Published Works

Below you will find the longer form writing that resulted from Inner Dharma. Please consider purchasing a copy to support the development of this site.

The Truth of the Calm Spirit

The Truth of the Calm Spirit (TOCS) is a collected set of works that stem from martial arts essays centered around my practice of Kashima-shinden Jikishinkage-ryū and efforts to read its earlier writings. The work’s title is inspired from an earlier name of the art used by Ogasawara Genshinsai: Shin (True) no Shin (Spirit) In (Calm/Still/Yin) Heihō.

NOTE: This work was revised in May 2026.1

From the Kōbusho to the Butokukai

In writing TOCS I became intrigued by the late Edo practitioners of Jikishinkage-ryū, the bakumatsu Kōbusho many of them taught at, and important traditions that had lasting impact as Japan modernized. The result of that investigation is now also available. From the Kōbusho to the Butokukai is a survey of the late-Edo and early-modern institutions around Japanese kenjutsu — the Kōbusho, gekken-kōgyō, the Battōtai, the Keishichō police schools, the Dai Nippon Butokukai and the Busen — together with a register of the schools and teachers who carried the arts through their modern transformation.

In this work we examine important 19th and early 20th century swordsmen, the traditions they learned and revised, and the institutions they inhabited as Japan began a period of rapid change.

End Notes

  1. The gokui list in TOCS originally included an entry called “nenshi” (thought/contemplation). This was a large annotation in one densho that summarized a two-link teaching poem called a rika. It has been removed from the list in the current version — the poem is now described in the section associated to one of the formal gokui called seikōsui. ↩