The Kenpō Ryakki of Kubota Sugane (1839)

The Kenpō ryakki, tsuketari fukugen (剣法略記附副言; “Abbreviated Record of Sword Method, with Supplementary Remarks”) is a four-kan treatise of Tenpō 10 / 1839 by Kubota Sugane (窪田清音), printed in the 1915 Bujutsu sōsho (国書刊行会 (Kokusho Kankōkai, ed.) 1915) at roughly pp. 444–540.

Kubota Sugane is documented as being a master of Tamiya-ryū kenjutsu (田宮流剣術), who went on to hold the shihan-yaku (師範役; head-instructor) post in heigaku (兵学; military science) at the Kōbusho and served as tōdori (頭取). His treatise records, seventeen years before the Kōbusho was founded, the pedagogical positions of one of its most senior appointees. We give some of its detail as a window on the perspective of one of the senior instructors of the Kōbusho.

The first preface (koma 232) presents the book as a meyasu (目安; index or guide) to Sugane’s larger body of teaching writings, which had grown too scattered to consult, with the reader directed to the underlying books for detail. The colophon to the fukugen (koma 280, Tenpō 10, eighth month) states that the supplement consists of material recalled after the main text was finished, appended in the order it came to mind, and left in draft without revision or sequencing.

Structure

The four kan are divided shun-ka-shū-tō (春夏秋冬; spring, summer, autumn, winter), the winter volume constituting the fukugen.

Broadly, kan 1 treats the blade as an object (selection, forging, polishing, mountings, nomenclature and etymology); kan 2 treats the practitioner (deportment, conditioning, solo practice, training equipment, and a block of samurai duty-content including a typology of seppuku and grades of kaishaku); kan 3 treats method proper (kata and shiai, iai and tachiai, distance, kamae, targets, faults, scoring, kiai); and the fukugen treats mounted combat, sword against other weapons, grappling, shogunal sword regulation, and a long antiquarian catalog of tachi forms.

1. On long hilts: nagatsuka (長柄)

Kubota defines nagatsuka as a hilt made outside the standard proportion for its blade, applicable equally to ōdachi, nakaba-dachi (中半太刀), kodachi and uchigatana, all of which otherwise take hilts of roughly equal length.¹

He writes that while some schools are reported to maintain a jōsun (定寸; fixed standard length), no such rule exists in Sugane’s transmission.² The rule is instead the individual’s build, each man’s weapon made to his own measure. Old densho are cited for the principle that so long as a tachi suits the hand, even one sun longer is better, and that victory is a matter of one sun’s advantage:

太刀は手にだにかなひなば一寸も長きをよしとし、勝つこと一寸まさりとの記あり.

Kubota states that heavy tsuba, thickened metal and frequent dōgane (胴金) adopted out of higaoboe (僻覚え; mistaken belief) about rigidity are said only to add weight to no purpose; oversized or dashi menuki are judged bad and failure to notice as much particularly benighted; and the shape and wrapping of the hilt are said to determine tedamari (手だまり), the feel of the grip.

He advocates that a normal hilt, a somewhat long one and a long-hilt sword are to be kept and rotated as part of one’s training. For a blade of about two shaku five sun he prescribes a hilt of one shaku two or three sun, or one shaku five sun; for a blade of three shaku five sun, a hilt of two shaku.

2. Nagamaki (長巻)

Anything longer, he writes, belongs to the nagamaki class. He goes on to write that the name nagamaki itself is a later re-coinage, absent from old books:

• Both nakamaki (unvoiced) and nagamaki (voiced) are current, but 中 and 長 differ greatly in sense: “in my transmission it is called nagamaki.”³
• Nodachi (野太刀) and tsukadachi (柄太刀) are also reported as names for the same object.
• The nagamaki is an ōdachi fitted with a long hilt. It existed anciently but was used predominantly in Genki–Tenshō (元亀–天正, 1570–92), whence most surviving specimens come.
• Etymology: the weapon combines naginata and tachi — a long tachi blade fitted with a hilt longer than normal and equal to a naginata hilt, then wrapped — so it ought properly to be nagatsuka-maki, 柄 being elided to yield nagamaki.

A second definition, in the mountings section. The yosohoi list at koma 238 classifies mountings with interlinear glosses (warichū, 割注), and there nagamaki is defined by hilt length alone:

• 太刀 — tachi: What is called tachi means the makidachi (卷太刀). It is the sword that has lately been called, mistakenly, the sayamaki no tachi (鞘卷の太刀).
• 打刀 — uchigatana: This is what is now called katana. In former times it was the sword called uchigatana or tsubagatana (鍔刀).
• 鞘卷刀 — sayamaki-gatana: It is one object under many names (一物多名).
• 腹劔・懷劔・守刀 — haraken / kaiken / mamorigatana; also called wakizashi (脇ざし).
• 長柄打刀 — nagatsuka uchigatana: an uchigatana whose hilt has been lengthened.
• 長卷 — nagamaki: that which is longer again than the nagatsuka (uchigatana).
• 曲づか — magarizuka 〔the hilt is made with a bend〕 · 直づか — sugu-zuka 〔the hilt has no curvature〕

Mounted handling (fukugen). Because the hilt is long and the weapon differs from a tachi, the nagamaki is handled largely as a naginata is handled; but once habituated, nothing differs from a tachi. With hilt and blade both long, poor manipulation obstructs. Stirrup pressure must follow the action or the work is not free, and poor manipulation risks striking one’s own horse’s head.

On foot against a mounted opponent (fukugen). Face the horse’s front and work so that it cannot advance; watching for the interval, cut the reins, then cut the legs. Attaching to the left or right rear quarter, the primary intention is to thrust from the kusazuri edge. Against an attempt to ride in and trample, circle and halt the horse.

Against the spear (fukugen; “the practice of meeting a spear with the tachi”⁴). Ōdachi and nagamaki may be taken in hidari-gamae (左構え; left stance) with nakadori (中取; a mid-haft grip) as the moment requires. Length holds particular advantage against the spear, but the weapon cannot be handled without constant practice: hearing and watching alone will not produce the working technique.⁵

Nodachi and nagamaki were for the most part, according to Kubota, carried slung across the back rather than slung at the waist. He states that in ancient times the tachi was a primary weapon, but in later ages distinction came to be won with the spear, so men took up the spear, and with it both hakizoe and ōdachi carriage lapsed. Also, after the Ōnin disturbance the makidachi ceased to be worn by everyone, and a long uchigatana came to be worn in place of the tachi.

Immediately after, the work distances itself from revivalism. The kojitsu-sha (古実者; antiquarians) are described as making it their business to copy the old for its own sake — reproducing armor, hitatare and ōkuchi, and the tachi of famous men — and Sugane’s response, given in his own name, is blunt: he is of a different mind.⁶ Ceremonial matters may properly follow old precedent, but the manner in which war-gear is furnished must be sorted into what should and should not be copied; one is not obliged to restrict oneself to the wrapped tachi; and the old is studied in order to understand the present.⁷

3. Conditioning — yōjō (養生)

Kan 2, koma 246.

Kubota begins with a prescription to make the mind fierce and govern it, to be still with no slackening of ki (気), to study the art to its corners, and to make sinew and bone thick and strong. The concrete regime that follows:

• In summer, coolness is not to be sought; in winter, snow and frost are to be pushed through.
• Long distances are to be walked out and back, to condition the legs.
• The same practice is to be repeated from daybreak to dusk.
• A full day is to be passed without food, 饑を試み — to test hunger.
• Mind and body are to be habituated to disagreeable work, and both made stronger than they already are.

The justification is occupational: the warrior house is an office whose business is the abnormal;⁸ should the emergency come and no man be equal to it, nothing can be done.

The warrior’s nurture is the obverse of what present-day physicians argue.⁹ Timidity of the form “doing that will affect the body, doing this will bring illness” is disallowed. Anything concluded to be necessary but avoided as unpleasant is to be sought out deliberately and done.

4. Solo Practice, musha shugyō, and Official Duties (kan 2)

The conditioning section stands in a run of kan 2 material that sets out what the warrior is supposed to be doing when not facing a partner, and then what the sword is actually for in the exercise of office. The two halves are continuous in the text and are treated here together.

Musha shugyō — koma 246–247

Kubota notes that formerly musha shugyō was constantly in men’s minds: one traveled, near or far, into the provinces, sought out those of local repute, tested technique against them, and stayed to train. But the substance of it (其まこと) is given as something else entirely — the customs of the provinces, the character of daimyō and castle lords, the strength or weakness and the concord or discord of their troops, the care they took of their weapons, and the survey of terrain (かつ地理をもはかりしることを心とするわざなる). Shugyō is described, in other words, as reconnaissance conducted under the cover of fencing.

Since station prevents many from traveling, a substitute program is set out: draw men of other provinces to oneself and win them over, learn their conditions from them, gather what is good in the various schools and fit it to oneself, take any skilled man nearby as a companion, and so learn customs and provincial conditions while seated at home — and at the same time display one’s own domain’s martial standing abroad. Completing the shugyō without going out of the gate is given as an old precedent, not an expedient.¹⁰

The contemporary criticism is sharp. Men are still sent out each year under the name of shugyōsha, but they learn a fragment of sword handling and think it sufficient; they ask about nothing, and when asked, know nothing. The entry closes: sword method is not merely the business of beating with a shinai.¹¹

Solo practice — hitori-narawashi (独ならはし), koma 247

The section opens by locating the root of solo work in deliberation rather than repetition: nothing in any branch of study can be done well without thinking about it, and that is the source of solo learning.¹²

What follows is a checklist, given as one or two instances out of many: examine one’s own form for kuse-yamai (くせやまひ; habitual faults); then the tightening and slackening of the grip; the placing and carriage of the feet; keeping to the natural order of sinew and bone; then the handling of breath; then the various matters of movement, circulating the sword as smoothly as the cursive hand (草の手のなだらかなる樣に太刀を運らし); then observing others and taking what is good in them as one’s own; then extending attention to matters outside the art altogether, taking this and discarding that, and turning even the fragments of others’ talk over against one’s own practice.

The practical prescriptions follow. In free intervals, iai and tachiai are to be rehearsed alone; with bokutō or shinai, seated or standing, the form corrected by deliberation, or swung to train the work of the hands and the carriage of the feet. For those whose official duties are heavy and who cannot find a partner daily, the answer is unqualified: 日毎に千度うち千度つきて — a thousand cuts and a thousand thrusts a day, and there is no one who lacks the time for it, since 武夫の勤は宿直のみのことにはあらず, the warrior’s duty is not only standing night watch.

The regime crosses into the yōjō material at this point: solo practice is to be done out in snow and frost, and in the shadeless midday of summer, which makes sinew and bone thick and hard and the mind fierce.

Then an observation about the age: men now have largely departed from the warrior’s disposition,¹³ so that anyone seen doing such things occasionally is decried as having gone mad (物に狂ふなるべしなどといひのゝしり), and has few companions. In such an age, few connect the pathos of moon and blossom or the voices of birds and insects to the warrior’s study — but everything seen and heard can be turned to the aid of solo practice, and nothing fails to help. Reading is included on the same terms, Japanese books and Chinese alike: 諸家百家のふみは武門の遣ひものとして — the writings of the hundred schools are equipment of the warrior house, to be taken into the mind as aids to solo work.¹⁴

5. Breath — iki no narawashi (息のならはし)

Kan 3, koma 258.

The argument runs in sequence:

1. Once the breath is constricted to exhaustion nothing can be done, and without habituation it breaks in even a short run.
2. For this conditioning nothing equals shiai — このならしをせんには、試合に若くことはあらぬわざなり.
3. The reason given is structural. Shiai, unlike kata, has no predetermined sequence — nothing of the form “strike here first, then thrust there.” The beginner must initiate from the working of the eyes through mind and ki, and within that respond to the opponent, learning to stop, slip and evade. Attention is pulled in every direction, ki becomes agitated, and fatigue arrives in the breath before anywhere else.
4. Breath ceases to press so soon once habituated. Even without knowing its handling one begins to sense it; as ki gains latitude (猶予) the mind settles, and with familiarity in technique the breath is sustained — 又業に馴れて息は保ちぬるものなり.
5. Criterion of sufficiency: where ki circulates, the mind is ample and the form calm, there is no cause for early failure. Even if the breath breaks somewhat under live conditions, it should not reach the point of being unable to speak.
6. Diagnostic, stated twice: breath that fails before the body is fatigued indicates deficient study — 手に足に疲れざるに息のきるゝは、學びの足はぬなり.
7. Transfer. Once the handling of breath is acquired, one is slow to be flustered in any matter. Mere familiarity with a single activity yields long wind for that activity alone; the actual art carries across all matters. Without it the warrior is winded merely by breaking into a run on the road.

The argument for shiai is made here on physiological rather than doctrinal grounds — a point of some interest given the date. The kata-versus-shiai question is argued at length in two dedicated sections of kan 3 (形まなびの論ひ, koma 256, and 試合まなびの論ひ, koma 257), where the position taken is that kata is the source and the rule, while shiai is where breath, eye, timing and variation are actually trained. Kata alone is there compared to consoling oneself with a painted landscape, in which the pines make no sound and the water does not run. The breath section is the physiological instance of that general argument.

6. Targets of cuts and thrusts

The text gives two distinct treatments: combat targets in kan 3, koma 263, and scoring targets in kan 3, koma 265.

(a) Combat targets — 打べき所つくべきところ

The section is organized by mono no gu (物具; armor) against suhada (素肌; bare skin).

Against armor. The premise is that with a good helmet and good lamellae, exposing the head or opening the dō will not result in the helmet being split or the dō cut. Old accounts of armored men being cut down are explained as reflecting armor in name only. A man of exceptional size and strength, skilled, with a great cutting blade might manage it; well-forged helmet and good dō are held to be beyond ordinary men.

Thrusts penetrate well but not the breast, the dō, the mouth-surround or the throat: the face is covered by the hōate, the throat by the hōate’s dangling plate and the nodowa’s lower plates, the chest by the kyūbi and sendan plates, or by the gyōyō where these are absent.

Cutting targets against armor reduce to three: the kote, the gap between kote and kusazuri, and the legs. Within the koshi no yurugi the left side is obstructed by the tachi scabbard, the katana and the tsurumaki, leaving only the right — and of that only about two sun. Where the kote is not cut through, a well-formed strike is still expected to break bone; the legs likewise, and a strong hit makes standing impossible.

Thrust targets against armor begin with the zone between the eyes and nose up to about the forehead, again about two sun. Depth is unnecessary: five bu (分) to one sun of point entry brings blood running into the eyes and disables. Then the sides of the takahimo, the armpit, the lower belly through the kusazuri gap, and the upper thigh. All of these are entered from below and open only when the opponent’s kamae is raised — and since a helmet makes what is commonly called jōdan impossible, kamae becomes low of itself.

Against bare skin. No fixed cutting targets are given. On thrusts:

• Thrusting is not to be shunned, but unless the sword is withdrawn at once a return strike is certain; without this understanding aiuchi follows necessarily.
• Thrusting at correct distance and withdrawing quickly avoids the return, but that is described as an accomplished man’s technique. For the unaccomplished the rule is to assume the return strike: thrust deep, run the opponent through, and push him over as one stands. The return then lands at the habaki-moto and is weak — はゞきもとなれば手薄しとの傳へあり, given as a transmitted saying.
• Three fixed bare-skin thrust targets, in order: slightly above the eyes (first, on the same blood-into-the-eyes reasoning); the two shoulder sockets (肩口), which need not be entered deeply and are immediately life-threatening; and the throat.
• Thrusts enter deeply even when light, so the rule is to withdraw the sword simultaneously with the thrust.
• In live application the thrust is faster than the cut. From distance too great to cut, thrust one-handed; closer, press and thrust; and when the opponent strikes at the kote, stop or slip it and thrust two-handed after.
• On bare skin, nothing below the chest is to be thrust.
• Against an armored man, having chosen one’s own helmet: let him strike the crown, drop down and cut the legs; or thrust the lower belly through the kusazuri gap; or thrust the thigh. The instep may also be struck.

(b) Scoring targets — 勝まけのわかち

• Cuts. Men: center, or left and right. Kote: both sides, from beside the elbow to the back of the hand. Dō: on the right, from below the armpit down to the lower belly; on the left, below the armpit.
• A strike delivered there with no twist of the hand and no misalignment counts as a win; where anything is deficient it is to be counted a shame rather than a point.
• Other places could be struck, but pain comes quickly there, so they are not struck in ordinary practice. Striking the leg carries its own convention.
• Thrust. Slightly above the center of the men — the eye-and-eyebrow region. Higher, lower, or displaced to either side is not a true win. The throat, chest and belly are not to be thrust at random. Since the eye region is the difficult target, the difficult one is what counts as a good win.
• Scoring etiquette, in which the striker does not claim: a dirty win answered by the opponent is to be refused and not counted; a strike or thrust received is to be answered and scored a loss even on faint contact; where one struck slightly first and the opponent claims first, aiuchi is to be accepted, and where the opponent says aiuchi, his priority is to be accepted: practice proceeds by yielding the win.¹⁵

The contrast between the two lists is the point of interest: the combat set is dictated by armor geometry and reduces to a few sun, while the shiai set is an explicitly pedagogical convention restricted to avoid injury.

7. Kiai — koe no narawashi (声のならはし)

Kan 3, koma 266.

The premise is that the voice issues of itself, so that it may be voiced without being sought; in ordinary practice and on the battlefield alike, kakegoe (掛け声) is to be used according to the moment. Its functions are given as adding momentum, advancing one’s own ki, and taking the opponent’s, with a convention of voicing alone, before any cut or thrust, to take his ki and move him.

Against the silent-kiai doctrine. Two positions are named and rejected: that no voice emerges when facing certain death, and that not voicing is itself a teaching, called shin no kurai (真の位). Sugane’s judgment is 其ことにくはしきに似て實はくはしからぬなり — it resembles detailed knowledge but is not — and he calls it a perverse claim that ignores the voice’s spontaneity. The test he poses: if at that very moment a kakegoe emerges unsought and unnoticed, what is then to be said? The convention holds both ways — the voice emerges of itself, and is also deliberately used as occasion requires.

However far “certain death” and shin no kurai are reached, if mind and ki are so blocked that no voice comes, live technique cannot be done. The grounding principle is that the warrior’s art trains, in ordinary times, the acts of the moment of death, so that even at that extremity the basis is not to lose the ordinary mind: settle the mind, govern the ki. Hence the prescription of a clean, crisp kakegoe — いさぎよきかけ聲 — while cutting and thrusting. Evidence for spontaneity is drawn from outside the martial sphere: labourers handling loads.

Faults. Random voicing constricts the breath that ought to be conserved and brings early fatigue; it also allows the interior of the mind to be inferred, so that the man appears shallow and his technique inferior. Repeated and frequent voicing interferes with the breath. The warrior’s discipline extends to a single word, and those lacking this sense mix in improper speech and voice ceaselessly, which is judged base.

On the theories. Of the various discussions of how to voice and of the resonance of the sound, some name an in-yō no kakegoe (陰陽の掛け声); Sugane allows that there may be grounds for it and says he does not know. His own position is stated as shinden (神伝) doctrine: 神傳にはたゞ聲はおのづからのものなれば、其ほど所によりて、かくべきを定とはするなり — in the shinden, the voice is simply a natural thing, and what is fixed is when to voice, according to degree and place.

The shinden self-designation recurs elsewhere in the work. It is the warrant term for whatever Sugane treats as fixed rather than optional — the three-shaku-three-sun practice sword at koma 247, the three-grade kamae in kan 3, and the timing rule for the voice here. It is worth reading against chōtan no shabetsu at koma 239, where the explicit refusal of a jōsun shows that the shinden label is not applied to the measurement of the live weapon: the fixed three shaku three sun is a training standard, not a prescription for what a man should carry.

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The remaining technical notes of kan 3

Between the general arguments on kata and shiai and the sections on targets and voice, kan 3 runs a sequence of short technical entries that proceed roughly in the order of an encounter — reading the ground, walking out, sitting, rising, measuring, setting the guard, engaging — and then break into a set of analytic notes on movement, arrest, fault and priority. They are given here in the order of the text.

Approach and setting

Mikiri (見切, koma 259). Before going out to the place of the bout, the ri of the ground is to be known. Without attention to it one runs into every kind of obstruction, facing the sun or the moon among them. The scope given is notable: it is to be understood for the field, for shimono, for cornered fugitives, for hanashi-uchi, and for ordinary practice alike.¹⁶ The section is the hinge between the duty material of kan 2 and the technical material here.

Deitachi-buri (出立ぶり, koma 259). Identified with musha-buri. Armor secured, no sidelong glances, everything pressed down into the mind, the form correct, the mind quiet, the footfalls unbroken — the place being near or far makes no difference. The faults are enumerated: head inclined, hips bent, eyes going sideways, looking back, the tread disordered, and being taken over by the opponent in the walking out. One judges his bearing and goes neither before nor after him, おとしめず恐れず — neither despising nor fearing.

Zatsuki (座つき). Halt at the good spot already read, sit quietly, and watch. Rise when he rises; do not rise if he does not. Nothing of one’s equipment is to be adjusted after taking the seat: 其處に至りてそこらつくろふは、用意の薄きにて恥なり — adjusting things at the place itself is thin preparation and a disgrace.

Tachiagari (立あがり). Rising neither before nor after him, judge the interval, advance quietly, put the right foot forward one pace, extend the hands and set the guard. Until that point the hilt is held in both hands with the point to the right and lowered. And at this moment the opponent is neither to be despised, nor feared, nor hated.¹⁷

Ba-ai (場間). Defined operationally: points crossed, the distance at which neither can reach the other without stepping forward one pace. One halts there, sets the guard, and proceeds to kakeai.

The three grades of guard (かまへのきだ). Only three: 上 places the point at the line between mouth and nose — 世にせい眼といふかまへなり, what the world calls seigan; 中 sets it against the region of the navel; 下 puts it to the mizuguchi. Each subdivides into three or five further grades, but the root is three. 神づたへの劔法には此三段をかぎりとする — in the divinely transmitted sword method these three grades are the limit — and within them 上 is the base, with 中 and 下 practiced two or three times in ten.

Kakeai (かけ合). The balance-scale figure, given at length: a hundred-monme object hung against the hundred-monme mark, the counterweight set so that the beam sits level with no rise or fall. The sequence is fixed — ba-ai, then guard, then kakeai.

Katachizama (かたちざま). The form as born. Toes aligned; the width of one’s ordinary walking stride; the right foot one pace forward; the hands on the hilt neither drawn to one side nor extended nor contracted but at a good measure; the tsuka-gashira five or six sun clear of the navel; the point set against the top of the opponent’s mouth; neither arched back nor stooped. Departure from it makes everything else hard to do.

Movement and its faults

Uki-shizumi (浮沈). From the kakeai position, a rising and sinking just at the threshold of the point’s visibility. Being conspicuous in it is a fault. The genuine article is ki passing of itself into the sword and becoming the beat of the pulse: the rising and sinking that follows the pulse is the true rising and sinking.¹⁸ Done deliberately and without that, it is a disease: the mind unsettled and the movement of ki uneven, showing in the point. Too fast is ki pressing recklessly; too slow is slackness. A restless point gives the opponent the interval to enter. Deliberately exaggerated uki-shizumi belongs to henkaku.

Hatarakiwaza (はたらきわざ). A staged curriculum in three phases.

Beginning: hold the natural upright form without regard to anything else, hands extended lightly, feet stepping in without violating their order, and strike men and kote in quantity — seven men to three kote in ten, men struck as a pincer from both sides,¹⁹ three thrusts within that, the thrust just above the center of the men and nowhere else. No tome or hazushi at this stage.

Middle: draw the opponent out and move him; thrust after striking, strike after thrusting, learn to press; keep advancing, hold the form, work fast.

End: judge the interval, advance and retreat, strike, thrust, stop and slip without limit. Hands not behind the feet and feet not before the hands; the footwork carried under it; no violation of the order of sinew and bone; fast or slow as the moment requires; and no gap in ki at any boundary.

Beyond this, the text stops. Higher transmissions concerning separating the work from the hands are said to exist, but ただ目に見耳に聞きしまでにてことのみ知るは、かの理り學びに流れて益なければ記さず — knowing a thing only by having seen and heard it runs off into the ri-learning criticized elsewhere and is useless, so it is not written down. The refusal is consistent: what cannot be acquired by doing is not committed to the page.²⁰

The division of victory (勝ちまけのわかれ). The division begins in the work of mind and ki, and beyond that in the momentum of the moment, the approach adopted, the method, and the distance. The enumerated cases: separated and joined; the moment of joining and then separating; the interval of advance and retreat; striking having stilled him against striking having moved him; striking by seeking the live moment against striking by pressing.

Narisama (なりさま). Comportment after the exchange, from before returning to the seat through the return, the seating, the salute, the withdrawal, and the resumption of the original place. Beginners press forward while working and then let mind and ki slacken once it is over, which is bad; won or struck, ki is not to be relaxed by the least amount, and each exchange holds the next within it. Nothing is finished until one has returned to the spot where the mikiri was made.

Form-arrest and ki-arrest.²¹ The body’s stopping is the ki’s stopping and is not a fault of the body; but at insufficient stages of study it is treated as a bodily fault, and moving the body arbitrarily is made into a practice. Movement and stillness belong to mind and ki, and the body follows. Stillness with the body full and easy, movement arising out of that stillness, and stillness held inside the movement. A body that merely stops without passing into live technique cannot perform the art. Where mind and ki are unsettled the color shows in the point and in the body — what shows outside the mind is a thing to be ashamed of.²²

Unken (運劔の法ごと). Circulating the sword has an order and a reverse. Against the order, even a strongly delivered cut lands weakly. With the sword circulating unobstructed on its proper line, a light cut cuts well and a long heavy sword feels light. Where the circulation is wrong the edge turns and the blade goes 刃かたそげ, so that it will not cut whatever the force.

The calligraphy analogy is given in full. Hold the brush at the body’s center and follow where the hairs go, right, left, vertical or horizontal; against the order, nothing runs smoothly. One should ask someone versed in shin, gyō and sō and set what he says beside the handling of the sword. The sequence prescribed is a full circuit: begin in the shin hand, in the kata practice of iai and tachiai; pass to the spirit of gyō; then to the smoothness of sō; then return to gyō; and then back to the shin one began with; without that return, one cannot be said to have grasped the circulation of the sword — 劔をめぐらすむねをよく得たりとはいひがたし. Someone who has not done it strikes with the flat, the point not recovering and the stroke reversed. A badly written 一 is still read as “one” and people suppose that suffices, but there are many ways of writing it. The test offered is material: set up a dodan (土壇) and cut it lightly and strongly in various ways.

Arrest, priority, and fault

Advance and retreat (進退のきわぎわ). Prizing advance and disliking retreat is the soldier’s rule, but it does not follow that advancing is always right, and there are situations in which one cannot but retreat. The window is stated as 目ばたきのうちに有こと — within a blink; outside it, early and late are equally useless.

Movement and stillness (動くと靜なるとのわかれ). Neither is initiated by oneself: both follow the opponent’s form and ki, entering his gaps. Still without a settled mind, one cannot move; unable to move well, one cannot be still. 動靜は其もと一つなり — movement and stillness are at root one.

The four tome and hazushi.²³ Four kinds of arrest:

1. Uchi wo toru no tome — receiving a strong attack by shaving it off lightly (かろくそいでうけとめて). The case given is a big, strong man striking with an ōdachi with his weight behind it: an ordinary sword meeting it squarely may be driven down, the man cut, or his sword struck from his hands.
2. Hari-dome or kiri-dome — meeting the incoming sword with a striking intention of one’s own.
3. Osae-dome — pressing the outgoing sword from above.
4. Uke-dome — putting one’s own sword beneath the descending sword and letting it strike there.

Distance governs which applies: stopping while advancing, receiving while retreating, or stopping in place. Retreating where one should have advanced means the strike overreaches and lands. A hand-only strike is stopped in place with the hands; a strike committed with the body must be met the same way, or pressed at the moment of issue.

Hazushi is finer. It works at the boundary between the point touching and not touching, and unless the counter-strike follows, nothing has actually been slipped. Its window is narrower than that of tome, and it is done with the footwork, the contraction of the hands, and the flexion and extension of the form, exactly level with his strike — neither behind nor ahead. Ten times correct in ten is rare: けはづしは、心なくする迄のことにて、其わざをば知らでおのづから其ほどに至るも有べけれど、そはあやまちの功名などいふことわざのごとし — most who slip do it without thought and arrive at the measure by accident, which is the proverbial distinction won by a blunder.

Kuse-yamai (くせやまひ). Faults of form and faults of ki, with four crossings between them: form passing into ki, ki showing in form, form alone, ki alone. The correction is to find the source and return the man to his natural form. Faults absent at first can appear later — a tendency to press forward against one’s own intention, or an inability to come forward, or being able to strike but not to thrust. Almost nobody is without blemish under inspection, and inattention means fault accumulating on fault until little is left but blemish. The consequences are technical: timing lost in advance, retreat, movement and stillness; the sword disordered; the edge turned and useless.

Verbal response (應答の言葉づかひ). Every exchange must be answered, or the distinction cannot stand. Coarse words are never to be used — 其言葉あしければ、心のうちの賤しくしらるゝなり, bad speech makes the baseness of the interior known. Rank and relative skill both bear on how one speaks.

Henkaku (變格の例ひ). Slight variation of the standard form, to be undertaken only after form and technique are in place: widening or narrowing the standard ikken sanpo stride; extending the hands from, or drawing them in toward, the standard tsuka-gashira-at-navel; arching slightly when pressing in or slipping. And, directly connecting to the kan 1 material: 長柄長まきのあつかひは、ともに柄長き故に、いさゝかかたちをかへてあつかふべきことならひなり — the handling of the long hilt and the nagamaki, both having long hilts, requires the form to be altered somewhat.

Aiuchi (相うちのわかち). True aiuchi is two unskilled men each intending nothing but to strike, striking together and each being struck. It is common among beginners and rare among the accomplished. Most of what is called aiuchi contains a slight difference in timing, and the difference is to be marked — the earlier counted earlier and the later later, without blurring. There is also deliberate aiuchi.

Priority (先後のわかれ). A light strike, if first, is to be credited, and answering it with “thin” or “light” is not permitted. But in a real bout, unless bone is cut, a return strike follows; a thrust through the belly guarantees one. Striking after being struck happens sometimes by the balance of the moment and is sometimes sought deliberately; it should be practiced, but pursued too far it comes late and is dirty. Having struck after, one apologises: 必わび置べきこと禮なり.

The lifetime bout (生涯のかちまけ). Ordinary practice is preparation for the abnormal, so nothing careless is permitted in it, and the first stroke is the whole matter. In a real bout, struck first, nothing can be done. The point is pressed for cross-school encounters especially. Those who set a limit of three points and contest for them are described as not knowing what they are doing. The first stroke is what is meant by the lifetime bout, and it is to be held in mind without being spoken of, by beginner and expert alike.

Shinki (心氣のことはり). The closing section of kan 3, and explicitly not the Song Confucian ri-ki-shinpō nor Buddhist godō. Mind and ki have their divisions: a man may resolve on something and still not do it because his ki does not consent; and where he is unfamiliar with a thing, neither reaches it. One born to a military house should have mind and ki fierce and spirited with nothing base in them, passing into the branches of study as 水の器に隨ふ, water taking the shape of its vessel — neither before the technique nor behind it, the mind quiet, the ki ordered, with no slackening and no gap.

Drawn instead by Confucian and Buddhist ri, mind and ki sicken, the whole becomes a matter of argument in words, and what is known by eye and ear only obstructs more than it helps. The conclusion sets ri aside as secondary and rests on accumulation: 其理りはくはしく知らずとも、わざになるゝ時は、理りのごとく活きわざをなして、ことかくことはなきなり — without knowing the principle in detail, one who has become habituated to the technique performs live technique as though according to the principle, and wants for nothing.

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8. Kumiuchi (組打)

Fukugen, koma 277–278, printed pp. 535–536; four consecutive sections.

(a) 組うちのきわぎわ — the moments of grappling

Once grappling has begun, the sword is to be discarded at once and the koshigatana (腰刀) used to stab; this is stated as the rule. The koshigatana serves at the moment of closing, after the opponent is pinned, and from underneath when one is oneself pinned. The stab is to be made as fast as the moment allows. A transmitted saying holds that once grappling it may sometimes be handier to draw the opponent’s blade than one’s own — with the immediate caution that he will know the same thing, so that one’s own must be guarded. Detail is said to vary infinitely with circumstance and to belong to practice.

(b) 体のかため — body-hardening

Identified explicitly with what is commonly called tai-atari (体当たり): よに體あたりといふにひとし.

Application: when the distance has closed and slackness appears in the opponent’s ki or posture, or when, having driven him in, he goes onto a retreating foot — strike into the men; whether the strike lands or is stopped is immaterial; the hands are then closed and, with the body’s power, the interval is closed and he is thrust back. The form requires hands, feet and body aligned in a single motion, striking from close range on the footwork, and thrusting the chest with the surplus of that power.

Reciprocal drilling is prescribed, together with its failure mode: where the contact is strong and well-formed, a poor reception results in being thrust back oneself. Counters are to meet his power, or to turn and slip aside, responding once provisionally and shedding the force to right or left; a diagonal strike is also possible at the moment of division. Reception requires lowering the hands: with the hands high nothing can be held.²⁴

Two general remarks close the section. The first is pedagogical: one must be struck in this manner oneself in order to learn how to shed it, and thereby to know in detail what it is to do it to another. The second is methodological, and states the four channels by which the boundaries of technique are learned — observing others’ actions, considering the matter in books, savoring it in oral accounts, and daily practice with a partner.

(c) 打ちくだき — smashing

Used both at the point where grappling is about to begin and after the opponent is pinned. Where one has entered close and neither cut nor thrust is possible with a long weapon, the koshigatana is thrust; where there is not even time for that, the tsuka-gashira (柄頭) is used — against armor, to smash the inside of the face; against bare skin, to strike anywhere without pause and break bone. In ordinary practice only the men is to be used, since anything else invites injury.

(d) 逆のかけ押さえ — the reverse hooking press

With the distance closed, the sword is turned to the reverse side, hooked over the front of the opponent’s blade, hooked and pressed deeply toward one’s own right, and a strike made from the side; a strike from above, or entry straight into grappling, are alternatives as the occasion dictates. The counter is given plainly: lower the hands, soften the power, and turn it back from below, whereupon the difficulty is avoided without effort. 力をこめて爭ふ時には、いかにともなしがたし — contested with strength, nothing can be done.

End Notes