mitsurugi ryu

i just wonder if any kenjutsu ryu in the name of mitsurugi ryu have ever existed, and if the battosai existed too
hmmm it looks stupid maybe...

[fifthchamber]

Hello Shugyo.
(P.S. You have to post your full name with your messages here..Part of the rules of the BBS.)
Wasn't Mitsurugi a character in Soul Blade? The Capcom game a couple of years back? Mitsurugi ryu is not a name that I have ever come across in my travels..Where did you hear of it? (Or was it off Soul Blade!!)
Batto in Japanese generally means the same thing as Iai (In Iaido) But with more emphasis on the one cut/one strike aspect (I know, I know..In depth it ain't) and Battosai may be a name..But I can't help you there either. (although the term is familiar..Ittosai maybe..Confused myself now!).
Sorry not to have been more help to you.
Abayo.

[Ian Remi]

Well, there is a character from Soul Blade (PSX) and Soul Calibur (Dreamcast) by that name.

If you are talking about "Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu" from Rurouni Kenshin, then I am pretty sure that this is completely fictional. The creator of the series placed fictional characters in historical situations. Although some of the characters of that show are historical (i.e. Saito Hajime, Okita Soushi, Katsura Kogoro, Okubo Toshimichi, all of these related to the bakumatsu no doran, the character Himura Kenshin was derived from several historical MODELS, but was never real himself.

Hope that clears things up for you! Great show, but I doubt that hiten mitsurugi ryu ever existed.

- Alex Guillermo

yes it is hiten mitsurugi ryu, thanks for this precision, i kewn there were part of real historic character in kenshin but i wasnt sure.
for battosai
i think i got it now
if batto mean iai
and sai mean (whoops i forgoted the english word)
hmmm well sai can be the object where you put a sword to carry it
so battosai may mean a sword without sai, or out her sai.
in japanese traditional culture that mean a roaming soul without
place to rest.
sanjuro from kurosawa is a good example, but i read the subtitles at the time i saw it and i m not sure the expression used was "battosai"

jimi demi

[fifthchamber]

Hello again Shugyo.
After reading the reply you posted I am still unsure what you meant by 'Sai'..I think I am right in guessing that you mean the 'Saya' (In english..Scabbard)..The sword 'holder'? In which case I don't think it is used for the name 'Battosai'. Also since Japanese uses ideograph 'pictures' rather than words in writing it would be very difficult to work out the 'Sai' part without seeing the Kanji (Chinese letters) used to write it...Sai could mean many things in Japanese and there is no context to put it into to work the word out. Sorry about that....Although one fairly good one woud be 'Talent'..Making Battosai mean 'talented sword draw'.
A good site to use if you know what the characters look like is www.kanjisite.com ...It has a wide and fairly comprehensive list of the Kanji used in everyday speech
No real help at all..If you can remember where you saw the word maybe I could help you on what it means..Or if you can remember the character used to write it out.
Abayo.
P.S. I am guessing that Shugyo isn't your real name? Sorry but you do need to put that down..Instead of the screen name 'Shugyo'.

unfortunatly, as this expression "battosai" came from a movie,
i can not have the kanji. but talented sword seems a good traduction possible.
for my name i put it at the and of my replies.

jimi demi

[ghp]

First, let me begin by saying I am not an expert in the Japanese language. Second, even Japanese can be puzzled by given names and art names. After finding the kanji for this name on one of the Kenshin fan sites (a hard labour since I am not fond of manga) ...

The bracked numbers below refer to the kanji in the old version of Nelson's Japanese-English Character Dictionary.

Batto [1854.2.2]= Drawing a sword, drawn sword (comprised of "batsu" Nelson 1854) and "tou" (sword).


Sai [5425] = 1. Buddhist food; 2. room; 3. (imi) religious purification; 4. (itsuku) worship; 5. (imu) avoid, refrain from, shun; 6. (toki) meals exchanged by parishoners and priests; 7. (hitoshii) equal, similar, like, equivalent.

"~sai" is possibly similar to Nelson's 5425.11 "itsuki-matsuri" (def #4) -- meaning to deify and worship.

Therefore, my conjecture is that the name Battousai means "to deify drawing the sword;" or "deify the drawn sword."

Cheers,
Guy

thank you very much

on the dvd the creator explained that sai meant master, best that sort of thing. and since battou means to draw the sword then it means master of drawing the sword. or ing kenshin's case as soon as he unsheathed his sword it meant sure death for his target

[Soulend]

I thought 'shi' was 'master'...

[R A Sosnowski]

Originally posted by Soulend
I thought 'shi' was 'master'...

Japanese is a syllable-poor language, that is, of all the syllables possible in speech, Japanese uses only a small subset.

Because of this, Japanese has an abundance of homonyms - words that sound the same but mean different things, like "to," "too" and "two" in English. For example, Zen can be translated as "meditation," "good" or "all," and Rei as "bow," "valley," "beautiful" or "bell" [these are short lists of possible meanings]. Of course the individual Kanji are all different.

Now we add another wrinkle. Each Kanji has two different pronunciations. Which one to use depends on how the word is used. For example, the stand-alone Kanji for the Japanese style long-bow is pronounced "yumi" and the stand-alone Kanji for way or path is "michi," but when they appear together, they are pronounced "Kyu-do" (the way of the bow). You know which pronunciation to use for the particular Kanji by simply memorizing them.

BTW, "shi" can also mean four.

HTH.

[Charles Mahan]

Perhaps we should sticky this at the top of the list so that we don't have to answer this question every month.

[Soulend]

BTW, "shi" can also mean four.

And it can also mean death.

I'm with Mr. Mahan..or at least have an FAQ. Between this 'hiten mitsurugi ryu' and 'where can I get a real "sabakatou"?', it's getting to where I despise anime.

[DCPan]

Originally posted by fifthchamber
Hello again Shugyo.
After reading the reply you posted I am still unsure what you meant by 'Sai'...

Okay,

I guess the closest translation I can come up for "sai" is "conneseour". It means something like the expert of something, the person who knows it best, the leading authority of, etc etc.

For example, Itto Ittosai changed his name to "Ittosai" to mean "he is the 'itto-man'"


The sensei that wrote "Nito-Ryu no Narai-Kata", Arazaki sensei, loved Nito so much he changed his first name to "Nito-SAI".

Hope that helps.