Rural Swordsmen in Early Modern

A work in progress by Michael Wert

In 1800, a new book published in Kyoto claimed to impart the secrets of swordsmanship

(kenjutsu) to its readers. Its author, using the pseudonym Sen’en, explained his reason for writing The Secret Transmission of Solo-Training in Swordsmanship: “In order to learn an art

(geijutsu), one should have a teacher. I have written this book for those who are busy working

and do not have time to practice, for those who live out in the sticks and can’t find a teacher or

don’t have any friends, and for those who are motivated to learn, but because they are poor, cannot afford to study under a teacher.”1

Sen’en’s book undercuts typical descriptions of early modern cultural arts as social

practices for those who can afford the time and finances. He promised to transmit secrets for the

price of a book, circumventing the need to display loyalty, and offer payment, to a master teacher.

The emphasis on secret transmissions (hiden), a central characteristic of cultural arts from poetry to tea ceremony to cooking, were deemed unnecessary, “Even if you do not receive secret teachings, if you train enough, you will figure it out.”2 And while Sen’en acknowledged that

training alone was not ideal, his solution did not require formal entrance into a sword school.

Instead, he advocated enlisting the help of one’s siblings or neighborhood children—simply give them some basic equipment and use them as dummies for attack and defense. The trick, he argued, would be keeping reluctant training partners interested. “The first two or three times they

1 Sen’en, Kenjutsu hiden hitori shūgyō, in Budō no meisho, 139. 2 Ibid., 144. 1

might have fun, but will soon become bored and begin to hate training with you…with this in

mind, tell the child that you’ll give them something if they succeed in hitting you once or twice; candy, a drawing, a folding fan, something that they like. That way they’ll come to enjoy training and try harder.”3

Sen’en’s book was clearly not intended for a samurai readership. Even the poorest and

lowest-ranking samurai, like Katsu Kokichi of Musui’s Story fame, belonged to a social network

that presented young men with opportunities to learn swordsmanship. Marginal, wandering

samurai who lacked sufficient status to live as a fulltime bureaucrat could eke out a decent living teaching swordsmanship to commoners. Sen’en, then, wrote for the non-samurai audience,

capitalizing on the growing number of commoners who had been flocking to swordsmanship

schools since the mid-eighteenth century. Like the samurai, commoners were attracted to the

cultural and social capital that could be accrued from practicing swordsmanship. But

commoners did not simply imitate some a prior form of samurai activity. Far from being an

example of samurai culture trickling down to non-samurai, commoner swordsmen in the

countryside actively participated in developing the art within a broad grey zone of elite

commoners and low-ranking samurai, and appropriated swordsmanship for their own purposes.

Historians have noted commoner participation in swordsmanship, but here I will analyze

the implications that their activity had on the status system. On the one hand, it seems that

commoner swordsmen threatened the status system. Past scholarship has viewed the rise of non-

samurai swordsmen as evidence of a weakening status system or a subversion of the social order,

particularly towards the end of the Tokugawa period. Instead, the status system was usefully

ambiguous enough to allow daimyo and the shogunate to incorporate commoners into their rule,

just as they had done with commoner swordsmanship.

3 Ibid., 148. 2

For their part, commoners did not directly challenge the everyday manifestations of status

distinctions. They supported the bakuhan authority, which is why daimyo and shogunate

officials rarely enforced the edicts prohibiting commoners from practicing martial arts, and, in

some cases, even encouraged commoner swordsmanship. Authorities believed that the type of swordsmanship that developed among rural and urban swordsmen alike fulfilled the call to reform samurai martial identity, stabilize the hinterland, and protect Japan against the rising

Western threat. The martial ideal that samurai had lost was to be found among rural commoner elites.

In tracing these development of commoner swordsmanship, I will explore the types of people, broadly included in the status group “commoner” (hyakushō), who practiced swordsmanship; why this activity increased during the mid-Tokugawa period, and how their practice influenced swordsmanship in general. Swordsmanship became so tied to notions of status that when the status system collapsed during the Restoration, it declined in popularity until its revival as modern kendo.

Swordsmanship as a Status Art

The dominant narrative regarding the development of swordsmanship from the late sixteenth century to the end of the Tokugawa period, and commoners’ role in it, generally follows three stages. In the first stage, during the early seventeenth century, swordsmanship consisted of a handful of styles that began, putatively, as effective combative arts forged from the experience of the warring states period. From roughly the late-seventeenth into the eighteenth century, those styles gradually became commercialized art forms, and began emphasizing abstract concepts and

3

mysticism to attract customers.4 Tokugawa period commentators, most famously Ogyū Sorai,

bemoaned this transition as a watering-down of combat skill, referring to the activity as “flowery swordsmanship,” an interpretation that has continued into the modern era.5 During this second

stage, scholars note a marked increase in the number of non-samurai practitioners of

swordsmanship. As John Rogers argues, after the early 1700s, most of the eight or so styles of

swordsmanship that existed in the early seventeenth century stagnated as the demand for

swordsmanship among samurai elites became saturated. Teachers of the most prominent styles

opened their schools to non-samurai, saving those styles from obscurity. Moreover, from about

the mid-eighteenth century, swordsmanship, which presented few opportunities for competition

other than outright dueling, developed free-style fencing methods within the community of elite

commoners and low-ranking samurai.6 During the nineteenth century, this group pushed

changes in equipment and established commonly accepted rules for fencing competitions; the

forerunner of modern kendo.

During the Tokugawa period, swordsmanship was not meant, primarily, to impart combat

skill.7 For millennia, combat was conducted without the need to signify weapon styles, name

famous teachers, nor write esoteric treatises on combat. While some primary sources from the

sixteenth century suggest that a few men became well known as sword teachers, there is little

4 John Rogers, The Development of the Military Profession in Tokugawa Japan, (PhD Diss. Harvard, 1998), 155. 5 He complained that the samurai of his day focused only on outward appearances and wore protective equipment to keep from even the slightest injury. Ogyū’s critique was a familiar lament by contemporary writers who idealized samurai of the Warring States. For more examples of such complaints, see Tominaga, 267-268. 6 Scholars typically argue that the shogunate prohibited inter-style competition but there is no primary source evidence for this. However, there was also no official edict concerning kenka ryōseibai, the punishment for both parties involved in a fight. Also, such free style competition was often forbidden by swords teachers themselves. 7 Friday, “Off the Warpath,” 255 refers to a “growing body of evidence, on the other hand, points to the conclusion that ryūha bugei and the pedagogical devices associated with it aimed from the start at conveying more abstract ideals of self-development and enlightenment. That is, there was on fundamental shift of purpose in martial art education between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. Tokugawa period budō represented not a metamorphosis of late medieval martial art, but the maturation of it.” 4

evidence that they chose to articulate their art.8 The first writings about swordsmanship from the

seventeenth century employed the vocabulary and pedagogy common among other cultural arts like Noh, tea ceremony, cooking, poetry, and religion. Only then did swordsmanship as a martial

art come into existence through the propagation, and competition, of distinct styles (ryū).9

Reversing the narrative of swordsmanship from battle-tested skill, to commercialized cultural art, to sport, swordsmanship began, primarily, as an art used to accrue social and cultural capital and, while retaining those features, also developed ludic and competitive characteristics as it spread,

becoming both a sport and method self-defense.

Thus, the pursuit of swordsmanship was, to borrow Pierre Bourdieu’s phrase, “an activity with no purpose.”10 For amateur participants, as opposed to professional teachers, physical

activity was an end in itself with no need to compete with one another. Free-style fencing was

not practiced among the samurai elite; they made no effort to hold matches, or become

professionalized experts. Swordsmanship may have had practical applicability, and there were

stories of duels to the death using swords, but this was not its primary purpose--most samurai could reasonably expect never to have to draw upon their acquired skills.

But swordsmanship was not useless. Samurai elite accumulated social and cultural

capital proscribed from the uninitiated: knowledge of etiquette, bodily comportment, and

behavior. Swordsmanship, practiced in a controlled manner with wooden swords, allowed men

8 An eighteenth century collection of pre-Tokugawa works called the Gunsho Ruijū does have sixteenth century writings about archery, but they mainly address issues such as behavior during archery gatherings, how to wear or take care of equipment, et cetera. Like swordsmanship, in-depth writing about archery as an art of self-cultivation appear during the Tokugawa period. 9 Even in Noh, which influenced the earliest writings on swordsmanship, did not use the term “style” or “school” (ryū) until the late 16th century. See Rath, Ethos of noh, 134. Before the Tokugawa period, there was little effort to intellectualize combat, and although many Tokugawa period writings about swordsmanship claim that certain styles were invented before the seventeenth century, there is, frankly, little evidence to support this. 10 Bourdieu, “Sport and Social Class,” 824. 5

to interact through a physical activity that strengthened their identity as warriors of a similar

status.

Martial arts and swordsmanship styles were practiced differently by different samurai

status groups, with an inverse relationship between cultural capital value and combat efficacy.

Staff fighting and unarmed techniques were considered unnecessary for high-ranking samurai because they were to be used for arresting. Usefulness became the defining characteristic of sword practice among low-ranking swordsmen. Other styles like the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū and

Ittō-ryū catered mostly to the uppermost status groups; shogun, daimyo, and higher ranked

samurai such as house elder and senior advisors. These styles appealed to the intellect as well as

the physical. Yagyū Munenori exemplified this through the publication of his Heiho Kadensho,

an esoteric text that drew from a variety of sources, including Zen, and Noh.11 Both styles even

had the endorsement of Ogyū Sorai who gave them backhanded praise calling them wonderful

styles for peaceful times, but without denigrating them as “flower swordsmanship”—he was

careful not to insult the shogun’s sword tutor, a Yagyū man.12

Fuse Kenji argues that martial art training, an obligation of all samurai, became the site of

daily status discrimination.13 His study of the structure of martial art training within the

Kawagoe and Maebashi domains illustrates a basic feature of training in other domains as well;

namely, that for much of the Tokugawa period low-ranking, marginal samurai would not have

trained alongside their superiors.

Domains lent official support to certain martial art styles based on the art’s pedigree

while also separating practice of different styles based upon samurai rank. In the Kawagoe

11 For more on the connection to Noh, and on esotericism on Yagyu Shinkage-ryū see Morinaga, Secrecy in Japanese Arts. 12 Ogyū Sorai, Shoroku in Ogyū Sorai zenshū 6, 399. 13 Fuse Kenji, Kakyū bushi to bakmatsu Meiji: Kawagoe Maebashi han no bujutsu ryūha to jusan (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2006), 38. 6

domain, swordsmanship teachers of officially sanctioned (kōshiki) styles were chosen from

middle ranking samurai. They required permission from the domain to teach, received a stipend

for their services, and could appoint assistant teachers. Samurai who trained in these styles often received money to pay for their equipment and training. In the last month of the year, advanced students in each official style were awarded cash for their efforts, and once a year members of each style demonstrated their techniques in front of the shogunate’s senior councilors. Low-

ranking samurai trained in styles that, although recognized by the domain, did not receive official

sanction. Unofficial styles (uchi keiko) received no financial support from the domain nor did

their low-ranking samurai pupils receive payment for training or equipment, further burdening

those already strapped for resources. However, low ranking samurai who used the arts directly

in their duties received some compensation. This occurred among foot soldiers (ashigaru) who

studied arresting techniques or staff fighting (bōjustu), skills used in their policing roles.14 This

held true for domains other than Maebashi and Kawagoe in Fuse’s case study. In the Kaga

domain, as well, foot soldiers, and a similar low ranking warrior group known as “wariba,” were

ordered by the domain to learn staff fighting and grappling (jūjutsu).15 Unlike their social betters,

practitioners of these styles did not demonstrate in front of top officials. High ranking samurai

could learn unofficial styles or arts devoted to skills used by low ranking samurai, but they did so

privately and voluntarily.

Lack of status could impede advancement in styles officially employed by domains.

When the Kawagoe daimyo decided to introduce Shinden-ryū swimming into his domain curriculum he sent a low ranking servant, Fujita Gosuke, to the Matsuyama domain to learn the art. When Fujita reached the level to obtain a license of full transmission (menkyo kaiden), the

14 Ibid., 54- 55. 15 Kagahan shiryō, 752 (1786). 7

Matsuyama domain informed the Kawagoe officials that Gosuke could not receive the rank

because he did not have samurai status (shibun). The Kawagoe officials promoted Fujita to the

rank of functionary (ōyakunin), which had no military role other than perhaps carrying a spear or

directing horses during a procession, but was still considered samurai status.16 This satisfied

Matsuyama officials and they approved Gosuke’s advancement.

Gosuke’s case highlights the difference among domains as to who, exactly, was considered a samurai. Thus, the idea that status was a uniform and portable category, as Howell argues, needs to be qualified by marginal individuals who work for domains.17 In other domains, servants of low rank, such as the foot soldier, performed such menial physical labor as to hardly be considered samurai. In the Okabe domain, rural commoners filled such roles, engaging in agriculture work while also serving the domain.18 In Awa (Tokushima) there existed a landed warrior class called “local samurai” (genshi), peasants during times of peace, but called upon during times of war.19 Status, then, shifts depending upon the viewer. This echoes Fukaya

Katsumi’s argument about status, namely, that people are not 100% of any one status, status

changes over a person’s lifetime, and even within one family not everyone necessarily shares the

same status.20

Every study of swordsmanship in the early modern era that includes the role of

commoners necessarily addresses the issue of status. Imamura Yoshio’s classic study of early

modern physical education established one of the earliest interpretations of commoners and

martial arts. While acknowledging that no law before the nineteenth century explicitly forbade

16 Ibid., 47. 17 Howell, Geography of Identities, 26 18 See Saitama kenshi, tsūshihen 4, (1989), 989. 19 Enomoto Shōji and Wada Tetsuya, Kinsei sonraku ni okeru bujutsushi kenkyū no genjō to wadai,” in Watanabe, Ichirō, ed., Budō bunka no kenkyū, 138. For more on the genshi see Tokushimaken-shi hensan iinkaihen, Tokushimaken-shi fukyūban, 240-242. 20 Fukaya Katsumi, Edo Jidai no mibun ganbō, 14-15. 8

commoners from learning or teaching swordsmanship, he argued that non-samurai would have

assumed that they were not allowed to engage in such activity.21 This he connects to the issue of

swords, namely, that the shogunate prohibited townsmen from carrying swords, except during

fire outbreaks and travel.22 Commoners probably studied swordsmanship at the beginning and end of the Tokugawa period, Imamura argued, when the status system had either yet to form, or was breaking down. The connection between commoner swordsmanship and the salience of

authority in the lives of commoners became the standard explanation for the phenomenon,

especially as it boomed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. More recently,

scholars have not assumed a heavy presence of shogunate authority in the everyday lives of

commoners, and this too applies to commoner swordsmanship. Rogers, for example, notes that,

until around 1800, there no evidence suggesting that the shogunate cared if sword teachers taught

urban commoners.23 But even Rogers doubts the claims made by modern teachers of

swordsmanship that rural styles regularly taught commoners.24

Watanabe Ichirō provided the earliest description of rural swordsmanship.25 He focused

on the twin themes of shifting status relationships and growing unrest that began in the Kantō

region between the 1760s-1780s. Famine, increasing numbers of wandering people

(mushukunin), and the inability of local authorities to provide adequate stability, forced rural

elites to protect themselves. At the same time, rural elites acquired status privileges, the right to

wear swords and use surnames, from local daimyo or the shogunate. Although some commoners

studied martial arts from underemployed samurai wandering the countryside, Watanabe argued

21 Imamura Yoshio, Jūkyūseiki ni okeru Nihon taiiku no kenkyū (Tokyo: Fumaido shoten, 1967), 441. 22 Ibid., pp. 439-440. The strictest prohibition above was announced in 1683 but earlier versions allowed all commoners to carry a short sword during the outbreak of fire or on journeys. Moreover, commoners throughout the Tokugawa period were allowed to carry blades under one shaku eight sun (21.5 inches). 23 Rogers, 159-160. 24 Ibid., 134. 25 Watanabe Ichirō, Kanōo kenjutsu eimeiroku no kenkyū (Tokyo: Watanabe Shoten, 1967). 9

that many martial art styles, and the non-samurai families that taught them, were remnants from

the warring states period. The large number of warrior families who forfeited their samurai status and settled in the countryside after the warring states, also explains why so many martial art styles existed in Kantō countryside compared to other regions in Japan.

Scholars have generally accepted Watanabe’s explanation for the presence of swordsmanship throughout late Tokugawa Kantō region, building upon his work with their own case studies. Takahashi Satoshi was the first scholar to focus his attention on what he called

“peasant swordsmanship” (nōmin kenjutsu).26 He focused on two Kantō styles from the

eighteenth century. One style, Gen-ryū was taught by the Funatsu family in a village near Mt.

Akagi. The twenty nine students who studied under the Funatsu between 1722 and 1765 came

from only one of six major families, including village headmen. Although the Funatsu claimed

ancestry to a retainer of Takeda Shingen, they received no special title or recognition.27 This style disappeared probably because of its limited membership and small geographical network.

The other style, commonly called Nen-ryū, was taught by a village headman family, the Higuchi.

Watanabe also pointed to the Higuchi family as the preeminent example of rural swordsmen, and like Watanabe, Takahashi claimed that the origins of martial arts in the Kantō countryside originated from families left over from the warring states period who kept their martial teachings.

This phenomenon was not confined to swordsmanship, the Akamatsu family passed on archery

(kyūdō) as their family art, opened up a archery training center, and taught the local children of

landed samurai.

Wada and Enomoto take issue with Takahashi’s term “peasant swordsmanship” arguing

that most martial art practitioners in the countryside were “landed samurai” (gōshi), low ranking

26 Takahashi Satoshi , “Bakuhanseika sonraku ni okeru “bu” no denshō,” Kikan Nihon shisōshi 29 (1987), 53. 27 Ibid., 58. 10

samurai such as the foot soldiers, servants of samurai (hōkōnin), and ronin; all occupying ambiguous space between peasant and samurai. Therefore, arts taught by families like the Inada,

who served as foot soldiers in the mid-Tokugawa period, cannot be accurately described as

peasant swordsmanship. “There were many people of statuses other than peasants in Tokugawa

villages (nōmin igai samazama na mibun no hito ga iru).”28

Both Takahashi’s phrase “peasant swordsmanship” and Wada and Eonomoto’s claim that

there were statuses “other than peasants” do not completely capture the broad implications about status that their research suggests. As with Fuse’s study of martial arts practice among domain samurai, where we see some functional titles, such as foot soldier, would be considered samurai in one domain but not in another, there is little consistency regarding the status of rural commoners.

Throughout Japan titles like “landed samurai” might have been used informally in commoner society, but they also existed as titles bestowed by domain or shogunate officials.

Herman Ooms offers an example of a group of elite families living in a village near Kyoto who refer to themselves as samurai, having descended from samurai, but were officially listed as

“titled peasants” by local authorities. Eventually they paid the overlord to recognize them, officially, as landed samurai.29 In other cases, commoners who worked in tax collecting and

agricultural management on behalf of the domain, pleaded with their daimyo to be given the

right to carry swords, arguing that they could serve him better by earning respect from other

commoners via the visible marker of carrying swords. The daimyo acquiesced but they could

not wear swords in the presence of a magistrate (bugyō).30 Even the craze originated with a

group of families who, like the examples above, claimed warrior descent. Unlike others,

28 Enomoto and Wada, 138. 29 Ooms, Tokugawa Village Practice, 210-211. 30 Daniel Stewart, Temporary Samurai: Status and Service in Early Modern Japan, (Phd dIss, Berkeley, 2003), 29. 11

however, they did not simply want recognition, they sought paying employment with the

shogunate. In their case, they spent nearly a century trying to convince the shogunate that they

aided during the using their ninja skills (ninjutsu), and even presented a ninja manual to prove their case.31

These are just a few examples or rural elite who served in their overlords and represented the interests of their domain, their bannerman (hatamoto), or the shogunal authority. Sometimes

they occasionally obtained the right to wear a sword or use a surname, privileges typically

reserved for samurai. Local authorities might ignore a commoner’s claim to warrior heritage, or

grant landed samurai recognition for money, regardless of family history. In each case, however,

daimyo and the shogunate used such title granting as a way to incorporate helpful commoners

into their local rule.

The Century of Rural Swordsmen

Martial arts may have existed in the countryside since the seventeenth century, or earlier, but the

rise of commoners learning swordsmanship began in the mid-eighteenth century. The origins of

the swordsmanship boom began with decrees in 1721 and 1733 allowing landed samurai to use

surnames and carry swords which led to a dramatic rise in the number of landed samurai wanting

to learn swordsmanship.32 Economic prosperity for rural elites allowed them to engage in cultural pursuits that helped them network with other elite commoners and samurai. Rural entrepreneurs pushed economic development with acceptance and even encouragement from

daimyo who hoped to borrow more, collect more tax, and earn money from licensing fees.33 Not

31 Fujita Kazutoshi, “Koga ninja” no jitsujō, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 2012. 32 Takahashi Satoshi, Kunisada Chūji no jidai: Yomi, kaki to kenjutsu (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991), 256. 33 Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite, 15. 12

only did the rural elite produce goods for distant markets, they also acted as a conduit for the

spread of agricultural technology.34 The mid-eighteenth century also saw an increase in the number and availability of books moving throughout rural communities.35 These intellectual pursuits were reinforced by cultural and social capital. The study of poetry, or nativism, helped an entrepreneur conduct business with like-minded elites in other rural areas. These social networks supported entrepreneurs against economic competitors during a time of intense interregional competition.36

Artistic pursuits transformed with the change in eighteenth century commoner society.

Wandering samurai in the mid eighteenth century took advantage of this new-found market for rural education and cultural arts.37 Artists, too, added new features to their artist practice to

profit from the rise of commoner students. Teachers of tea ceremony and incense appreciation

standardized their teachings and created grading systems in response to the rising amateur

market.38 Even cuisine schools began to impart licenses of mastery, allowing students to wear

colored trousers (hakama), with each new color signifying a promotion to a new rank within the

school.39

Nen-ryū, one of the most well documented swordsmanship styles that benefited from

these eighteenth century trends, was taught by a village headman family, the Higuchi, in Jōshū

province (Gunma).40 According to the Higuchi family’s own origin story, the first Higuchi

family member studied Nen-ryū from its founder, the monk Nen’ami Jion, in the fourteenth

34 Ibid., 55. 35 Rubinger, Popular Literacy in early Modern Japan, 83. 36 Ibid, 48. 37 Platt, Building and Burning, 38. 38 Rath, Ethics of Noh, 193-194. 39 Rath, Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan, 41. 40 Maniwa Village had passed from the hands of the Yoshii domain before the Tokugawa period to various bannermen, then became a Tokugawa fief before being split among five bannermen in the latter half of the Tokugawa period. See Yoshii machi (Gunma ken), Yoshii chōshi (Yoshii machi: Yoshiichōshihensan’iinkai, 1974), pp. 391-394. 13

century. There is no evidence to support this, but there are a few written oaths (kishōmon)

signed by new students that date to the early seventeenth century. Most documentation about

Nen-ryū dates to the mid eighteenth century. In his study of the Nen-ryū documents, Takahashi

Satoshi found a total of 869 oaths from 1751-1760 and 760 students listed in the enrollment lists

(monjincho). While the number of new oaths gradually declined over the next several decades, a

total of 2032 names appear on enrollment lists from 1781-1790.41 Takahashi argues that most of

the students were peasants, although most were probably elite commoners such as landed

samurai who did not fit the simple category of “peasant.”42 In fact, students came from a broad

range of statuses, including two daimyo, Maeda Toshimasa from the Nanokaichi domain and

Akimoto Tajima-no-kami from Tatebayashi, a house elder (karō) from the Obata domain, and

samurai from the nearby Annaka and Yoshii domains. The Higuchi also taught women, although

they confined women’s training to use of the halberd (naginata).43

The Higuchi also began producing texts that recorded their family history, established

religious customs, and further developed their sword teachings. For rural elites, creating a

family identity through history writing and diaries had become common a common strategy in

the latter half of the Tokugawa period to preserve family wealth, prestige, and even patterns of

behavior for descendants.44 It also differentiated them from the increasing number of poorer

commoners who obtained an education. During the 1780s and 1790s, the Higuchi created, or

41 Takahashi, Kunisada Chūji no jidai, 254. 42 Ibid., 249. 43 For a list of other notable pupils see Yoshii chōshi, 363. For a copy of the kishōmon for Maeda and Masa see Takahashi, Kunisada Chūji no jidai, 249-253. Unlike most oaths that contain a list of punishments from gods and Buddhas, Maeda’s is short and contains no such threats. Maeda and the Obata domain house elder are also mentioned in Higuchi Sadataka’s 1781 document “Higuchike senzou oboegaki,” in Nihon Budo Zenshū vol. 2 (Tokyo: Jinbutsu Oraisha, 1966), p. 514. As with other martial art styles the Nen-ryū kishōmon contained five items for all students to follow: they should not quit (soen), not compare or interact with other styles, not to engage in matches (shobu), not show techniques to outsiders, and teach techniques even to parents or siblings until given a license (menkyo) allowing this. However, Masa’s kishōmon, dated 1737 and written partly in hiragana, only contains two items; to not quit and not to show techniques to anyone, even parents or children. 44 Walthall, The Family Ideology of the Rural Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth century Japan, 464-465. 14

recopied (as shahon), documents with titles like, “Notes on our Ancestors” (Tōke senzō

oboegaki—1781), and “Notes on our Style” (Tōryū denrai oboegaki—1729 copy of an early

seventeenth century original). They reinforced group identity during the mid-1790s, when the

headmaster and his students visited Chōfukuji Temple in Namiai Village in southern Nagano.

The temple is said to have been founded by Jion, who installed an image of the Bodhisattva

Marishiten, a figure often worshiped among swordsmen. In addition to erecting a memorial stone to Marishiten several times during the 1790s, one member of the group copied out the

Namiaiki, an eighteenth-century story that records a legend about a putative grandson of Godaigo who tried to fight for Godaigo’s cause, but failed.45

As village headmen with prominent students, the elite position of the Higuchi family was clear, even as their status was not. They were simply called “rural people” (gōmin) in a history

of swordsmanship written in 1843.46 Matsudaira Sadanobu referred to the Higuchi as “landed

samurai.” Left unsaid is whether Matsudaira referred to them as landed samurai because that is

what the Higuchi called themselves, or whether this is some official title.

The Higuchi’s fame allowed them to establish practice halls (dōjō) throughout the Kantō

region and Edo. Nen-ryū’s proliferation that began with Higuchi Masasada culminated with his

son Higuchi Sadataka, one of the most famous swordsmen in the mid-Tokugawa period, a time

when Nen-ryū peaked in popularity. Sadataka opened a branch school in 1782 in the Kyōbashi

section of Edo, run by two of his top students, with two more schools opened in Kanda, one each

in Otadakachi and Koishibashi.47 Sadataka even demonstrated his style in the Western

Enclosure (nishi no maru) of the shogun’s palace in 1794 at the age of ninety two. Sadataka also

45 For more on the Namiaiki legend see, Charisma and community formation in medieval Japan, 46 “Gekken sōdan” in Shinpen: bujutsu sōsho (Tokyo: Shin jimbutsu oraisha, 1995), 228. 47 Watanabe, 7. For a brief biography of Higuchi Sadataka see also Moroda Seiji, Jōmō kenshi sōran: Maniwa nen- ryū sonota no shoryu (Maebashi: Kankodo, 1991), 298-300. 15

met Matsudaira Sadanobu, a senior counselor in the shogunate, who asked the old swordsman

about his art. Sadanobu wrote of this encounter:

In Jōshū there is a landed samurai named Higuchi Taiō [Sadataka] whose family has been studying swordsmanship for generations. His father was particularly well-known (meiyo ari). This year Taiō is ninety-one years old and healthy. He always says of himself that his skills are not good, nor does he know the essence of his style (ryūgi no shui mo shirazarishi) but that since his seventies he has gradually started to understand [the art]. “Since then I have continued training and last year I suddenly understood.” This is called Nen-ryū. The style hides nothing, and the Higuchi hide nothing from those who inquire. Higuchi said the essence (ri) does not come from the sword but from training in the techniques (waza yori dashi ri nari to iu)…I saw this art on the 7/7/1793.48

Timon Screech has argued that writings from Sadanobu’s “Leisure Jottings,” such as the

one above, were intended to be public.49 The Nen-ryū teacher evidently impressed Sadanobu; the senior councilor gave him a scroll with the characters for the Chinese phoenix (hō’ō), still in the possession of the Higuchi family. The choice of the Chinese phoenix was significant. In

Chinese folklore, the phoenix was said to appear with the rise of virtuous rule in society.50 In

praising Sadataka, Sadanobu not only saw as someone who had perfected himself through

martial training, but held him up as an exemplar of moral superiority that could be possessed by

even rural elites. Sadanobu threw himself into martial art training which influenced his political

attitudes and the Kansei reforms, much like his grandfather who had also

been a diligent martial arts practitioner. The Kansei reforms reflected Sadanobu’s own belief in

the efficacy of martial training among samurai. After becoming daimyo in 1783, Sadanobu

added spearmanship (sōjutsu) and gunnery to his domain’s curriculum in addition to the three

arts of archery, equestrianism, and swordsmanship. He practiced Kitō-ryū jūjutsu, a forerunner

48 Matsudaira Sadanobu, “Taikan Zakki,” in Zoku Nihon zuihitsu taisei 6 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunka, 1980). 49 Screech, The Shogun’s Painted Culture, 36. 50 Ibid., 21. 16

art to modern judo, that combined physical training with moral and ethical teachings called

“Shimbu no michi,” what Ooms has called the “Way of Psychic and Martial Power.”51

Sadanobu sought to reinvigorate the practice of martial arts, and swordsmanship in particular, because, after all, they were warriors in name if not necessarily in deed. He even forced military exercises on his retainers, conducting hikes through the countryside.52

Swordsmanship, whether useful or not, compelled the samurai to experience their warrior

heritage in a bodily way. Robert Nye points to a similar phenomenon to explain the popularity

of honor, dueling, and masculinity in early modern France, by invoking Bourdieu: “The body

believes in what it plays at: it weeps if it mimes grief. It does not represent what it performs, it

does not memorize the past, it enacts the past, bringing it back to life. What is “learned by the

body” is not something that one has, like knowledge that can be brandished, but something that

one is.”53 For landed samurai, at least, it was not enough to simply wear two swords as markers

of their inheritance, they had to embody that past. In so doing, rural elites tried to convince

themselves, and prove to others, that their claim to warrior lineage was legitimate.

Economic prosperity may have encouraged the development rural culture, but

enrollments in sword schools benefited from periods of disorder and violence. This trend

supports Brian Platt’s argument that elites placed greater importance on education when rural

commercialization was not going well, such as during times of famine.54 Rural elites also

reacted against the rising literacy among all commoners, feeling ever greater pressure to educate

51 Herman Oom, Charismatic Bureaucrat: A political biography of Matsudaira Sadanobu 1758-1829 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 40-41. Kanō Jigoro, the founder of jūdō, also practiced Kitō-ryū, an art that influenced the creation of jūdō. 52 Ibid., 61. 53 Bourdieu logic of practice, 1990: 73, emphasis in the original. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, 6. 54 Platt, 50. 17

their children because everyone was doing so.55 In other words, as Ooms also illustrated, the

pressure for rural elites came from below. They wanted to distinguish themselves from their

poorer neighbors. Roaming samurai, gangs, and peasant uprisings throughout the nineteenth

century only added to the anxiety. Typically, peasant uprisings are described as having rarely

targeted individuals, focusing their rage, instead, on property. As Suda Tsutomo’s work

demonstrates, however, the nature of protests changed in the nineteenth century. Young peasant

males no longer followed the accepted customs of peasant protest in which harm against individuals and arson had been avoided. Groups of young men referred to by other rural commoners as “evil bands” (akutō), broke with the customary methods of uprisings and began carrying weapons, stealing, using arson, and attacking other peasants.56

Violence had extended beyond the confines of protest, as the theme of revenge, present in

much Tokugawa period popular culture, became reality among nineteenth century peasants and

towns people. In the nineteenth century the number of commoners who registered for revenge

killings (kataki uchi) exceeded registrations by samurai.57 Revenge became a reason to study

swordsmanship. A peasant sent a letter to the headmaster of the Nen-ryū telling him of his long-

cherished desire to study swordsmanship. He explained that ever since his father’s accidental

death ten years previous, he has been weak and timid. The young peasant’s true intention was to

kill his father’s murderer, a goal he accomplished after years of training in Nen-ryū.58

As with other arts, the realm of martial practice provided a space where a teacher’s social

status mattered little when interacting with students. The incentive for rural elites to participate

55 Ibid., 52-52. 56 Suda Tsutomu, Akutō no jūkyūseiki: minshu undo no henshitsu to "kindai ikoki" (Tokyo: Aoki shoten, 2002). 57 D.E. Mills, “Kataki-Uchi: The Practice of Blood-Revenge in Pre-modern Japan”, Modern Asian Studies Vol. 10 No. 4 (1976), 531. For a recent work that addresses commoners and katakiuchi see Shinko Taniguchi, Kinsei shakai to hō kihan: meiyō, mibun jitsuryoku kōshi (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, 2005). 58 Takahashi, Kunisada Chūji no jidai, 268. 18

in martial arts explains its continued existence throughout the Tokugawa period, but particularly

in the latter half of the era when newly acquired wealth among rural elites fostered the pursuit of

cultural activities such as writing poetry, studying nativism, or sponsoring local theater. The

social capital accrued by forming connections through one activity could transfer to another activity. Iwata Miyuki offers an example of how a social network could lead to endless connections: A village headman from Kantō who, through his nativism studies, encountered a

Confucian scholar from Sendai, which led to an introduction to a gunnery instructor in Mito where he met other rural commoner elites also studying gunnery and finally added spearmanship

(sōjutsu) to his hobbies.59

Swordsmanship and Turf Battles: The Ikaho Incident

Jealousy and competition for territory had been another source of potential violence in rural martial art communities, and conflict among rival groups was inevitable. Rival styles often competed against each other using the sacred symbolism of Shinto shrines. Schools that received financial support from rich peasants and samurai would demonstrate their style’s teachings in front of the gods. Having thus received the blessing of the god enshrined, and after paying a substantial tip to the priests, they received permission to place large dedication plaques

(hōgaku) on the shrine itself. In the Kantō region, dedicating plaques to a temple or shrine began with haikai circles in the late 1730s, but participants in other activities, such as mathematic study clubs and shrine performance groups (daidai kagura), copied the practice.

59 Iwata Miyuki, Bakumatsu no jōho to shakai henkaku, 62 and 98. 19

A survey of the martial art dedication plaques on the Kumano Shrine reveals a good deal

about the connections among fellow sword practitioners of different statuses. The Kumano

Shrine lies along the Usui Pass on the border between Karuizawa in Nagano and Matsuida in

Gunma, a well-travelled path during the Tokugawa period. Most of the Tokugawa period

plaques were erected by shrine performance groups (67%), but the number of martial art plaques

(8%) outnumber the haikai groups (3%), a reversal in other areas of Kanto.60 The martial art

plaques include jujutsu, archery, and swordsmanship, including plaques erected by two

commoner teachers who became instructors within the domain schools of Matsushiro and Isesaki

respectively.61 Plaques listed the names of students, assistant instructors, and supporters who

might have donated money to the style. Some plaques list fewer than a dozen names, most likely

those who demonstrated their art at the shrine. Others listed hundreds of names. The oldest Nen-

ryū plaque was erected in 1788. Half a century later, the Higuchi felt that the 1788 plaque

suffered enough damage to warrant erecting a new one. They asked a Nen-ryū student, an

Annaka domain samurai, to mediate a deal with the shrine priest to erect a new one, which they

did in 1847.62 The Higuchi had been particularly active erecting plaques throughout the Kantō

area by then, at a pace of almost one a year from 1830 to 1851.63 The Higuchi, for example, have their headmaster listed on a jūjutsu plaque in 1831, while a samurai Nen-ryū student erected his own archery plaque in 1845.

This competition for sacred legitimacy and advertising space caused many conflicts during the nineteenth century. One such event, the Ikaho Incident of 1822 represents the potential danger caused by the rapid spread of martial arts study in the nineteenth century. Chiba

60 Kazuma Kōji, “Usugi tōge kumano jinja no bujutsu bounokyaku ni tsuite,” 96. 61 Ibid, 96 and 98. 62 Ibid, 100. 63 Takahashi, Kunisada Chūji no jidai, 263. 20

Shūsaku, himself a commoner, created Hokushin Itto-ryū, a style that had much influence over

the development of modern kendo. His style spread throughout Edo and Kantō, eventually reaching Takasaki City. The pressure mounting against the Higuchi was clear, they also had schools in the same sections of Edo, Kyobashi and Kanda, opened nearly forty years earlier, and now Chiba seemed to be moving into Higuchi home territory. According to his own account,

Chiba engaged in a match with a swordsman named Koizumi who was also a student of Nen-ryū under the Higuchi family.64 Having lost the match, Koizumi begged to become Chiba’s student,

claiming that Chiba was better than his own Nen-ryū master, a Higuchi. Several other Nen-ryū

students left to train with Chiba, including two sumo wrestlers.

This resulted in a clash between Higuchi and Chiba’s expanding social networks. One of

Chiba’s disciples asked for his permission to erect a plaque with the names of Chiba’s students at a nearby temple in Ikaho, a famous resort town in the mountains of Jōshū. Chiba responded, “I typically do not think that this kind of thing is good, but since it celebrates the virtue of the gods

I will not stop you.”65 Upon hearing of Chiba’s intentions, Higuchi called upon his disciples to

stop Chiba. On the night before the proposed to erect a dedication plaque, roughly 300 Nen-ryū

students filled the Ikaho inns.66 Among them was Honma Sengorō a wealthy commoner, student

and financial supporter of the Higuchi family, who received a license in 1813 granting him the

perpetual right to teach Nen-ryū as his own. He brought sixty or seventy of his own students to

Ikaho. One participant described the scene: “…(Honma) sat atop a barrel as if it were a military

camp stool. He wore a white hachimaki and sash (tasuki), his students gathering to his right and

64 Chiba Ei’ichirō, Chiba Shūsaku ikō (Tokyo: Okasha, 1941), 70. 65 Ibid., 95. 66 Ibid., 218. The Ikaho choshi notes that there is no primary document concerning the Ikaho incident. Besides Chiba Shūsaku’s account and the oral history passed down and published in the early showa period by the Higuchi family, the only contemporary source is a list of names of those who attended on Higuchi’s side, and short story published in 1825 by a samurai and Nen-ryū student named Nishihara Yoshikazu. His “story of a rabbit grove” (Toen shosetsu) was part of a collection edited by Takizawa Bakin called ‘Toen Shōsetsu.” Nishihara states that 700 people attended. 21

left, waiting for the enemy. He had the countenance like that of a grand general, and when

people came out they looked at each other and laughed.”67 Eventually local shogunate

representatives in nearby Iwahana convinced Chiba to abort the plaque ceremony thus avoiding

any major incident.

Cooperation between different types of martial arts, such as between swordsmanship and

archery, seemed not to have been a major problem among teachers and students. As illustrated

through the names that appeared on multiple dedication plaques from different martial art groups.

The tension between Chiba and the Higuchi arose from two issues. First, the Higuchi lost

students to Chiba’s growing sword network. Training in another style of swordsmanship was

forbidden. Although the fate of the offending Nen-ryū students is unknown, earlier transgressors were treated harshly.68 Watanabe has suggested that part of the reason for the Higuchi family’s

reaction to Chiba arose from their refusal to incorporate inter-style fencing into their art, a practice strictly forbidden in Nen-ryū.69 The popularity of a new type of swordsmanship, one

that emphasized free-style fencing, challenged Nen-ryū and elite samurai sword styles alike.

The Growth of Fencing

The development of fencing (shiai), and especially competitive fencing between different

swordsmanship styles (taryū jiai) represented a watershed moment in the relationship among

people of different statuses. Written oaths typically forbade students from engaging in matches

67 Takizawa Bakin, “Toen shōsetsu” in Nihon zuihitsu taisei Vol. 13 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1927), 19 68 From Takahashi, Kunisada Chūji no jiai, 260-61. Two students were expelled (hamon). The hamon notices are not extant, but there are two requests for leniency from 1797 and 1800. The first student engaged in a match in 1795 , and then in 1796 started teaching Nen-ryū without permission. Another student was removed in 1800. His troubles started in 1798 when he “damaged the name of our style” by acting disorderly after drinking. He was kicked out of the style but later allowed to return after promising not to drink anymore. He later broke this promise by getting drunk in a local village. In both cases the men tried to return to the style by appealing through the higher ranking students and dojo manager (sewanin), but were denied. 69 Watanabe, 43. 22

of any sort, threatening expulsion. Although there is no clear evidence that the shogunate issued

any edicts against competitive fencing, Tokugawa period commentators blamed the decline of

martial arts on the outlawing of taryū shiai.70 Teachers at many domain sword schools also

forbade their students from engaging in matches with other schools. The reasons for this are not

hard to imagine; for one, authorities wanted to discourage any possible conflicts that might arise

among samurai that could turn violent, especially if samurai from multiple domains became

involved. Second, a poor showing in competition would have damaged the reputation, and thus,

the livelihood, of sword styles. Finally, competition would have been extremely dangerous

before the eighteenth century when proper equipment allowed for safe, full-contact training.

Most styles of swordsmanship throughout the eighteenth century continued to emphasize training that focused on the repetition of kata. Using wooden swords, two people practiced predetermined attack and defense sequences. There was little opportunity to experience free- style fencing. The development of bamboo swords wrapped in leather (fukuro shinai) in the early eighteenth century and armor, allowed practitioners to attack each other full force. These equipment changes began in private sword academies in Edo. As the popularity of swordsmanship grew, styles that emphasized the use of this equipment and expertise in fencing outnumbered schools that refused to adopt the new practice. Inter-style fencing became popular among samurai and commoners alike, but styles dominated by the low-ranking samurai, urban commoners, and rural commoner elites, eclipsed older styles that catered to high-ranking samurai.

70 Tominaga Kengo, Kendō gohyaku nenshi (Tokyo: Hyakusen Shobo, 1972), 272-273. Karl Friday notes that no such official prohibition exists in the . However, it is likely that the prohibition on taryū jiai had been an interpretation of kenka ryōseibai, another unofficial but well known shogunate policy of punishing of all parties involved in a fight which originated in the warring states period. Domains and the shogunate would have been especially keen to keep samurai within their own domain from competing with each other which could become harmful rivalries. Moreover, taryū jiai practice among commoners crossed spatial barriers, domain and otherwise. Inter-domain taryū jiai by samurai could have escalated from simple rivalry to more serious conflict. Connections between political factions and swordsmanship styles came into conflict in the bakumatsu Mito domain. For more on this topic see Sukano Masahiro, “Mitohan ni okeru Ittō-ryū nit suite no kenkyū,” in Watanabe. 23

With little salience of samurai authority in rural culture, and the broad appropriations of martial practice in the countryside, competitive fencing styles were predisposed to a population much larger than samurai.

Rural Swordsmanship, and martial arts in general, shared many characteristics with samurai practice. But with fewer limitations placed upon rural martial practice than in samurai swordsmen, important differences emerged that explain why rural swordsmanship developed free-style fencing, and how that practice was eventually encouraged by local authorities. Wada and Enomoto argue that martial arts in the countryside retained characteristics of medieval martial arts, namely the inclusion of esoteric Buddhism (shingon mikkyo), shugendō and the use of spells, which filtered into rural ceremonies, religious practice and even theater. 71 In the

Owari and Mikawa region of Aichi Prefecture, villages held ceremonies called “bō no te” where peasants performed stylized two-person drills (kata) in order to predict the weather, and they engaged in faux matches (shiai) to predict the future. Villagers organized their teachings into styles (ryūha) complete with scrolls that imparted secret teachings (hiden) and designated rank and mastery.72 These gatherings for formal practice are believed to originate from similar esoteric practices by medieval yamabushi, although evidence for this is thin.

In nineteenth century Kawasaki City, several ronin who taught swordsmanship at a school in the Kaga Domain, also opened a school in town where they taught various martial arts to be used in local lion dances (shishimai). Other sword teachers followed suit, creating performance-based styles that taught the use of staffs, swords, halberds, and even sickle and chains (kusarigama). These innovations turned a sizeable profit, and hybrid martial art-

71 Enomoto and Wada. 140-141. 72 For more on this folk art, and efforts to preserve it, see Owari Ashi-shi: Bunkazaihen, 235-323. 24

performance groups continued well in the Meiji period.73 The use of mock and real weapons in

this mix of ludic martial activity affected how commoners consumed and appropriated martial

arts differently than samurai. As Anne Walthall has argued, rural plays featuring martial valor

with large casts that involved youth associations, where everyone could be involved, were more

popular in the countryside because they broke the monotony of everyday life.74

Play through martial arts extended to archery as well. In Shizuoka prefecture, peasants

practiced Heki-ryū Insai-ha archery for use in competitions and religious ceremonies.75 In the

second month of 1741, for example, villagers held a five day archery contest to bring good crops

and ward off harm.76 One local lamented in 1835, that commoners were receiving rank in Heki-

ryū, and calling what they did archery but were really just meeting to gamble on competitions.

He felt that this would hurt the reputation of Heki-ryū, and more respectable people would stop

sending their young to study the art.77

The multifaceted practice of archery, as both a cultural martial art, and as a source of

bawdy gambling also has implications for rural swordsmanship. Wada argues that martial-like

activities were less rigid than samurai-dominated urban swordsmanship because rural arts

incorporated rural culture, religion, and recreation.78 This might help us understand why

competitive fencing flourished among rural commoner practitioners and the low-ranking samurai

who were more likely to interact with them.

73 Kanazawa shishi, shiryōhen 14, 463-469. 74 Walthall, Rural Culture in Tokugawa Japan, 380-382. 75 As Morgan Pitelka noted, Ihara Saikaku listed archery as one of the “arts of play” (yūgei) enjoyed by commoners as early as the late seventeenth century. See Morgan Pitelka, Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrions, and Tea Practitioners in Japan (U. Hawai’i Press, 2005), 92. 76 Nishiyama Matsunosuke, Iemoto no kenkyū (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1982), 289. 77 Original reproduced in Iwasaki, “kinsei Tōkaido no shuukueki bunka eshu Hekiryu insaiha kessha no tenkai” , 7. This article contains a full analysis of archery in the Shizuoka area and the. For a scathing rebuke about Shinto priests, Buddhist monks, and other commoners doing Heki ryu in Shizuoka, see a 1767 commentary by Saitō Nobuyuki, “Insai-ha no ben” reproduced in full in Shizuoka kenshi shiryo hen 15 kinsei 7, 535-543. 78 “Kinsei sonraku ni okeru bujutsushi kenkyu no genjo to wadai” by Enomoto, 141. 25

Martial art training excursions became popular among samurai and, like pilgrimages, provided commoner with an excellent excuse to travel as well. Many traveling swordsmen were practitioners of new fencing styles, such as Shintō Munen-ryū, Jikishin Kage-ryū, and various subgroups of Ittō-ryū. They trained with whomever would have them, domain schools, private school, and other traveling swordsmen encountered on the road. Upon visiting a new school,

swordsmen might simply learn whatever was being taught at the time, and if allowed, would

engage in a fencing match. Some swordsmen recorded their visits and even asked training

partners, or school managers and teachers, to sign a type of passbook similar to those used for

temple pilgrimages. One domain samurai who received permission from the domain to

spend two years training on the road, kept a record of places visited, people encountered, and

rumors about happenings in society, such as the arrival of Western ships. He mostly trained in

domain schools with other samurai, but he noted whenever he encountered swordsmen of other status, including a landed samurai who was also traveling to train in swordsmanship.79

As swordsmen traveled, they contributed to social networks of martial artists of all statuses, especially through their production of texts. They created and even published lists of notable swordsmen (eimeiroku). One such list compiled in 1860 by two samurai, lists 633 names,

many of them commoners, and most from newer fencing styles like Shintō Munen-ryū and

Hokushin Ittō-ryū.80 Another nineteenth century list by a landed samurai in Kyushu

demonstrates that the phenomenon occurred throughout Japan.81

Not everyone was enamored with the rise of fencing over earlier forms of swordsmanship.

Some felt that wearing armor and using a light sword did no reproduce realistic combative

79 “Shokoku kaireki nichiroku,” 270. 80 For an in-depth study of this eimiroku see Watanabe, 1967. 81 Susumu Nagao, “Kinsei goki ni okeru musha shugyo no jittai nit suite: ‘Miyazaki Chobei bujutsu eimeiroku’ no bunseki wo toshite,” 26

conditions as advocates had argued. Still others complained that swordsmanship was losing its

role as an activity to cultivate the self. One critic argued that training just to win a match might

work while one is still young, but once they begin to reach forty or fifty years of age, their skill

will worsen because they never perfected the art nor trained the mind (kokoro).82

The Response to Commoner Swordsmanship

Before the nineteenth century, the official reaction towards non samurai engaging in martial art practice ranged from casual acceptance, indirect encouragement, and outright prohibition. The earliest prohibition was issued in the Aizu domain on 1712/12/8. It stated that peasants should cease all martial art practice immediately, and no one should teach martial arts to peasants martial arts.83 The shogunate issued its first in a series of prohibitions against

commoner martial practice in the early nineteenth century, reflecting the boom in

swordsmanship education in the countryside and the changing nature of violence in Kantō.

By the late 1790’s, the carrying of swords by unauthorized persons from common travelers to unregistered wanderers was enough of a problem to cause comment among government officials. One official complained, “In the Kantō region there are many vagabonds who travel together carrying swords and making trouble.” Referring to another domain in Kantō, he stated, “the ruler of this region allows too many people to use surnames and carry swords, even people coming into his territory from other domains are doing so.”84 It is no surprise that

82 Yamaga Motomizu,”Bubunbi no kan narabi gakkō” reprinted in Nihon Kaibō shiryō shōsho 1, 310. For more on Yamaga’s attitudes towards fencing in general see “Kinsei Goki no bugeikan in kansuru kenkyū: Satō Nobuhiro, Yamaga Motomizu wo chūshin ni,” Kokugakuin daigaku kiyo 48, 2010. 83 See “Hyakushō domo bugei keiko kahan no mono domo teishi ni mōshi tsuke,” in Aizuhan kasei jikki Vol. 6 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1975), 137. 84 Takahashi, “Bakuhanseika sonraku ni okeru “bu” no denshō,” 61. 27

the shogunate tried to prohibit the practice of rural swordsmanship. It issued edicts against rural

kabuki, dance, and elaborate festivals, hotbeds for wandering troublemakers.85

At the turn of the nineteenth century the shogunate issued what became a series of edicts

banning commoners from practicing martial arts. The first such prohibition dating from the

ninth month of 1804 stated:

Each of the four statuses has a separate occupation (gyō), but recently people have been setting up training areas (keikoba) in their houses or adding them to their houses, and teaching non-samurai and townsmen martial arts. This is not a proper art (gei) for those of townsman status, and naturally they lose their occupations (jizen to sono shokugyo wo ushinai). Moreover this is insolence (furachi). If one hears of such activity report it to an official…the practice of martial arts by townsmen is strictly prohibited.86

The success of non samurai who established training areas in Edo, like the Higuchi, offended the

shogunate’s sense of control over space. These privately built schools acted as meeting places

for men, and some women, of all statuses. Commoner sword teachers outnumbered samurai

teachers in the Edo hinterland. In a survey of nineteenth century Saitama swordsmanship,

researchers found records that describe the school leaders for forty swordsmanship schools. Of those teachers, twenty-four are defined as “peasant” (nōmin), eight as village headman, five as samurai, and the rest are unknown.87

Less than a year later, in the fifth month of 1805, the shogunate shifted its attention to the

Kantō countryside and banned peasants from practicing swordsmanship:

We have heard that in this region there are unemployed samurai wandering about. Peasants are learning martial arts and gathering together for practice which might cause them to ignore their agricultural work. They forget their status and become

85 Walthall rural culture, 372. 86 Shinzo Takayanagi and Ishii Ryosuke, eds., Ofuregaki tempō shūsei ge (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1941), 440-441. 87 Shinpen Saitama kenshi shiryo hen 12. 28

uppity (kigasa). They should be told to stop and martial art instructors should not introduce their arts to the villagers….88

As with the 1804 edict, this begins with a caution against the erosion of status distinctions

caused by commoners practicing martial arts. The same edict continues:

Item: Among the peasants there are those who imitate the appearance of firefighters (hikeshi ninsoku). Under the pretext of a fire outbreak they gather into groups and tear down the houses of those whom they hold in contempt…they also form groups and start fights and indulge in argument. These people should be disciplined.89

More than forgetting their status, commoners in the Kanto countryside were a source of

violence, and the shogunate saw the connection between growing disorder and martial arts

practice. The shogunate’s newly created Kantō Regulatory Patrol (Kantō torishimari

shutsuyaku) issued warnings about commoners betting on rifle and archery shooting in Kiryū

(Gunma).90 The same prohibition, verbatim, was issued again in 1831, 1839, and 1867. A

similar document sent to the shogunate inspectors (ōmetsuke) in 1843 asking that townsmen not be allowed to practice martial arts.91 In the latter case, the offense was directed at sword teachers

who, “…awarded townsmen with rank certificates like mokuroku and menkyo.”92 These ranks

acknowledged the accumulated cultural capital, and their dissemination among commoners

diluted their symbolic value for the samurai who once monopolized them.

The 1867 edict blames daimyo for the continued practice of martial arts among

commoners and that, “…daimyo building peasant militias and encouraging commoners to build

88 Ibid., 742-743. 89 Takayanagi, 743. 90 Shinpen saitamakenshi. 299 91 Ishii Ryosuke and Harafuji Hiroshi, eds., Bakumatsu ofuregaki shusei 5 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992), 113 92 Tokyoshi shikō, shigai hen 40, 550. 29

swordsmanship schools should be reported to the accounts magistrate (kanjō bugyo).”93 These repeated prohibitions demonstrate that laws against carrying swords, practicing swordsmanship and using surnames no longer inhibited commoners’ behavior. The problem extended beyond commoners. An 1864 letter to the imperial regent (kampaku), Nijō Naniyuki, complained that the children of court nobles were shooting pistols and gathering to practice swordsmanship.94

Not only were these hortatory proclamations unenforceable, but the shogunate began to

depend on rural martial power, thereby loosening its monopoly over violence. The shogunate

had already overreached its policing ability. In the Kantō region approximately 1,000,000

of land was divided among the bannermen who left much of the local authority in the hands of

the village headmen. Only thirty shogunal representatives (daikan) governed the shogun’s lands,

which amounted to 100,000 koku, and they did not have enough military or management power

to handle all major incidents. Eventually the shogunate had to cooperate with peasants to control

groups of indigents roaming in the countryside. The Kantō Regulatory Patrol relied upon rural

elites for information on wanderers and criminals, the most frequent topic found in letters

between village officials and the patrol.95 This was the first instance of the shogunate

recognizing the peasant’s social capital. Villages formed leagues centered on larger, wealthier

villages that hosted criminal holding centers (yoseba). The village headmen of these villages

were given the right to wear swords and use surnames. League members practiced

swordsmanship for its practical use and to strengthen internal social cohesion.96

As rural elites took it upon themselves to defend against the increasing violence in the

countryside by having their sons train in martial arts which in turn facilitated the spread of

93 Kanagawa kenshi, 779. 94 Komei tenōki 5 (showa 45), 397-398. 95 Iwata, 22. 96 For more on security in the Kanto countryside see Anne Walthall, “Village Networks: Sōdai and the sale of Edo Nightsoil,” Monumenta Nipponica 43, No.3 (1988) and Howell. 30

martial art styles. In the case of Nen-ryū, the number of students newly enrolled during the

nineteenth century rose during the peak years of “smashings” (uchikowashi).97 This enabled the custodians of martial arts in the countryside to secure their positions by increasing the number of students from elite families. In exchange, advanced pupils whose presence had been socially advantageous for the style were allowed to form their own groups. Several new offshoot styles arose from Nen-ryū, such as Honma Nen-ryū. Likewise, the Tennen Rishin-ryū benefited from the increase of rural elite students during troubled times in the Tama countryside.98

Edicts issued by the shogunate could be reinterpreted by local officials tasked with

enforcing them. In one case, a bureaucrat asked what to do about commoners in certain regions

had been given permissions to engage in the practice of martial arts. “In Sunpu, Enshū, and

Mikawa (Shizuoka), the peasants, townsmen, and merchants have, since the Eiroku Period

(1558-1570), received permission, just like samurai (shi), to practice archery in town, set up

archery ranges (matoba) in commoner residences and in temples and shrine property, to hold

competitions.”99 The shogunate responded “although they may continue to practice archery,

they should not be having competitions (literally, “record hits and misses”). The real problem was not the practice of archery itself, but the inevitable gambling that accompanied the competitions.

Non-samurai also took advantage of the growing sense of urgency on the shogunate’s part, to revitalize the martial spirit and improve coastal defense with the growing presence of the

Western powers in East Asia. Some argued that villagers near the sea could help organize such defenses, and indeed villagers started gathering old muskets and spears. But the shogunate

97 A chart listing the numbers of enrolled practitioners and new pledges can be found in Takahashi, Kunisada Chūji no jidai, 254. I compared this with a list of uchikowashi in the region found in Michio Aoki and Tadao Yamada, Tempōki no seiji to shakai (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1981), 114. 98 Suda, 128-129. 99 Nihon zaisei keizai shiryō 6, 980. 31

ultimately rejected this idea because it did not want to encourage the idea among villagers that

foreigners were a bad group of people who needed defending against.100

Elsewhere, however, shogunate officials approved, and even, encouraged non-samurai to

participate in coastal defense. At the Ise Shrine, the Yamada magistrate reluctantly allowed shrine priests to practice swordsmanship. In 1853, the Yamada magistrate wrote to the shrine representatives telling them,

Although it is not good for you to learn warrior customs (buke no fūgi), seeing as you are already allowed to carry swords, we will allow you to practice swordsmanship to the extent that it does not interfere with your jobs of your status (mibun)…as for those teaching swordsmanship, they should not harbor ronin or others of the sort.101

As in the case of archery among commoners, the shogunate followed precidant, allowing martial

practice to continue among non samurai. Again, the shogunate was more concerned with the

criminal behavior that might accompany the activities. After an 1855 inspection of Ise Shrine,

however, officials from Edo felt that the shrine was not sufficiently protected. Priests were

ordered to survey temple bells that could be melted down to use for cannon and rifles, and to

start training in martial arts, especially gunnery.102 This culminated in 1863 when the shrine

formed peasant militias.

Ōkawa Heibei

Ōkawa Heibei is the most famous example in the Kanto region of an elite commoner

swordsman who used his cultural capital to advance his social standing through employment in a

domain. In 1848, Kawagoe officials hired Ōkawa Heibei, the son of a village headman and a

100 Iwata, 233. 101 228. 102 Ibid 228-231. 32

skilled practitioner of the Shintō Munen-ryū school of swordsmanship, because of his martial

ability. Initially his sword expertise only earned him a job as a lowly guard with additional

duties of teaching his Shinto Munen-ryū to other low-ranking samurai. As the trend towards

inter-style fencing matches increased, many domains recognized the benefits of this training

method for their own military reform.

Ōkawa wanted to use his Kawagoe appointment as a vehicle for spreading Shintō

Munen-ryū.103 He believed in the efficacy of his style because of its emphasis on “practical”

(jitsuyō) training versus older styles already employed by the Kawagoe domain. Before becoming a servant of the domain, Ōkawa had traveled throughout the Kanto Plain training at other schools and engaging in taryū shiai on his own, becoming famous in 1836 for defeating a practitioner of the rival Kogen Ittō-ryū. The Shintō Munen-ryū school was well known for encouraging taryū shiai, which it conducted by hosting students from other schools or allowing its own members to travel and train in various styles. Even as a guard working for the domain,

Ōkawa was given permission to use his free time to travel throughout the Kantō Plain for the purpose of training. Domain officials accepted Ōkawa’s use of taryū shiai among lower-ranked samurai who trained in Shintō Munen-ryū, allowing Ōkawa’s students to engage in matches outside of Kawagoe and welcoming visitors into Kawagoe for the same reason. Those leaving the domain needed permission from their superiors, and lengthy, time-consuming background checks limited the number of visitors who arrived each year. Ōkawa petitioned the domain to speed up the processes but he was denied.104

The desire on the part of many shogunal and domain officials to adopt more practical

training methods for their samurai benefited teachers of styles that emphasized taryū shiai.

103 Yamamoto Kunio, Saitamaken kenkaku retsuden (Tokyo: Yugisha, 1981), 246 104 Fuse, 204-205. 33

When Matsudaira Naokatsu became daimyo of Kawagoe in 1862, he immediately called for a

reform of the martial art styles in the domain, ordering the eighteen teachers of all martial arts,

not just swordsmanship, to implement taryū shiai by the time of his return from Edo in the

following year. In the same year, the shogunate’s newly built military training center, the

Kōbusho, also hired sword teachers whose styles emphasized fencing. The ninth daimyo of Mito,

Nariaki, announced in 1842 that domain samurai were to practice martial arts in one location despite their membership in schools of different styles. He hoped for more exchange and improvement in their military capabilities. Eventually Mito consolidated existing sword teachings in one new style called Suifu Ryū. Of the fifty-one styles that existed before the consolidation, forty were absorbed and eleven disappeared. At Mito’s main sword school, only

Suifu-ryū, Hokushin Ittō-ryū and Shintō Munen-ryū continued to be practiced. All of them used sword pedagogy that focused on fencing, rather than on the repetition of kata, as fencing was thought to be the most effective method for increasing the samurai martial ability.105 In the

Fukuyama domain, traditional schools of archery employed by the domain were forced to

completely reform their training methods and begin emphasizing hitting the target.106 While

other domains, including the shogunate’s Kōbusho, eliminated archery entirely.

Officials announced that they would begin implementing taryū jiai in order to improve

the technical ability of its samurai and to “catch up with the trends of the times.” Ōkawa was

promoted again, received an annual stipend, and the Shintō Munen-ryū became an officially

sponsored school--all samurai in the newly formed infantry units were ordered to study Shintō

Munen-ryū. In 1865, Shintō Munen-ryū practitioners were given the honor of demonstrating

their techniques in front of the senior council members. In this way Ōkawa received

105 Sugano Tadahiro, “Mitohan ni okeru Ittō-ryū ni tsuite no kenkyū” in Budō bunka no kenkū, 112. 106 See Tamaki sato, Fukuyama hangaku seishikan ni okeru kyujutsu koshiki no jittai. 34

extraordinary recognition of the cultural capital he had accrued while serving the Kawagoe

domain.

Ōkawa received samurai status because of his fencing expertise that he developed while still a peasant. At first many of his samurai students came from the lower ranks but gradually higher ranking samurai also became his pupils. As a samurai Ōkawa could no longer travel as he pleased and he had to apply for permission to leave the Edo in order to train or hold matches.

When the domain granted him temporary leave it ordered him not to hold matches or train commoners, those who had been the source of his rise in the fencing world. Ōkawa ignored these stipulations and he continued to teach his former peasant acquaintances.107 Initially

Ōkawa’s promotion encountered resistance from upper-level samurai who were offended by the

favor showed to this former peasant, and his Shintō Munen-ryū, although employed for lower-

ranking samurai, did not enjoy the benefits of an officially sanctioned style until the mid

nineteenth century. As with the Mito domain, the Kawagoe domain’s efforts to promote taryū

jiai initially failed due to the traditional prohibition of the practice by most schools, but gradually

samurai of all levels began cross training in Shintō Munen Ryū.

Ōkawa was not the only commoner practitioner of Shintō Munen-ryū granted samurai status. Ohashi Torakichi became famous as a sword teacher in Edo and later received notoriety for carrying out a revenge killing (kataki uchi) in 1784. This event acted as a catalyst for his career; a bannerman named Nemoto Kinai employed Ohashi as a 100 koku samurai.108 Other

domains also employed Shintō Munen-ryū for its fencing practice. The Ōmura domain employed

a commoner teacher, bestowed him with samurai status, and built a separate school for Shintō

Munen-ryū in the 1850s. The domain samurai had all been training in the older styles of Ittō-ryū

107Fuse, 203-204. 108 Bugei ryūha daijiten, 428. 35

and Shinkage-ryū, but gradually they were ordered to cross train in Shintō Munen-ryū. In 1855,

the domain fired the other teachers and completed the transition to fencing practice.109 Of course

not all peasant swordsmen achieved such social mobility. However, their stories demonstrate

that even in the realm of military expertise, where we expect to see more social rigidity between

samurai and commoners than in other social activities, status distinctions had become relatively

malleable.

Conclusion

Despite continued edicts against commoners practicing swordsmanship, by the 1860s the

shogunate relied upon rural elites to organize and train peasant militias. In 1862, it encouraged

the bannermen to recruit “peasants” to form militias. With few takers, commoners were

eventually given training, and the privilege of wearing swords and using surnames, even though

their legal status did not change.110 Rural elite swordsmen, also, filled the ranks of vigilante groups such as the , fighting along samurai. For those commoners who participated in the , swordsmanship became a vehicle for living out their martial ideals, a motivation that coincided with their desire to be taken seriously as politically active participants in the Restoration.

The number of swordsmen and sword schools dropped rapidly after the Meiji Restoration.

This is typically explained as being due to military modernization, in which swordsmanship was

deemed obsolete, or blamed on the elimination of the samurai and prohibitions on carrying

swords. But as the status system fell, so too did the symbolic and cultural capital value of

109 Yamada Rie and Mayumi Tabata, Bakumatsu murahan ni okeru kenjutsu ryūha kaigen no kei…ni kansuru kenkyu” 149-151. 110 Kurushima Hiroshi,”Hyakushō and military duty in early modern Japan,” Acta Asiatica No. 87 (2004), 15-20. 36

swordsmanship and other martial arts. Swordsmanship did not disappear entirely and, in fact, in the politically active Tama region, swordsmanship remained popular. Dedication plaques continued to appear there during the early 1880s, and some of the men listed on those plaques were injured fighting police during the Chichibu Incident. Even one of the organizers of the incident made his wife and daughter train with the halberd. While Moriyama believes this indicates the continued importance of the violent side of swordsmanship, it also highlights the social capital needed to keep close social ties to with politically like-minded men.111 In other

countries too, swordsmanship rose during moments of intense political activity, such as in

Ireland during the 1760s, when the frequency of dueling increased.112

Even well into the twentieth century, kendo did not replace these older swordsmanship

styles. The Ikaho Incident, for example, continued to enflame ire among Nen-ryū supporters.

When the movie production company Nikkatsu released a movie in 1929 about Chiba Shūsaku,

Nen-ryū students in Tokyo were outraged at what they felt was a false portrayal of the incident.

Nikkatsu issued an official apology for having ignored historical accuracy after being pressured

by Nen-ryū supporters among Tokyo police and right wing leader Toyama Mitsuru.113

Status was a relatively loose category that depends upon the eye of the beholder. The

four statuses are a favorite theoretical construct among scholarly spokesmen for the shogunate,

who drew from Confucianism and the Chinese model. There are, as Howland describes them,

also occupational statuses, which include groups such as priests and physicians, the polluted

people (eta), and others who do not fit into one of the four categories.114 People from all statuses

111 Moriyama, 64-65. Swordsmanship plaques gradually cease to appear and were replaced by a sudden boom in jujutsu ones precisely at the time when modern judo was becoming popular. 112 That Damn’d Thing Called Honour, 282. 113 The apology was printed in a Gunma Prefecture journal Jōmō oyobi Jōmōjin. See Onishi Keijiro, Maniwa nen- ryū monogatari (Maebashi: Jōmō Shinbunsha, 1987), 354-355. 114 Howland, “Samurai Status, Class, and Bureaucracy: A Historiographical Essay”, 358. 37 filled the ranks of priests and physicians, and, as Iwata Miyuki argues, they become a node of interaction for both samurai and non-samurai. This explains both the presence of samurai and commoner names alongside one another on dedication plaques in shrines, and the swordsmanship practice among the Ise Shrine priests.115

There is also the simple fact that the closer one looks at martial art practice on the ground throughout Japan, the more one finds variation within the status. Landed elites of different names, some recognized as distinct from peasants by local daimyo or the shogunate, while others were not, and part-time samurai who also engage in agriculture activities. All of these definitions shift over time, and money could certainly buy privileges.

It seems contradictory for the shogunate and daimyo to prohibit non-samurai from practicing swordsmanship, and yet allow, and sometimes encourage, the activity. Again there is the issue of variation, daimyo could largely apply edicts as they pleased, and if there were some non-samurai families engaged in teaching swordsmanship, as long as it did not facilitate the breaking of laws, then they could do so. Luke Robert’s recent study of shogunate policy highlights the flexibility inherent in the bakuhan system, with overt (omote) edicts being tempered with on the ground realities that could be overlooked.116 It might also be an issue of salience, namely, that authorities simply did not have, or perhaps even attempted, to control the everyday practices of rural elites, especially when those elites sought to uphold local authority, not subvert it. Fencing in France operated in much the same way, where monarchists used fencing, “…as a way to reassert the codes of the past and to challenge the authority of the Third

Republic.”117

115 Iwata, 209. 116 Luke Roberts, Performing the Great Peace: Political Space and Open Secrets in Tokugawa Japan (U. Hawaii, 2012). 117 Corry Cropper, Playing at Monarchy: Sport as Metaphor in nineteenth century France, 138. 38

Many casual observers lamented the rise and dominance of rural swordsmen. Yamaga

Motomizu complained that the peasants’ rough and wild fencing, and their arrogant airs, had

infected the ranks of samurai youth.118 Their practice lacked the sophistication of older style

swordsmanship. Even worse, thought Yamaga, people were so focused on becoming strong at

fencing that some trained without a teacher, a state of affairs presaged by Sen’en’s how-to book only fifty years earlier.

118 1853. 39