I wrote this initially in late 2025 in discussions with a colleague. It has been condensed and reformatted on 13 October 2026, and contains some thoughts developed from my recent research on Shugendō and Shinkage-ryū.
From Inspiration to Adaptation
In the end of the Muromachi period, bushi had skill at arms and skill at wrestling from sumō or its combative predecessor called sumai, which Draeger mentions as still being practiced in some mountain areas of Japan in the 1970s – without the ryūha concept necessarily. Knudsen draws a distinction between what he calls ryū-ha bujutsu and sen-ha bujutsu – the latter being what bushi learned and were drilled in when preparing for campaigns, the former arising later as a philosophical pursuit.
I think that when early bushi did their musha shugyō, they were already accomplished, and the insights they synthesized or collated in my opinion were layered with philosophical and spiritual context of awakening.
Thus we see the formative stories handed down about Kashima-shinden, Tenshinshō-den, the origin of Takenouchi-ryū, etc. In the case of Kashima-shinden, that is an idea that entered in the mid 18th century — there is no mention of Kashima-shinden in early Jiki Shinkage-ryū writings before the time of Naganuma Kunisato. He credited Matsumoto Bizen no Kami, who was a famous bushi associated to Kashima, mostly I think to invert the commonly believed lineage (that Shinkage-ryū comes from Kamiizumi Ise no Kami via his earlier training in Aisu Kage-ryū and other arts), foregrounding an early Shintō-ryū teacher of Kamiizumi instead of his later tutelage in Aisu Kage-ryū, since Jiki Shinkage-ryū had abandoned the older kata (empi, tengushō) and reworked Kamiizumi’s material (sangakuen, kuka, nanatachi) into their Hōjō and Tō-no-kata practices by that time period.
In the case of the divine inspiration, thinking of the proto-ryū as having an essence of a small number of principles that allowed the advanced practitioner to re-evaluate their experiences and contextualize them, and see things at a deeper level. That is an appealing idea. This might be why the tachi was used as the central explanatory device, being somewhat flexible in its use compared to field weapons like the spear.
Anyway, one thread through these topics is how then does the inspired expert educate others? If the core principle is subtle, inexpert grapplers or swordsmen might not get it, or be able to do it. We see in Shinkage-ryū a set of three foundational teachings (empi, kuka, tengushō) and then empi gets broken down into explanatory or preparatory sets (sangakuen, nanatachi) that are done in a less connected manner and likely as a result easier to learn, more explicit.
But then things change quickly with the shinai kata – 108 gaiden kata that may have first been a reformulation of a very advanced practice of 27 variations of technique based on timing, rhythm, and posture into what became an introductory set that became the focus of initial training in the Owari line Yagyū-ryū during the Edo period. That set later became even more important with the rise of kendō.
Balancing Kata and Jigeiko
Later, in an art like Jikishinkage-ryū kenjutsu, most of the top people in the Odani-line embraced gekken and were head instructors at the Kōbusho. In the 20th century several were respected kendōka, like Yamada and Ōnishi. Edo Yagyū dies out, or devolves into a form of iai and kenbu, but maybe some vestiges survive in the Jikishinkage-ryū line of practice, such as some of the gokui, at least in name, due to Yamada Ippūsai’s practice of the art.
After the second world war, the Jikishinkage-ryū practice of some lines got further condensed – presupposing certain things, like the fact that people were assumed to be also doing kendō. But for those of us who train in kata alone, if you never do free practice, is it enough? It depends on what the goal of practice is. I made the decision to embrace free practice in my approach. Others see no need, or feel the risks of injury too high, or the risk of practice devolving into sport too high.
So, one can maintain a small number of kata and practice them well, and explore them in free practice. But what about collecting kata? Earlier I wrote:
Attempting to record variations of teachings (henka) as core teachings in an effort to have a larger curriculum that then must be maintained can disturb the learning process for principle-based martial arts. This seems to me to be the case in Daitō-ryū and other jūjutsu styles with very large curriculum. Maybe the vast number of kata are designed to stop people from learning the core principles of the art, if they were considered upper-level teachings, as opposed to being examples that facilitate the process. Kata as a means of social control.
Jiki might be easier to parse than some other kenjutsu ryūha in this regard. It went through these changes in the 18th century (restructuring of kata) and 19th century (long focus on shiai), but retained something closer to the essence of what it had been. With long Hōjō sessions, I think they try to recreate some level of adversity and psychological turmoil to get someone in a state they can re-experience insights directly.
It is hard to say whether that actually works. There has to be a teacher willing to draw the student forward. That may not happen except in some cases, and not where things are very rigid and hierarchical in a larger group and juniors admire, but do not as often experience direct instruction with, senior teachers they may not see very often. If there is a very large curriculum, as in many early 20th century jūjutsu and aiki-jūjutsu approaches, and people see advanced teachers infrequently, it can be very difficult to make progress. This is a protective mechanism, when these pursuits changed from being a matter of survival, when instructors were paid by governments (individual domains, institutions, or the Tokugawa itself), to a commercial endeavor (selling, essentially, a sense of nostalgia for the past).
Some older grappling approaches have both lethal and less-lethal approaches to the same curriculum, so that their training is flexible to circumstance. The idea of continuity of force has been something that has been around for a long time. It is not as though the samurai or feudal police operated in a vacuum. For older arts, the concept of there being a few core teachings that then explain everything, which you mention below, is an important one. Some groups might still have a version of what those are, but a key problem is getting a person to the point where they will have the inspiration from them to re-evaluate everything they do and unlock it or release its full potential. I am not sure people who are stuck in a kata mindset can easily do that, which is why I wrote I think having very many kata is to prevent, not enable, those realizations.
The benefit of an art still being alive, versus crystallized or encased in amber, is that it can adapt to new circumstances — examining new weapons, or how to deal with new circumstances. But say an art decides to explore the use of the spear. It doesn’t mean it is then an intact field weapon tradition – the result of course might still be better than most other kobudō approaches today, given they are but fossils due to all of these factors I am describing.
If there are fewer kata, and they are more flexible, then when you are told the gokui, it is more manageable to go back and exercise them with those teachings and perspectives in mind versus trying to analytically determine how now to think about 400 disparate pattern drills.
Ethics and Practice
I will close with some small insights into Marishiten I have discovered while researching Shinkage-ryū and learning more about Vajrayāna in and of itself as part of my Buddhist and Yoga practices.
First, in Jikishinkage-ryū, Marishiten is not mentioned in early writings of masters like Ogasawara. Instead, he writes about meditating or performing rituals to Acalanātha (Fudō) and Mahākāla (Daikoku). Later densho contain the bonji for A-Un or the seed syllables for Fudō. Mahākāla is a graveyard, sinister figure, mediating life and death – he is a battle deity, invoked to represent destructive power. Fudō has a calmer register, his immovable variant embodies steadfastness and imperturbability.
In my later research on Shugendō, after this essay was written in 2025, one can see Mahākāla, Fudō, Mañjuśrī, and Marishiten all in relation to one another as part of protective rituals used in pre and early Edo period Shugendō.
Marishiten (Mārīcī) as regarded in the Indo-Tibetan tradition is similarly a god of light but his power (siddhi) is not only concealment in the martial register, but it is generally regarded as ethical insight – shining light on circumstances to better understand the correct path or decision.
Ethics (not the same ethics of today necessarily, being a different culture and time) would have been very important in military affairs at a higher level in charting one’s course through shifting allegiances, requirements, situations.
There is the concept of two truths in esoteric Buddhism – the proximal (conventional) meaning and the ultimate meaning of the same subject/object in question. Invisibility/concealment and Illumination/ethical discernment (decision making) may be related in that sense.
Kata, if done well, can imbue a person with these qualities, but it has to be set in the proper context and mindset. Thus we see the Hōjō-ken Kokoro-e Sho of Jikishinkage-ryū and the Jūaku (ten faults/evils [to avoid]). Without that overlay, too often we are engaging simply in nostalgia and commerce.
