hello list,
i have recently become interested in the lineage of the various branches of the Itto-ryu during the Bakumatsu era and Meiji era. the famous kendo master Tesshu Yamaoka, seems to be smack dab in the middle of it all. from the book "The Sword of No-Sword" by John Stevens it seems Yamoaka first learned the Shinkage ryu of sword, as a boy (this doesn't have much bearing on my interest). after his family moved, he learned Ono-ha-Itto-ryu from Kiyotora Inoue . from there he moved to Tokyo and trained in the Kobukan, where i would assume he learned Jikishinkage-ryu. he then learned Nakanishi-ha-Itto-ryu from Yoshiaki Asari. in the book now, this is where it gets me confused/interested. it seems that Asari made Yamaoka, the 13th headmaster of the Nakanishi-ha-Itto-ryu. just a short time after that, he was designated as the 10th headmaster of the Ono-ha-Itto-ryu. because of both of these events, he created his own system he called Itto-Shoden-Muto-ryu, just prior to his mastery of Ono-ha, he simply called it Muto-ryu. what has me scrathing my head, is if Yamaoka was the head master of each of these schools, and he created his own school (i am assuming he taught only Muto-ryu) how is it that these schools, and their soke-ship, got passed on?!? the Muto-ryu it seems was passed on by one of his two menkyo-kaidens, but there is no mention of any of the other two schools. did he later resign from these schools, and give them to other students of these styles? i am assuming this Ono-ha and that of Takemi Sasamori are one in the same.
as a related side note, it seems Toma Shibuya was the Ono-ha-Itto-ryu teacher of Sokaku Takeda. does anyone know if he is at all related to Tesshu Yamaoka? they would have been contemporaries, as Yamoaka didn't die until 1888, and Shibuya began training Takeda in 1870. could they both have been students of the (unknown to me) 9th headmaster of the art? i know that Daito-ryu practices a form of Ono-ha-Itto-ryu that is supposed to be slightly different then that of Mr. Sasamori's group. are there other branches of Ono-ha-Itto-ryu? i hope this isn't as complex as the whole Muso-Jikiden-Eishin-ryu situation .
gambatte!!!