In my recent book, I examine the history, kata, and principles associated with Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū kenjutsu:
The Truth of the Calm Spirit: The Practice of Shinkage-ryū Heihō as Taoist Internal Alchemy, M. Raugas, 2025.
Doing this work, I utilized both historical records that had been annotated by advanced practitioners of the art and are available publicly in libraries in Japan, as well as Japanese language books from the twentieth century, including those by Yamada Jirokichi, Iwasa Minoru, and Ishigaki Yasuzo.
Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū Gokui Denkai [
People often have an instinctive idea that higher-level principles or gokui of specific surviving ryūha are private to each school. Their detailed explanations very well are, but historically these topics were listed in densho precisely so they could be at times inspected by the central authorities — in essence, to attest that the group was not teaching matters that were a potential threat to the Shogunate.
Kuden, or oral teachings, are explanations that go beyond the written gokui in some cases, unlocking necessary realizations needed to recreate or get as close as possible to the inspiration of the founders of these arts, especially when the foundational experience or its explication involve philosophical, religious, or abstract language inspired by vision, trance, or dream.
In the case of Jikishinkage-ryū, Yamada Jirokichi catalogued its teachings in an effort to preserve the tradition. Because the art had a number of practitioners of high social stature at the end of Tokugawa Shogunate, there was great interest in the art around the end of the nineteenth century. Jikishinkage-ryū's emphasis on shiai contributed in part to the development of modern kendo.
Ishigaki inherited a family line of Jikishinkage-ryū that had stopped training some time after the second World War. He then wrote a book with all their historical documents, poems, comments on gokui, etc., in an effort to assert the importance of his family's line of practice. The mention of gokui can also be in the context of attempting to express dominance or priority in terms of matters of faction or succession.
But what are gokui?
These organizing principles from one perspective should be teachings that inform and reinforce the training one is already undertaking, allowing it to be viewed more deeply than otherwise, and providing a window through which one can begin to see the art's full realization or practice at its highest level of skill.
If one trains in kata properly, without explicit instruction in these gokui — say under a middle-level instructor — can one still obtain a very high level of skill? Or will, without the proper context, not only one's practice be missing certain fundamental elements, but also constrained in how far the practice itself can be taken, even limiting analysis to what is explicitly contained in kata?
Paradoxically, consider modern swordsmen who have a strong practice of fundamentals and kata, are healthy and fit, and who engage in regular stress testing of their approach. They might be better off combatively than others who have the full set of teachings of a system (both omote and ura), but do not train with sufficient intensity.
In writing my book, I became familiar with several concepts important to Jikishinkage-ryū practice that I had not been taught in the classes I attended, which focused heavily on the repetition of formal kata and then their comparison to other related arts, but not explicit instruction in the formal writings of Jikishinkage-ryū in and of itself.
Am I better off for having conducted this research? Has it in turn improved my swordsmanship? Did I have any realizations during the process? Was I surprised by the gokui I encountered as described in the texts I was consulting, or were they, in retrospect, obvious?
Reading the books made me realize how much ideas from Chinese martial arts were in Jikishinkage-ryū already in the 17th century — the idea people had that Ogasawara went to China for fifteen years and came back with one 'gokui' no one knew about or has seen since was false. Taoist teachings — common today to Taijiquan and other arts — are explicitly listed in the Jikishinkage-ryū mokuroku. Instead, I discovered strong overlap between some of Jikishinkage-ryū's central motivating principles and those of Chinese internal martial arts. This is not entirely surprising, given Ogasawara's travels. The research process helped me develop the courage to not keep my practice of kenjutsu isolated, like a museum piece, but rather to embed it in the larger framework of my internal martial arts practice.
Does being taught or even knowing what the gokui are, make one a better martial artist? Different, yes. Better, maybe. In one sense, you can’t say you practice an art if you don’t know its rationale. That is one reason, along with the embedding process described above, I stopped using the name Jikishinkage-ryū when I teach. But even knowing gokui intellectually is not enough. You could still have a low level of practice if you don’t understand the essential teachings, come to the wrong conclusions, or do not have the proper foundations of practice being in place.
The ten gokui of Jikishinkage-ryū are very abstract, so I think they have a lot of content to them, ultimately, and I don't think one can read a book and 'get' them. I do put explanations to them, but it is just one interpretation. My writing in the chapter on Jikishinkage-ryū Gokui is mostly about philosophical and religious context, not explicit technique.
The names of the gokui are: Shinmyōken, Ken Tai Yu, Ikki-tō, Kenrin-yu, Nenshi, Seiko-sui, Sotai-no-zu, Kojō, Furyū-no-katsu, Marubashi and Juaku.
A person might learn gokui from more than one teacher. Supposedly, the Kojō (oral teachings) was something Yamada Jirokichi had to learn from Saito Akinobu and not Sakakibara Kenkichi. But did he learn Marubashi before that? The others? Are they taught in order? Do they stand independent of one another?
I make a claim in my book that they are related to one another, and that they build upon and inform not only kata but the core tactics (called koto "matters" or katsu "victories") of the art, which precede the gokui in the historical mokuroku.
The koto in Jikishinkage-ryū are more practical, less philosophical, but I am guessing each gokui in Jikishinkage-ryū is a concrete teaching that changes a person's perspective on the art. My having learned only kata, and not the koto or gokui directly, is an important deficit in my training.
There is another extreme — being given the gokui or kuden too early might actually damage one's training and skill progression in an art. A student might have an idea of the ultimate purpose of the art, but might wind up not being as good as their contemporaries at the technical execution of the art, if they still do not receive enough direct instruction on the fine details of kata.
It is dangerous to ignore upper-level teaching but it also can be a challenge if one's physical practice is lacking and one attempts to compensate too much with intellect. This may be what people referred to as the pitfall of the so-called 'vacant' schools of kenjutsu during the Edo period.
Just because someone tells you a kuden, it doesn't magically fix everything or compensate for a lack of athleticism or regular training intensity with peers. If we are too isolated in our practice, we might wind up getting stuck and not know it. Also, by never doing shiai, our skill might not increase the way it would otherwise.
I also believe people need to work together to keep these arts alive. In many cases, due to the sectarian nature of practice, and schisms within individual arts or groups, people are instead far too often unwilling to do so. Matters get compounded by training infrequently, at a distance, without close access to feedback and correction. Students living close to a strong dōjō will progress faster than otherwise, for a variety of reasons. [1]
In the case of historical Jikishinkage-ryū mokuroku,
we see a shift during the Edo period to downplay earlier esoteric
Buddhist
and Taoist influences over time. This happened around the time
the lineage of the art was revised to place Matsumoto Bizen no Kami
as its founder and the art renamed to include Kashima-shinden,
divine inspiration from the Shintō deity Takemikazuchi (
The book chapters on koto and gokui have me relating what was written, putting it in a small amount of context, and then writing my own thoughts down. My skill at Jikishinkage-ryū did not increase from conducting that exercise. Rather, I realized how little I know about the art.
In the case of gokui, I think more in terms of the concept of the essence of a thing or essential part of a thing, and not some secret or hidden concept or idea. Gokui to me are about connecting to the original or peak understanding of an art, versus an immediate teacher. It is likely that interpretations of gokui shift over time, despite best efforts. Society, language, context can be very different now compared to five hundred years ago. A single word or phrase may be very hard to understand compared to in its original circumstance.
In my book, I wrote:
"The Gokui (極意; inner essence) are the driving principles of an art, closely held in confidence, as they are meant to both inform the art to those who have reached a certain level of initiation but also ideally are discovered by practitioners as they move deeper and deeper into the practice of kata, intense reflection and solo training, and martial exchange."
Some Jikishinkage-ryū gokui are common to other lines of practice and have been written about elsewhere. Examples include Marubashi and Shinmyōken. Matters like kiri otoshi are found in other arts. There is enough in the commentary to be able to build a book chapter with a section for each. The ten evils (to avoid) are admonitions now found in several lines of kenjutsu practice. But these are not kata or waza. I think it is easy to get trapped in kata because our minds like to count patterns and look at patterns.
A 1978 budō studies paper by Okada Kazuo
But, since aspects of the gokui are commented on in the literature we can at least go with what these swordsmen-authors describe. It makes things richer and more interesting, even not having explicitly learned all of the koto or gokui of Jikishinkage-ryū.
I mentioned gokui in an art might change over time. Research by Karukome Yoshitaka
Sōjaku no Koto (
Some of the patterns cutting across kata could indeed be specific gokui — marobashi is like this — so in some cases, if you properly understand the patterns underneath the kata, you will always be doing that art and will have the essence, whether you can describe it or not.
In some ways, gokui are the art, its essence, what the whole point of it is. Kata come in several flavors, ones that map directly to these essential matters, and also those that are designed to get someone to the point where they can understand the essential matters. It is not a simple equation where you add the gokui and you are better. You need to know the gokui to even be doing the art at all. But it also may be the case that the many layers of kata developed over the years constituted a means of social control.
Better arts may paradoxically have less material in terms of kata because their principles are more directly or efficiently encoded in the pattern practice they maintain. Older kata might be more transparent rather than obscured. For example, the 108 shinai kata of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū are a preparatory and explanatory set, and important to Yagyū pedagogy, but one can have a robust practice only practicing the older historical sets of kata. Kamiizumi Ise no Kami certainly did not need them to obtain his own realizations.
In terms of having a succinct curriculum, Jikishinkage-ryū may have been an over achiever. Because the teaching shifted to sparring and explanation, just doing the surviving kata today, as is, without sparring or explanation, is probably not enough. That’s why teachers of the art sometimes want other tactics to explore.
When I first trained, it was suggested I keep doing Katori Shintō-ryū so I would have a robust set of tactics to reflect on, as I learned more and more of Jikishinkage-ryū. We used to say Jikishinkage-ryū was a finishing school of sorts — providing other kenshi who entered Sakakibara's dōjō stronger basics, a better mindset, and experience at sparring. That may indeed have been true. But it also may be incomplete for us modern day practitioners who are not already advanced kenshi in our own right when we begin training.
It is a bit counter intuitive as one might expect more forms means better, know more, etc. But people tend to make stuff up as time goes on. Originally many kata were likely short because they directly encoded a few distinguishing ideas. But people sometimes embellish, obscure, or rearrange things from generation to generation.
By paring down kata, and looking for patterns across them, we are essentially making our own gokui. Those might even match closely the actual historical gokui of an art — this is hard to know for certain. It is important to go back to sources to see if your understanding is correct. In principle better means you will be a better swordsman if your operating system matches more closely masters like Kamiizumi. How to know this outside the realm of vision, trance or dream mentioned above, is unclear.
If Gokui are essential principles, kuden may be explanations that help unlock the kata and gokui. They are different than the gokui, the driving principles of the art.
One example from an art I once studied. In Shintō-ryū there are no blocks. There are only cuts. You will hear people say, "every block is a lie". So you look at the kata and every time the swords clack, you know something else is supposed to happen. Katori Shintō-ryū is encoded that way. There is a danger that if you never take the time to decode the kata, and practice it in a different way than it is first encoded, you will never actually get to the point you are supposed to arrive at.
The gokui shichijo no kata you learn later on in the art's progression more explicitly encodes this structure (the blades almost never clash), so maybe once you learn the shichijo, you would then go back and practice all of the previous kata that way. Most people don't. They too often get fixated on how quick the shichijo kata are, and try to mimic that light feeling everywhere — that might be a mistake. [2]
I think even when someone gets an upper-level license in a specific approach, it doesn't mean they necessarily know all the gokui well. It may simply mean the teacher is finished teaching them. They may have imparted all of their knowledge, or what they consider to be 'enough' for the student to go the rest of the way.
It might be necessary for high-level practitioners of arts to continue to do their own research. Or, conversely, maybe one reason we at times see people who have high-level ranks on paper not being great is they only take their training to a certain point, and don't look past what they were shown. Maybe the worst thing that can happen to you is being told you are a master.
Still, some brave souls continue to refine their practice and work very hard at it, even many decades into their practice.
However, that means their art changes over time. Ideally, their efforts will comport with the principles they learned, and they are mindful when adding new principles. Being too radical in an evolution runs the risk that students — if you have begun teaching — will not be able to follow you.
People who train as the teacher's practice is converging on what their ultimate expression is – so that things are changing less rapidly – might have an advantage in some way over earlier students. There might be a disruptive period when you are shifting to a different body organization from what you were first taught, or a different mental model for your practice. Some people may be unwilling or unable to follow you. That is their loss — not all students can follow their teachers on their journey.
Gokui are important because if they are respected, the changes being made by an advanced practitioner are still within the construct of the same approach. If you change the gokui too much, you have invented a new style, which in today's world, will never be fully tested.
Conclusions
In my case, studying writings about the gokui of Jikishinkage-ryū has changed my perspective on kenjutsu. Early Jikishinkage-ryū was once much closer to the principles I have since learned from Chinese internal martial arts. Doing so has improved my kenjutsu substantially.
It has given me the confidence to change some foundational aspects of practice — this now makes it difficult to interact with the Japanese Jikishinkage-ryū community. I no longer practice the introductory kata or basics quite in the way they do, so I can't easily join another group. Studying gokui academically has both freed and isolated me.
Going back to the example above, I don't think I have made a new art, I have instead restored what I learned to something closer to what maybe it once was, in some ways. This hasn't made me a better budoka, but it has made my kenjutsu better.
There are other gokui of which I still have no idea as to what they mean, as they are written as obscure philosophical concepts. Sotai-no-zu (swallow the west river [in one gulp]) is one example. What that has to do with anything at all is unclear, but I can try to relate it to the idea in Taijiquan of "swallowing" someone's force – this may relate back to advanced approaches to go-no-sen in Jikishinkage-ryū or be a distraction.
A final thought and admonition. This research has led me to be very cautious about the limits of my current understanding. I am grateful for the instruction I received and for the patience that was shown to me as I first struggled to train in multiple approaches. Part of me feels it is important now that I have coalesced into a single mindset, to keep wandering up the mountain path of shugyō, even if I struggle at times as I do so.
End Notes
- My first martial art had very strong cadre of core students because they trained together five days a week at high intensity, being concerned about crime in NYC. Looking back there was proper lineage elsewhere to be found, especially relating to Aikido and aiki-jujutsu, but I still am uncertain if I would have been better off training with better lineage and less immediate intensity.
- The shichijo are seven "essential articles" and while they are presented as three kata each expressing a different initiative (sente), they are supposed to teach seven gokui. These are named in academic scholarship on Shintō-ryū.
