Regional koryu

[nicojo]

So, Japan being the country it is, various regions developed over time a sense of shared cultural identity, in some part because of the relative isolation of each part. In other words, certain places in Japan today define themselves as having a local specialty--this kind of ramen (Hakata) or that kind of working class attitude (Osaka) or whatever. Some of this is no doubt played up by local tourism bureaus but some of it has a sort of truth--the various regional dialects certainly show the effect of isolation.

And of course other countries have the same thing going on.

But my question is whether this can be seen in koryu. I have heard of certain koryu like Maniwa Nen-ryu being relatively famous in their district, even though they are so localized. And Jigen-ryu as well. And Kage-ryu seems to be a very local expression according to their particular regional history--their use of long swords is something that probably couldn't have been retained in other regions.

What I'm specifically wondering is if on a larger scale this is possible: do people draw conclusions on various ryu according to the region they are from? Many of our treasured koryu correspondents seem to be tied to Narita, Chiba, and certain other Tokyo-area ryu. Others are Nagoya. Perhaps there are common characteristics because of the region? And what are they? So what about a ryu from Tottori? Is there a sort of general characteristic from that prefecture? Are the Okayama ryu like Takenouchi similar in attitude to each other, but different from next door in Osaka? Or can we even talk about it because we don't know of any such characteristics? Or we are still unable to move from reduction to abstraction, then back again.

Well hopefully it is interesting to talk about.