The following is a transcription and translation of a handwritten Japanese letter dated September 5, 2005, possibly recorded by Kyoko Ogawa on behalf of, or using the name of, Nishiyama Akemi. This document was provided by the instructor of the aiki-jūjutsu school I trained at in NYC, to substantiate the school's claimed connection to Haguro Shugendō. Ogawa was the school's spiritual advisor; the Nishiyama name was claimed to be a budo name related to the tradition we practiced. Editorial commentary in brackets addresses the historical reliability of specific claims:
修験道の由来は、山奥で密教を修業する者達「修験者」が精神力向上する為の鍛練の道（お法）です。仏教、神道、道教そして陰陽占術が修業の基礎となっています。山の「神」は、教徒達が呼ぶ「権現」聖者と同格で神道と仏教が、完全にからみあった存在です。
The origin of Shugendō is the path of discipline by which those who practice esoteric Buddhism deep in the mountains — called shugensha — improve their spiritual power. Buddhism, Shintō, Taoism, and onmyō divination form the foundation of this practice. The mountain kami are beings called gongen by the followers — equivalent in rank to saints — in whom Shintō and Buddhism are completely intertwined."
The document opens with a general description of Shugendō as a syncretic tradition blending Buddhism, Shintō, Taoism, and onmyōdō that is broadly accurate and consistent with standard scholarship.
1868年、明治政府は全国の僧侶達に、神社での仏事をして仏に対しハ誓いをあきらめ、神社の神主の務めだけをする様に布告し、11日目後にはさらに二番目の布告、神である観現という地位の者達に仏教の教えを全部とりのぞく様に命令を出しました。この激変によって修験道は特に打撃を受け、布告に同調しかぬた山寺のほとんどは修験道寺でした。
In 1868, the Meiji government issued a proclamation to monks throughout the country ordering them to cease Buddhist rites at shrines, abandon their Buddhist vows, and serve only as Shintō priests. Eleven days later, a second proclamation was issued commanding those holding the position of gongen — a rank designating them as manifestations of the divine — to completely remove all Buddhist teachings. Shugendō was especially hard hit by this upheaval; most of the mountain temples that could not comply with the proclamation were Shugendō temples."
It continues with a historically accurate description of events during the late 19th century. The shinbutsu bunri (separation of kami and Buddhas) edicts of 1868 and the related haibutsu kishaku (abolish Buddhism) movement did devastate Shugendō institutions throughout Japan. The timing and general description are consistent with the historical record.
羽黒、カンデン総責任者（ベットウ）はこの新しい布告が一時的な規律と判断し、政府のさこうにしたがいませんでした。東京にある羽黒の系統に属しているカンエイ寺に助言を求めましたが、抵抗（反対運動）中に寺が焼けてしまいました。そして彼は自分が先頭をきって、布告のとおり神社の神主になり新しい規律を守って祈禱もつかさどり、自分の住いである寺では従来通り教徒を集めて修業をしてました。
The bettō (head administrator) of Haguro, Kanden, judged this new proclamation to be a temporary measure and did not comply with the government's policy. He sought advice from Kan'ei-ji, a temple in Tokyo belonging to the Haguro lineage, but during the resistance the temple was burned down. He then took the lead himself, becoming a shrine priest as the proclamation required, observing the new regulations and overseeing prayers, while at his own residence — the temple — he continued to gather followers and conduct ascetic training as before."
An academic paper on the Meiji-era separation at Haguro by Miyake
Hitoshi (published in the Meiji Seitoku Kinen Gakkai Kiyō) states that
the bettō of Haguro during the transition was named
His work confirms that the Tendai temple Arasawa-ji (the Shōzenin temple we visited the next day) was preserved as a Buddhist institution through the transition, and that a Hirata-school nativist scholar named Nishikawa Sugao was appointed as shrine priest (gūji) in 1873. No Nishiyama appears anywhere in the account, however, see below for some discussion about the orthography of Japanese names and how Nishikawa may have been the inspiration for the choice of the name Nishiyama:
- Nishikawa (
西川 ) —西 (nishi, west) +川 (kawa, river) — the historical figure appointed gūji in 1873 - Nishiyama (
西山 ) —西 (nishi, west) +山 (yama, mountain) — the family name in the letter - Ogawa (
小川 ) —小 (o, small) +川 (kawa, river) — maiden name
Nishikawa and Nishiyama share
That could be coincidence, or it could suggest her family actually does have some connection to the historical Nishikawa — perhaps a branch family or descendants — which would explain how they knew enough about the Haguro transition to write a letter that gets the broad strokes right while changing some key details to suit our teacher's narrative.
So one interpretation is that the Nishikawa family's real history at Haguro — as the government-appointed gūji who oversaw the forced transition — was lightly fictionalized into a "Nishiyama" ancestor narrative that reframes a state appointee as a reformist Shugendō monk with martial arts credentials. The instructor then adopted this fictionalized history as the origin story for an art whose name actually derives from his own French surname.
This is speculative, but the Nishikawa | Nishiyama parallel is hard to dismiss as coincidence given everything else.
Kan'ei-ji in Ueno, Tokyo, was affiliated with the Tendai establishment and was significantly damaged during the Battle of Ueno in July 1868 during the Boshin War, so the detail about the temple burning is historically plausible, but convenient in that records are thus removed from play. The description of the Haguro bettō attempting to navigate between compliance and preservation is consistent with the general pattern seen at many Shugendō sites during this period, though the specific name being glossed as Kanden instead of Kanda draws some suspicion.
勢力を持った山嵐流の僧侶、西山太志郎は月山モ三山神社と名づけて入山しました。彼の元で修行をしている僧侶と山伏達は、脱退するか神社の聖職者になるか選択を迫られた。西山太志郎は東京と地方で武術を教えながら生活の糧を得て妻と子供を養っておりました。彼の考えはだれからも同調されず、野望は完全に破れて羽黒へと帰郷しました。
A monk of the Yama Arashi-ryū who held influence, Nishiyama Tashirō, named the site Gassan-mo-Sanzan Jinja and entered the mountain. The monks and yamabushi training under him were forced to choose between leaving or becoming shrine clergy. Nishiyama Tashirō supported his wife and children by teaching martial arts in Tokyo and the provinces. His ideas found no support from anyone, and his ambitions completely shattered, he returned to Haguro."
This is where the narrative becomes difficult to verify. The claim
that a Shugendō monk supported himself by teaching martial arts is a
common trope in martial arts lineage stories — it provides a
plausible bridge between religious practice and martial
transmission. The name "Yama Arashi-ryū" (
彼はロシアから布教にきていたニコライ教と天台宗に属している山伏達を召集して断圧し、復従させるに成功しました。彼は山伏達と岩根沢の村民から反発をかいはじめましたが、改善への意志はかたく、彼の御堂を神社として修業を行い、多くの人から非難を受けました。そして彼は山嵐流から風嵐流と変名しました。
He succeeded in summoning and suppressing the yamabushi who belonged to the Nikolai mission that had come from Russia to proselytize, as well as those of the Tendai sect, and brought them back into compliance. He began to face opposition from the yamabushi and villagers of Iwanesawa, but his resolve for reform was firm. He conducted ascetic practice at his own hall as a shrine, and received criticism from many people. He then changed the name from Yama Arashi-ryū to Fūran-ryū."
The reference to the Russian Orthodox "Nikolai mission" is historically grounded but odd — St. Nikolai (Ivan Kasatkin) established the Orthodox mission in Japan beginning in the 1860s, and the mission was active in northern Honshū. However, the claim that a Shugendō figure "suppressed" Orthodox-affiliated yamabushi is unusual. Orthodox Christianity had very limited penetration into yamabushi communities; this likely conflates separate historical phenomena.
Nikolai spent his first eight years in Japan (1861–1869) intensively studying Japanese language, history, and religion, including Buddhism. He viewed Japanese religions through a praeparatio evangelica lens — the early Church Fathers' concept that pre-Christian philosophy and religion served as a "nursemaid" preparing the ground for the Gospel. He respected the moral seriousness of Buddhism and Shintō without accepting their doctrinal claims. His first convert was actually a young Shintō devotee, a samurai named Sawabe Takuma, who had initially come to kill him but was so impressed by Nikolai's composure and arguments that he converted and became the first Japanese Orthodox priest. Many of his subsequent converts were former Buddhist monks.
Critically, his earliest and most committed Japanese disciples in the 1860s and 1870s were from the Tōhoku region — the same geographic area as Haguro. By 1874, he had about 400 converts. This means that during exactly the period the letter describes (the Meiji upheaval of 1868–1874), there was active Orthodox proselytization in the Dewa Sanzan region, targeting precisely the kinds of religiously committed people who were being displaced by the shinbutsu bunri edicts.
Yamabushi who had lost their institutional footing during the Meiji suppression could plausibly have been approached by or attracted to the Orthodox mission — both traditions value asceticism, monasticism, and hierarchical spiritual authority. From Nikolai's perspective, displaced yamabushi would have been promising converts: religiously serious, literate, disciplined, and suddenly without institutional support.
What remains implausible is the letter's framing — that a Shugendō figure "summoned and suppressed" Orthodox-affiliated yamabushi and brought them back into compliance. Nikolai's mission was small and his converts dispersed; there wouldn't have been an organized bloc of "Orthodox yamabushi" to suppress. But the underlying historical detail — that there was tension between Orthodox proselytization and traditional mountain religion in Tōhoku during this period — has a basis in historical reality.
This sharpens the picture of the letter: whoever composed it (or provided the oral account) knew enough about local Tōhoku religious history to include a real phenomenon — Orthodox missionary activity among displaced religious practitioners — but cast it in a way that aggrandizes the Nishiyama ancestor's role. It's the same pattern as the rest of the letter: real historical backdrop, fictionalized family narrative.
1874年、西山は神社を守る流派を設立したところ、２パーセントの山伏が彼のもとへきただけでした。この流派の目的を神道の学びから離れて修業（鍛練）の道へと専念する事を決定しました。そしてそれ以来アキナミネは風嵐のグループに入って行なわれるのが伝統となりました。
In 1874, when Nishiyama established a school to protect the shrine, only two percent of the yamabushi came to join him. The purpose of this school was determined to be dedication to the path of ascetic training, departing from the study of Shintō. And since that time, it became tradition that the Akinamine would be conducted within the Fūran group."
Regarding the renaming from Yama Arashi or "mountain storm" to or "wind storm", changing a single kanji follows a common convention in Japanese lineage histories where a branch distinguishes itself through a small name change. Neither name, however, appears in standard references on Haguro Shugendō.
The Akinomine (
西山は山伏にシャクジオを持つのを許可しました。そして彼の元で修業を望んでいる者達に伝統の上着の着服をしなくてよいはしましたがほどなくにほとんどの者たちは着る事をやめました。宗教の修業の変りに議論と講義が行われました。
Nishiyama permitted the yamabushi to carry the shakujō (ringed staff). Although he allowed those who wished to train under him to forego wearing the traditional upper garment, before long most of them stopped wearing it anyway. In place of religious ascetic training, discussion and lectures were conducted."
Permitting yamabushi to abandon traditional garments and replacing ascetic practice with "discussion and lectures" describes a secularization that runs counter to the entire purpose of Shugendō as a tradition of embodied mountain practice. This detail may serve to explain why a martial arts school derived from this lineage would not display recognizable Shugendō practice — a convenient explanation for the absence of authentic religious training.
風嵐流は西山家人によって管理されています。二つに割れた流派もこのままそれぞれの方向をとったままです。けれども二つの流派の関係もすこしずつよいかたに向っていますが一修験道という一本の糸が切れて二本になった為に、羽黒での合流は遠い夢の様です。
2005年9月5日 西山明美の録者
Fūran-ryū is managed by the Nishiyama family. The two divided schools continue to go their separate ways. However, the relationship between the two schools is gradually improving, but since the single thread of Shugendō was cut and became two, a reunion at Haguro remains a distant dream.
September 5, 2005 — Recorded on behalf of Nishiyama Akemi
The document closes with a poignant image of schism, which lends it emotional weight but also serves to explain why no one at the Haguro Shugendō institutions themselves would be likely to confirm the existence of Fūran-ryū — the two sides are estranged. This is a convenient narrative feature: it preempts verification.
The document presents itself as a family history recorded on behalf of a Nishiyama family member, and was possibly written by the NYC school's spiritual advisor — I increasingly believe she was the person named Nishiyama Akemi, but this matter remains unclear. If so, the family's Shugendō heritage may be genuine on its own terms. However, in the context of this essay's broader narrative — that the NYC dōjō appropriated family histories from Japanese sources to manufacture authenticity — the document's function is clear:
It provides enough verifiable historical backdrop (the Meiji persecution, the burning of Kan'ei-ji, the Nikolai mission) to seem credible, while the core claims about the Nishiyama family, Yama Arashi/Fūran-ryū, and their role in Haguro Shugendō cannot be independently verified through standard sources. The inclusion of martial arts teaching as a livelihood detail creates a convenient bridge between Shugendō and the martial arts instruction offered at the NYC school.
- Miyake Hitoshi (
宮家準 ). "近現代の山岳宗教と修験道 ― 神仏分離令と神道指令への対応を中心に " [Mountain Religion and Shugendō in the Modern Era: Responses to the Shinbutsu Bunri Edicts and the Shintō Directive]. Meiji Seitoku Kinen Gakkai Kiyō (明治聖徳記念学会紀要 ), restored issue no. 43, November 2006, pp. 42–61. - Sekimori, Gaynor. "Paper Fowl and Wooden Fish: The Separation of Kami and Buddha Worship in Haguro Shugendō, 1869–1875." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32, no. 2 (2005): 197–234. [The definitive English-language account of the Meiji-era disruption at Haguro, which is directly relevant to evaluating the claims in the Nishiyama letter.]
- Sekimori, Gaynor. "Haguro Shugendō and the Separation of Buddha and Kami Worship (shinbutsu bunri), 1868–1890." PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2000. [Sekimori's doctoral research covering the same period; no Nishiyama appears in her account.]
- Earhart, H. Byron. A Religious Study of the Mount Haguro Sect of Shugendō. Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970. [The foundational English-language study of Haguro Shugendō.]
- Blacker, Carmen. The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1975. [Covers yamabushi practices in their broader shamanic context.]
- Miyake Hitoshi. Shugendō: Essays on the Structure of Japanese Folk Religion. Edited by H. Byron Earhart. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 2001.
- Keene, Donald. Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852–1912. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. [Covers the Battle of Ueno (July 1868) in which Kan'ei-ji was destroyed — corroborating the letter's claim about the temple burning.]
- Lensen, George Alexander. "The Russian Orthodox Mission to Japan." Chapter in Russia's Japan Expedition of 1852 to 1855. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1955. See also: Naganawa Mitsuo. "St. Nikolai of Japan (Ivan Kasatkin) and the Orthodox Mission in Northern Honshū." [Establishes the historical presence of the Nikolai mission in the Tōhoku region, relevant to evaluating the letter's claim about Orthodox-affiliated yamabushi.]
- Van Remortel, Michael, and Peter Chang, eds. Saint Nikolai Kasatkin and the Orthodox Mission in Japan. Point Reyes Station, CA: Divine Ascent Press, 2003.
- Pranin, Stanley. "Saigō Tanomo and Takeda Sokaku." Aiki News / Aikido Journal, various issues. [Documents the Saigō Tanomo connection to Takeda Sokaku and the claim that Saigō was connected to Shugendō, although Saigō Tanomo is now believed to not have practiced budō.]
- Saigō Shirō and the yama arashi technique: Saigō Shirō (1866–1922), adopted son of Saigō Tanomo, was a legendary early Kodokan Jūdō practitioner famous for his yama arashi (
山嵐 , "mountain storm") throw. His story was fictionalized in the popular novel Sanshirō Sugata (1942) by Tomita Tsuneo, later adapted as a film by Kurosawa Akira (1943). That the name of the art in the family letter — Yama Arashi-ryū — matches the signature technique of Saigō Tanomo's adopted son is unlikely to be coincidental, and further links the fabricated lineage to the periphery of Daitō-ryū history. - On Saigō Tanomo and Shugendō: Saigō Tanomo (1830–1903) was the chief retainer (karō) of the Aizu domain and a Shintō priest at Nikkō Tōshōgū after the domain's defeat in the Boshin War. His connection to Takeda Sokaku and the origins of Daitō-ryū remain disputed. See Pranin, Stanley, ed., Daitō-ryū Aikijūjutsu: Conversations with Daitō-ryū Masters (Tokyo: Aiki News, 1996). No mainstream source describes Saigō Tanomo as a Shugendō practitioner.
- Shōbō (
聖宝 , 832–909), posthumously Rigen Daishi (理源大師 ), founded Daigo-ji in Kyoto in 874 and is the patriarch of the Tōzan-ha (当山派 ) branch of Shugendō, which is affiliated with Shingon Buddhism. He has no connection to Haguro Shugendō. See Miyake Hitoshi, Shugendō: Essays on the Structure of Japanese Folk Religion, ed. H. Byron Earhart (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 2001), and the Daigo-ji temple's own history at daigoji.or.jp. - Haguro Shugendō traces its founding to Nōjō Shōja (
能 除聖者 ), identified with Prince Hachiko (蜂子皇 子 , c. 542–641), son of Emperor Sushun. After his father's assassination by Soga no Umako in 592, the prince is said to have fled north and opened Mt. Haguro, Mt. Gassan, and Mt. Yudono as sacred sites for mountain practice. See Earhart, H. Byron, A Religious Study of the Mount Haguro Sect of Shugendō (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970), and the Dewa Sanzan Jinja and Haguro-san Shōzenin institutional histories, both of which identify Nōjō Shōja — not Shōbō — as the founder. - Hagurosan Shugen Honshū (
羽黒山修験本宗 ) is the postwar institutional continuation of Haguro Shugendō, based at Arasawa-ji Shōzenin (荒澤寺正善院 ) in Tsuruoka, Yamagata Prefecture. It was reconstituted after WWII under Japan's 1947 constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, inheriting the tradition maintained at Shōzenin through the Meiji disruption. The claim of affiliation with Haguro Shugen Honshū refers to this specific, existing religious corporation — the same institution the author visited the day after receiving the diploma, where no one had heard of the NYC school. See hagurosan-shozenin.or.jp.
