This is an interesting topic
Ok, during my teaching at UC Irvine this summer ("Violence in East Asia: 12th-19th Centuries") I discovered one thing: that in early modern China there are just as many, if not more, styles/organiztions/groups/individuals practicing and selling their martial arts skills than in Tokugawa Japan. In addition to Naquin and Esherick who've written on the subject some time ago, there's Violence in China by SUNY press, Disorder Under Heaven: Collective Violence in Ming China, Bandits, Eunuchs and the Son of Heaven , Like Froth Floating on the Sea (about piracy in Qing China but has much on fighting and violence), Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in early and mid-Qing China , plus other books on the boxers, the white lotus, the red spears, etc. These all talk about the number of martial artists as mercenaries, bandits, pirates, local toughs, protesters etc wandering about in Ming and Qing China. Sure these people are creating and changing their arts along the way, and adding legends to support their agendas, but they're using martial arts. And these arts weren't created in a vaccum, there were antecedents. Policing Shanghai has a good bit on the Chinese trying to create a national martial art in the Republican era. And an article in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies "Ming Period Evidence of Shaolin Martial Practice" (v61#2 2001) by Meir Shahar (who is also writing a book (a scholarly work) on the Shaolin temple) is an interesting read.
As for Japanese koryu, we really need to understand the agenda behind koryu styles claiming to be old/legitimate (and the difference between those claims made by Westerns and Japanese), be aware of the drawbacks on reading (believing) texts, and problems with accepting what budo teachers have to say about history (a kendo teacher does not a social-political historian make...).
What purpose did it serve in early modern society to say one practiced budo? Do you think it was all about getting ready for the next battle? Were there hordes of warriors fighting on the battle field using their shinto/shinkage etc ryu skills? Or do we hear more about individuals and their exploits?
That's not to say fighting didn't happen in Tokugawa Japan. The number of commoners practicing martial arts was on the rise in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. People not only imitated their social betters and created social networks through martial arts practice, but also dealt with the increasing number of trouble makers wandering throughout the countryside with martial art skills. Not much in English on this yet (at the village level) but in Japanese there's
Fuse, Kenji “Bakumatsuki Kawagoehan ni okeru Kenjutsu Ryuha Kaikaku” in Nihon Rekishi #640 Sept. Or something for the popular audience would be Takahashi's Kunisada no jidai: yomi, kaki, to kenjutsu. Even with peasant uprsings in Tokugawa Japan you have to remember that humans were rarely the targets of peasant action, and only ringleaders were punished--after officials waited for the violence to subside (and when they did make a move they paid burakumin and other commoners to do the arresting/fighting). The scale and variety of groups involved in fighting in Qing China is much greater.
Just some thoughts
Michael Wert, PhD
Associate Professor
History Dept.
Marquette University