing itself from certain traditions, although none of these branches became a sport for all that. Nevertheless, they have also moved away from the “cosmovision” of the time which supported their transmission and allowed a better understanding of the set of principles that irrigated a particular martial tradition.

This is why it was so important for Hirakami to have access to the Meiji style of the Santo-ha lineage, the first step in understanding the kyokugi, the potential of this art. Going back even further allowed him to discover that the lineage had retained some very Edo-style peculiarities, peculiarities that make sense in a martial system linked to its era. In the second part of this article we will look at some of these specific features of Ioriden Niten Ichi ryū.

Sequel to follow shortly…

Manon Soavi et Romaric Rifleu

A text by Manon Soavi & Romaric Rifleu published in January 2024 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 16.

1. Tokitsu Kenji, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, Chap. 1, Eng. transl. by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, 2004, Shambhala Publications, p. 24 (1^st ed. in French: 1998, Éditions DésIris, p. 172)
2. La jitte (十手): a short, non-cutting weapon with a sort of claw, used to block the blade of a sword.
3. Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, op. cit., Introduction, p. ix (1^st French ed.: p. 5)
4. ibid., p. xiii (French: p. 7)
5. Hirakami Nobuyuki is a bujutsuka and master of several koryū. His research into the martial arts has been published in specialist magazines and books, including: Gokui Sōden [Secret transmissions], vol. 1 & 2, 1993 & 1994.
6. Articles on this research, in Japanese, can be consulted on his website.
7. Tokitsu Kenji also mentions Aoki Jôzaemon in his book Miyamoto Musashi (op. cit.), p. ?? (French: p. 255)
8. Rakugo (落語, literally “story with a punchline”) is a form of humorous Japanese literary entertainment from the early Edo period (1603-1868). Rakugo is said to have originated in the comic stories told by Buddhist monks. At first, rakugo was performed in the street or in private. At the end of the 18^th century, theatres were built exclusively for this performance. The storyteller, kneeling in seiza, uses a paper fan and sometimes a cotton hand towel as props. These were used to represent a paintbrush, a sake jug, a sword, a letter, and so on. There is no scenery or music. [Footnote added by the authors.]
9. Hirakami Nobuyuki’s website, op. cit.
10. [Actually, this recent article by Ellis Amdur dates the use of fukuroshinai to at least 1563, during a duel between Shinkage ryū founder Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami Hidetsuna and a certain Yagyū Munetoshi. (Translator’s note)]