Hasegawa Eishin and Katori Shinto Ryu

[Robert Reinberger]

I recently found a remark on a website, that linked up Hasegawa Chikaranosuke Eishin (Hidenobu) with the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu, stating that the former had 'extended' the teachings of Hayashizaki Jinsuke Shigenobu 'with techniques from the TSKSR'.

While I'm aware of the big influence Hasegawa's teachings had on the school, I'm astonished about that interpretation. From what little I've seen about TSKSR Iai, to me it seems do be a quite different approach. Moreover, I was unable to trace that direct connection in the books I have, including the books of Otake Shihan (The Deity and the sword) and the Warner/Draeger book (Japanese Swordsmanship), despite an obscure link between Izasa Choisai Ienao and Hasegawa Eishin through Muso Jikiden Ryu, mentioned in the last book.

Does anybody have informations about a direct link between Hasegawa Eishin and the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu, or any other comments?

Regards,
Robert

[Edited by Robert Reinberger on 09-14-2000 at 01:25 PM]

[Robert Reinberger]

No replies so far.

Has anybody at least also read/heard about this connection?

Maybe you regard it to be a rumor with not enough substance to comment on?

Regards,
Robert

[Ruediger]

Robert,

...not so much knowledge to share..., i know also just the "facts" (that Hasegawa Mondonosuke Eishin was the 19. Soke of the Muso Jikiden Ryu) from the book of Warner/Draeger.
As i said above... not so much knowledge to share

Best regards

Ruediger Meier

[Earl Hartman]

Ruediger:

Don't you mean that Eishin was the 9th headmaster of the Muso Jikiden Ryu, not the 19th?

Earl

[Ruediger]

Hi Earl,

i checked the book again, on site 85 there is a chapter called "Eishin and the Muso Jikiden Ryu".
Draeger writes about Eishin: "It is traditionally recorded that he became the nineteenth successor headmaster of the Muso Jikiden Ryu. This ryu is allegedly the development of a priest named Onkeibo Chohen who devised the component martial-arts systems of his ryu through the process of tenshin sho (divine inspiration and sanction). Neither the accuracy of this claim nor the date of the development has yet been determined, and complications abound to hinder any clarification of these issues. Orthodox oral tradition makes Izasa Ieano (1486-1588) the founder of Japan's oldest historically proved ryu - the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu - and, questionably, the seventh headmaster of the Muso Jikiden Ryu. Because the Muso Jikiden Ryu is no longer extant, our only knowledge of its martial curriculum is based on scattered references, largely unreliable, that tell of arts grouped under the vague headings of hei-jutsu (weapons fighting arts of a nondescript form) and yawara (techniques performed in a "flexible" manner while the operator is minimally armed) but without specific mention of swordmanship."

Best regards

Ruediger Meier

[ghp]

Earl,


[from Ruediger] "It is traditionally recorded that [Eishin]became the nineteenth successor headmaster of the Muso Jikiden Ryu...."

Actually, Eishin was the seventh soke, I believe, of what we today call MJER. What Ruediger cites above is from Warner & Draeger's Japanese Swordsmanship -- or it is repeated in another Draeger book.

Isn't it rather convenient that Draeger didn't cite his sources?

From what I recall from Japanese Swordsmanship, Draeger stated it was supposed (or a legend ... don't correctly remember) that Eishin -- in addition to being the seventh inheritor of Hayashizaki's school -- he additionally might have been the inheritor of Jikiden Ryu. Again, I don't have the book in front of me, but that's the gist of what Draeger said.

Draeger posits that Eishin possibly combined the names of the two schools -- along with his name -- changing the Shinmei Muso Ryu name to Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu. I don't know if that happened. I seem to recall reading that Eishin's students called the style Hasegawa Eishin Ryu, Hasegawa Ryu, Eishin Ryu, etc. Even in 1935 the Toyama Gakko's Kenjutsu Kyohan Shoukai broke MJER down into two chapters: Omori Ryu and Hasegawa (Eishin) Ryu [parentheses original]. Oe, Nakayama, and (oops, forgot) recodified the teachings in the 1930s deleting lots of useful stuff that was no longer useful then ( :cry: ) ... is that when "Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu" was officially named?

Kinda sticky when history and tradition get so mixed up with legend and "fuzzy" facts.

Regards,
Guy

[Edited by ghp on 09-28-2000 at 08:03 PM]

[Earl Hartman]

Guy:

I'll have to check Masaoka Sensei's book, but I think that you've pretty much got it right. When I first started with Masaoka S., most people in our group called it Hasegawa Eishin Ryu, and I seem to recall reading somewhere (maybe in the Kendo Nippon articles that you gave me) that Oe S. gave it the name MJER when he re-codified the teachings. Perhaps that's when the torinawa, bo, and yawara parts of the curriculum were lost (sob!). Oe S. was a gekken instructor, and apparently his iai reflected the facing-straight-forward philosophy of gekken.

I read (again, can't remember where) that the "Muso" (Incomparable, or Without Peer) part of the name was given by some bigwig when he was given a demonstration of the art. Still, I'm sure that there are a lot of stories about that kind of thing.

Earl

[Leo Chang]

Hi Robert,

So "muso" means without peer...How about the meaning of "Jikiden" then ? :)

Also, anybody happen to know the kanji for MJER? (Being ethnically Chinese, it's always good to know how much the Japanese screwed up the characters we invented :laugh: j/k)

Thanx~

[Brian Dunham]

Hello,
In MSR, the chuden series(tate hiza no bu in MJER) is also refferred to as Hasegawa Eishin Ryu.
Also, the kanji for MU in MSR is 'yume'(dream), and SO (thought). These same kanji are, I believe, used by the extant Shin Muso Hayashizaki Ryu, which seems to indicate that they were the older way of writing Muso. They were probably changed by someon in MJER to enhance the ryu's image. Any thoughts?

[Earl Hartman]

I can't remember the specific designation of the kanji according to Nelson's system of ID'ing kanji by number, but not having my books in front of me I'll give it a shot:

Mu: nothing, naught, without
So: peer, or twin
Jiki: direct (straight)
Den: to pass on, to relate, to transmit
Eishin: (personal name of Hasegawa Eishin)
Ryu: flow (lineage/school)

Thus, the name can be taken to mean "The Peerless, Directly Transmitted Lineage of Eishin".

Hope this helps. As an aside, I think it is interesting that the Muso Shinden Ryu (Dream Thought, Divinely Transmitted Lineage), which is so closely related to the MJER that many consider it to be Shimomura-ha MJER as reconfigured and renamed by Nakayama Hakudo, took two characters that sounded the same (Muso: "Dream Thought" as opposed to Muso: "Without Peer") to use as the name of his school. A very subtle allusion to the fact that the schools were related yet different, and a way to show respect to the original school while yet clearly separating himself from it so as not to confuse people or appear to be illegitimately appropriating something that was not his.

Earl

[Earl Hartman]

Brian:

I doubt that anyone in MJER needed to "enhance the school's image" by "changing the characters". In Japanese, there are many characters that sound the same yet mean something completely different. There is thus no single right way or wrong way to write something. You choose the characters you want to say what you want, and sometimes they sound the same as other characters and sometimes they don't.

Besides, it is a matter of common knowledge that MSR, as we have it today, is a fairly recent creation of Nakayama Hakudo that was based almost entirely of pre-existing MJER Shimomura-ha techniques. This is borne out by the fact that the tatehiza no bu in MSR is called Hasegawa Eishin Ryu (an interesting bit of info, BTW, thanks). MJER predates MSR by quite a bit, so I don't think anybody needed to "enhance" anything.

As far as that goes, if the stories regarding the genesis of iai are to be believed, the original iai of Hayashizaki was the wellspring for hundreds of different ryu, all of which had different names. It is probably a waste of time trying to figure out what the "original" name or techniques of this proto-ryu might have been, if the only reason for doing so is to try to figure out what the "real" teachings were so as to make it possible to comment on the supposed legitimacy, or lack thereof, of subsequent developments.

Ryu have always changed. The fact that iai is done nowadays with a katana worn in the obi edge up, instead of with a tachi worn on a belt with the edge down, as in Hayashizaki's time, is proof of that. It is not so strange if the name of the ryu would change along with the technique. Indeed, it is precisely because the innovations of Eishin were so profound and far-reaching that his name was appended to the name of the ryu.

Earl

[Brian Dunham]

Earl,
Thanks for your comments. You make some good points. However, I did not mean to imply that someone changed the kanji to distinguish MJER from MSR. You had said that the Muso(without peer) part of the name was perhaps added at some sort of demonstration. I was merely suggesting reason for this. Also, I don't think you can credit Nakayama with the use of the "dream thought" kanji, as both Shin Muso Hayashizaki Ryu and Hayashizaki Muso Ryu use the same kanji. It seems most likely to me that the kanji used for the name of our tradition were probably "dream thought", and somewhere along the line they were changed to "without peer". Nakayama probably changed them back to name his interpretation of Shimomura ha.

In regards to MSR being a creation of Nakayama, this is only true if changeing the name creates a whole new thing. You say yourself that it is entirely made up of existing Shimomura ha techniques. BTW, (and I'm probably preaching to the choir here) the curricula of MJER and MSR is, technique for technique, identical (with plenty of stylistic differences, of course). Also, you say that MJER predates MSR by quite a bit. MJER, in it's present state(more or less), codified by Oe Masamichi, is no more than a generation older than MSR.
I think that Nakayama renamed his system because while perhaps he was in the best position to lead the Shimomura ha, the matter of official succession was left unclear by Hosokawa Yoshimasa. Rather than declare himself 16th headmaster, renaming his system was probably a smart move, in terms of avoiding much political contraversy. Any more thoughts?

Regards,

[Edited by Brian Dunham on 09-29-2000 at 07:09 PM]

[Earl Hartman]

Brian:

I read that Nakayama S., who was already known as a master of sword and jo, approached Oe S. to learn MJER from him but was rebuffed since he was not from Tosa. He later learned it from someone else whose name escapes me at the moment (I have some articles from Kendo Nippon on this whole subject, but haven't read them all the way through). It seems that one of the big changes that Nakayama made was to how the noto was done; he apparently thought that his method reflected an older method. Apparently Oe S. was the inheritor of both the Shimomura-ha and the Tanimura-ha; for some reason he left the Shimomura-ha and went on to lead the Tanimura-ha, leaving the Shimomura-ha leaderless.

Regarding the "Muso" issue, according to Masaoka S.'s book, one of the past headmasters of the school is credited with writing what Masaoka S. refers to as the Muso (Dream Thought) Shinden Ryu densho. I have to go back and look to see who and when this was. In any case, this means that, at least according to this story, the name "Muso Shinden" has a certain history that predates Oe S. and his re-configuration of the school. It appears perhaps that distinct traditions, or at least different interpretations of the waza, existed side-by-side in the school as it was transmitted in Tosa. From my reading of it, it seems that the present issues regarding succession and the "correct" interpretation of the waza may be an outgrowth of the nationalization of what was once an art that was limited exclusively to the Tosa domain. This is, of course, exacerbated by the fact that without any battlefield, the only way to prove the "correctness" of the waza is to insist that it is correct because that's the way your sensei does it. Although Masaoka S. taught us the "standard" way to do the techniques, he also demonstrated various henka or ojiwaza that would be used if the situation demanded it (there are quite a number for Yaegaki, for instance, depending on the direction and target of the enemy's counterattack). Perhaps these different variations became excessively codified later, leading to splits in the line that probably would never have come about had the art stayed in Tosa and had remained something of practical use.

Just my speculation, though. Take it for what its worth.

Earl


Earl

[Robert Reinberger]

Hello,

and thank you all very much for the interesting contributions.

Regarding the kanji for Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu, I think they are:

http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/S=48/fg=b/inline/nocolor/jap/%cc%b5%c1%d0?TR http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/S=48/fg=b/inline/nocolor/jap/%c4%be%c5%c1?TR http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/S=48/fg=b/inline/nocolor/jap/%b1%d1%bf%ae?TR http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/S=48/fg=b/inline/nocolor/jap/%ce%ae?TR


What I still don't know is if anybody here thinks there is enough evidence to say:

'Hasegawa Eishin has extended the teachings of Hayashizaki Jinsuke Shigenobu with techniques from the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu'

Regards,

Robert