which came first, the Chujo or the Nen?

[Cliff Judge]

Placed here in Sword Arts possibly due to cognitive bias on my part.

I was checking out Ellis's new website for Toda-ha Buko Ryu (http://www.todahabukoryu.org/ if you haven't seen it yet, lots of interesting stuff to read) and there was a particularly good writeup on Chujo Ryu.

The list of the three primordial ryu I most often encounter is Shinto Ryu, Kage Ryu, and Chujo Ryu. But I sometimes see Nen Ryu instead of Chujo Ryu. So there is something interesting in this article.

The gist of the short article is that Chujo Ryu was founded by a disciple of Hogen Kiichi, a legendary figure who developed the Kyo Hachi Ryu. Then, sometime later, it was revived by Chujo Nakahide, a follower of Jion.

So did this style really exist previous to Nen Ryu, and then was revived in a later age by en exponent of Nen Ryu? That seems as possible as anything else...maybe Chujo Ryu had been incorporated into what was Nen Ryu, maybe those guys all had mastery of a half-dozen Ryu under their belts at the time and Nakahide just decided he liked Chujo Ryu best and decided to focus on that in the 1300s.

But it seems like it could have been marketing too. An exponent of Nen Ryu develops his own style, names it Chujo Ryu, and then weaves a story of how it is actually a really old school that predates Nen Ryu and Jion himself. Or such a story is weaved for Mr. Chujo, because who wants to believe that some new guy can come up with some new thing that is better than this old thing?

Anyway, based on this information, it is difficult for me to say which of Chujo Ryu or Nen Ryu came first. I think I shall start listing the primordial ryu as "Shinto Ryu, Kage Ryu, and Chujo/Nen Ryu."

[pgsmith]

It is impossible to say without the kanji. Take, for instance, Kage ryu. Kage ryu is still practiced today, although it is in danger of dying out. However, it is a different Kage ryu than the one which spawned Shinkage ryu. Different kanji, same pronunciation.

[Cliff Judge]

It is impossible to say without the kanji. Take, for instance, Kage ryu. Kage ryu is still practiced today, although it is in danger of dying out. However, it is a different Kage ryu than the one which spawned Shinkage ryu. Different kanji, same pronunciation.

Yeah, well, Ellis gives the kanji for Chujo Nakahide as 中条長秀, and the alleged earlier Chujo Ryu as 中条流, so I think we've got that angle covered. 中条.

[Ron Beaubien]

It is impossible to say without the kanji. Take, for instance, Kage ryu. Kage ryu is still practiced today, although it is in danger of dying out. However, it is a different Kage ryu than the one which spawned Shinkage ryu. Different kanji, same pronunciation.

I am quite certain that even having the kanji alone would not necessarily be that useful. Other identifying information about the school is also often necessary.

Different characters were often used in the past (and even today) to refer to the same people and martial traditions. Separated by time, location, generation, local tradition, or even in thought had an impact on how the same name might be written in Japanese.

I hope that helps.

Sincerely,

Ron Beaubien

[Josh Reyer]

Paul, we have the kanji: 中条流.

There's something of an etic/emic distinction to be found here. Much like those outside the ryu refer to Yagyu Shinkage-ryu, founded by Yagyu Munetoshi, while inside YSR it is referred to as Shinkage-ryu and the founder is Kamiizumi Hidetsuna. Or Kashima Shinto-ryu, which outside the ryu is considered to be founded by Tsukahara Bokuden, but inside the ryu the lineage is traced back to the legendary Kashima no Tachi.

So there's Chujo-ryu, ostensibly the family art of Chujo Nagahide, passed down from before he was born, and then there's CHUJO-RYU, the art that historians note Nagahide as the founder of, following his learning of Nen-ryu. The Kyo Hachi-ryu are considered somewhat legendary, as there is no contemporary record of them, and if they existed they died out before the phenonemon of bugei ryuha really took off.

The concept of three primordial ryuha comes (in large or in part) from the Empi scroll of Kamiizumi Hidetsuna, wherein he writes, "In middle antiquity there were the Nen-ryu, the Shinto-ryu, and the Kage-ryu". In Japanese sources, I have generally seen it described as either these three, or "Shinto-ryu, (Shin)Kage-ryu, and Itto-ryu". For example, in the lineage charts in Gakken's "Nihon no Kenjutsu", first comes "Itto-ryu (Nen-ryu)", then "Shinto-ryu", then "Shinkage-ryu". This kind of classificiation, of course, favors ryuha that are still active.

[Cliff Judge]

Thanks for your replies, guys.

Josh, that's an interesting point about the name an organization might call its own system vs the name the system takes from the outside. I still find it curious that Chujo Ryu was "renovated" by a practitioner of Nen Ryu whose name was Chujo.

Obviously there are a number of different possibilities here - maybe Chujo-san actually took the name Chujo when he began accepting students of the new-old system. Maybe there are three different systems here, maybe two, maybe one.

I guess all we can do is look at the Itto Ryu systems, Toda-ha Buko Ryu, etc to get an idea of what the principals of Chujo Ryu were, and that's a job for somebody other than me. :)

[Ellis Amdur]

1. Hogen Kiichi - so we have a legendary figure, like a number of others who may have lived, may have not, and if he lived, was probably far different from what the legends say. He legendarily taught eight legendary monks, who may have existed, or maybe not - and if they did, they were probably far different from what the legends say. One of them was named Chujo.
2. The legend goes that what he learned/developed was passed down as a family art. But no one knows what it was, or any technical parameters.
3. What can be asserted is that there was a "general" type of swordfighting that developed associated with Kurama (but whether that was technical or merely a particular esoteric slant, no one has established).
4. So then we have have a monk - Nen Ami, aka Jion aka Soma Shiro, who learned something on Kurama from an "ijin" - a word that has so many nuances that they may be hinting that Jion learned from Hogen Kiichi, who would be a tengu in that case, as some have asserted, because that was hundreds of years after the alleged founding of Kyo Hachi-ryu. (BTW - Yoshioka Kempo, of Musashi duel fame, is said to be associated with Kyo Hachi-ryu).
5. So, anyway, Jion, another legendary figure, who, if you read his history, studied combatives a very short time, if at all, but anyway, he taught 14 people. Two of them started lines of Nen-ryu. Another was Chujo Nakahide. BUT - this doesn't mean he learned Nen-ryu. It only means he learned something from Jion, as did the people who developed Nen-ryu.
6. So this could mean that, really, Nakahide founded Chujo-ryu and give it a lot more lineage, by including the family line back hundreds of years. This was done all the time (Takeda Sokaku, for example). Or, he renovated the family art with what he learned.
7. Chujo-ryu has a fair amount of documentation, little in English. I've been informed that there is a common thread of esoteric teaching that can be found in many widely separated descendents of the ryu.

So there's no mystery. The Chujo family either had a family art that was passed down one gen after another and one guy renovated it enough, due to influence from his teacher, that he would be regarded as Chuko no so. BTW, this is almost exactly the same as Kashima Shinto-ryu, descending from the legendary Kashima no tachi.

Toda-ryu, btw, was considered the Chujo-ryu as practiced by Toda family.
Best
Ellis Amdur