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 (koma 232–280 of the NDL scan).

Kubota Sugane later held the shihan-yaku (師範役; head-instructor) post in heigaku (兵学; military science) at the Kōbusho and served there as tōdori (頭取).

His documented training includes Tamiya-ryū kenjutsu (田宮流剣術), which is consistent with the iai-first organisation of the present work and with its approving citation of the Tamiya long hilt.¹

The treatise therefore records, seventeen years before the Kōbusho was founded, the pedagogical positions of one of its senior appointees.

The 1915 editor in his kaidai (koma 8) provides some source notes:

1. The base text is the Teikoku Toshokan (帝国図書館) holding, a manuscript with frequent errors.
2. No second witness was available for collation
3. The prose being kana-heavy and diffuse, the editor converted much of it to kanji — which were the source of machine translation and subsequent analysis.

The editor supplied small reading glosses and ママ (sic) marks at cruxes — one such is visible at koma 239 — so the print carries a layer of implicit editorial judgement.²

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.³

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 catalogue of tachi forms.

The seven loci below are given in the order requested rather than in the order of the text; volume and koma are noted at each.

1. The long hilt — nagatsuka (長柄)

Kan 1, koma 238–239; the section opens in the final columns of koma 238 and continues on 239, the page-break falling at こは其長さ何寸程といふ | 定りはなけれども.

The nagatsuka is defined 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.⁴

The author states that the long hilt has many advantages is set out in detail in the Tamiya-ryū densho but summarizes:

• Measure. No fixed rule. Typically two to three sun (寸) beyond normal; five to seven sun, or a full shaku (尺), also occurs.
• Handling. Separate conventions are used mounted and on foot.
• Precedent. Houses formerly recognised the advantage of the Tamiya long hilt and adopted long hilts school-wide.⁵
• Polemic. Contemporaries are said to copy what Sugane transmits to his own students without knowing whether it is sound, and use long hilts in violation of their own school’s rules, and there are such men here and there.⁶
• Authority. Kanjō shōden (干城小伝) is cited for Tamiya’s long sword and long hilt as common knowledge, with an interlinear gloss identifying it as 武藝小傳といふ. This is a single work under two titles.⁷

The doctrinal ground. The argument the nagatsuka section defers is supplied two sections later, at chōtan no shabetsu (長短の差別; the distinction of long and short), koma 239:

Some schools are reported to maintain a jōsun (定寸; fixed standard length), but no such rule exists in Sugane’s transmission.⁸ 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.

The conclusion is stated in the third person:

されば清音は長刀をつかひ習はすことを旨として教ゆるを掟とはするなり.

The long hilt and the long blade are therefore two applications of one position, and the position is a rejection of fixed standard measure in favour of individual fit.

The nearest thing to a functional argument about hilts on this page falls in the preceding yosohoi (よそほひ; mountings) section rather than in the nagatsuka section itself, and concerns swords generally rather than long-hilted ones.

He states that heavy tsuba, thickened metal and frequent dōgane (胴金) adopted out of 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. The section then breaks off explicitly: the matter being long, it is omitted here and not set down.⁹

Practice dimensions appear separately, under chōdo no kotowari (調度のことはり; on training equipment), kan 2, koma 247–248, a normal hilt, a somewhat long one and a long-hilt one are to be kept and rotated as part of one’s training:

• For a blade of about two shaku five sun, 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.

Anything longer 長まきの部たるべし — belongs to the nagamaki class. The flat statement is that the advantage lies with length.¹⁰

2. Nagamaki (長巻)

Kan 1, koma 239; fukugen, koma 269.

The treatment is philological before it is technical, in the kokugaku register that characterises the whole work.

• The name is judged 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.”¹¹
• 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 are from.
• 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, and there nagamaki is defined by hilt length alone:

• 太刀〔太刀といふは卷太刀をいふ、近き頃鞘卷の太刀と誤りいふ太刀なり〕
• 打刀〔今いふ刀なり、古へ打刀鍔刀といひし刀なり〕
• 鞘卷刀〔此もの一物多名なり、委曲は後に記す〕
• 腹劔・懷劔・守刀、又脇ざしともいふ
• 長柄打刀〔打刀のつかを長くしたるなり〕
• 長卷〔長柄よりも又長きをいふなり〕
• 曲づか〔つかをまげてするなり〕・直づか〔つかにそりなきなり〕

The bracketed text is the compiler’s own interlinear gloss (warichū, 割注):

• 太刀 — tachi: What is called tachi means the makitachi (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: This thing is one object under many names 一物多名 (“one object, many names”)
• 腹劔・懷劔・守刀 — haraken / kaiken / mamorigatana; also called wakizashi (脇ざし).
• 長柄打刀 — nagae uchigatana: an uchigatana whose hilt has been lengthened.
• 長卷 — nagamaki: that which is longer again than the nagae (uchigatana).
• 曲づか — magarizuka 〔the hilt is made with a bend〕 · 直づか — sugu-zuka 〔the hilt has no curvature〕

The first gloss is a terminological correction, not a description: the compiler is asserting that tachi properly denotes the makitachi and that sayamaki no tachi is a recent misnomer. The nagamaki entry defines the weapon purely by relation: longer than the nagae uchigatana, with no measurement and no blade-to-hilt proportion.

The author closes with an admonition:¹²

There are established conventions regarding the manner of one’s attire, and since these styles entail distinct advantages and disadvantages, it is essential to fully understand and discern them.

The two definitions are compatible but not identical. The mountings list makes nagamaki the next increment on a hilt-length continuum (uchigatana → nagatsuka uchigatana → nagamaki); the nagamaki section makes it a construction and blade class, an ōdachi fitted with a naginata-length hilt and wrapped, and derives the name from nagatsuka-maki.

The practice rule at koma 248 — anything longer than that is to be classified under nagamaki¹³ — follows the mountings definition rather than the etymological one, which suggests the hilt-length criterion is the operative one and the naginata etymology a separate justification.¹⁴

Proportions. Determined by the man’s build, but the general convention gives a three-shaku blade a hilt of two shaku three or four sun, and a blade of three shaku five to seven sun a hilt of three shaku. Hilts beyond three shaku suit only extremely long blades; three shaku is transmitted as the limit. Construction and handling are referred out to tsutae-gaki (伝え書). Practice specimens (koma 248): blade of three shaku three sun, three shaku five sun, or four shaku, with a three-shaku hilt.

Mounted handling (fukugen). Because the hilt is long and the weapon differs from a tachi, it 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”¹⁵). 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.¹⁶

What the section is doing. Read together, these passages are an argument about a name rather than a report of one. The material conditions of hedge erosion are all present in the one section: multiple designations with no fixed referent — nagamaki, nakamaki, nodachi, tsukadachi for what may be a single object; an author who marks his own choice as a choice, 「おのれが傳には 長卷といふなり」, in my transmission it is called nagamaki; two definitions, the etymological and the one implied by the mountings list, that are compatible but not identical; and conjectural verbs throughout. What later readers inherit from a passage of this kind is a definition. What the text offers is a preference, plus an argument for it. The distinction is worth holding onto, because the modern disagreement over what nagamaki denotes is conducted in definitions, and this is one of the sources it is conducted from.

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The long-hafted sword in the wider work

The two sections of kan 1 are not the whole of what the work says on the subject. Four further passages, three of them in the fukugen, bear on it directly, and together they make the Kenpō ryakki a usable witness for a terminological question that remains contested — what nagamaki denotes, and how it stands to ōdachi and nodachi.

The term within the compilation

A search of the full OCR of the 1915 compilation returns 長卷 eleven times, every occurrence within the Kenpō ryakki (koma 233, 238, 239, 248, 269), and 中卷 once, also within it (koma 278). 大太刀 by contrast occurs twenty-two times, distributed across at least five distinct works — Honchō bugei shōden, Gekiken sōdan at three separate points, Honshiki sanmondō, and the Kenpō ryakki. 野太刀 is likewise confined to the Kenpō ryakki.

Within this corpus, then, nagamaki is not part of the shared vocabulary of Edo bugei writing, while ōdachi is. The result is bounded rather than categorical: the compilation is a 1915 selection weighted toward lineage history and doctrinal texts, and its silence could reflect genre rather than currency. The relevant test corpora would be gunki and sword-connoisseurship literature, which this compilation does not represent. But the finding is consistent with Sugane’s own claim at koma 239 — 古書に此名見えず, the name is not to be found in old books.

One name, several objects — fukugen, koma 278

The fukugen’s antiquarian catalogue of tachi types opens its ○野太刀 entry by stating a homonym problem outright:

この物の名は一つにして二品あり、一には平鞘の太刀なり、是は野劔と書て、〔の〕太刀と讀むことなり、二には軍陣に用るものなり、一名を長太刀ともいふ也、後世長まきともいふなり、此もの本名は野太刀なるべし、大太刀・野太刀・長太刀・長まきともいふ也、又後世ところによりてはゑ太刀ともいふかた有り、ゑ太刀は柄太刀なるべし、又中卷といふかたもあり

The name is one and the objects two: a flat-scabbard tachi written 野劔, and the weapon used in the field. Of the second, the passage states that its original name is presumably nodachi, that ōdachi, nodachi, nagatachi and nagamaki all name it, that some regions say edachi (taken to be 柄太刀), and that nakamaki is also current. Nagamaki is expressly identified as a later name — 後世長まきともいふなり.

This confirms and sharpens the kan 1 statement that the object is 大太刀へ長柄をかけたる, an ōdachi with a long hilt fitted. The distinction so often drawn between nagamaki and ōdachi or nodachi has no purchase on this witness: for Sugane the terms share a referent, and the interest lies in which of them is original.

Carriage and displacement — kan 1, koma 242

The ○をひ太刀 entry names the two together in a single clause: かの野太刀長まきなどいふものは、多く負ひたることなり — the things called nodachi and nagamaki were for the most part carried slung across the back rather than slung at the waist.

The same entry supplies a cause for their disappearance from ordinary carriage, and it is not weight or unwieldiness: 古は太刀のはたらきを旨としたるに、後世には槍に一二の功名なども出きたれば、人々槍を扱ふなれば — anciently tachi work was the main thing, but in later ages distinction came to be won with the spear, so men took up the spear, and with it both hakizoe and oi-dachi carriage lapsed. Koma 271 gives the mounting-side counterpart: 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.

The same entry also fixes the size vocabulary, and with it the reading of a term used above: 太刀も長きを大太刀といひ、短きを小太刀といひ、其中ばなるを中半太刀といへば.

Wrapping, grip, and the makidachi — fukugen, koma 270

The section on field mountings defines the wrapped tachi and states its purpose:

軍中へはくべき太刀は、卷太刀を本義とはすることなり、卷太刀といふは、柄を卷き渡りも卷たるをいふなり … 柄を卷ことは手だまりのために卷なり

Wrapping the hilt is for tedamari (手だまり; the feel and security of the grip), and the wrapped tachi is the proper form for the field, plain ray-skin being for the castle. The same passage rejects a name-drift: 此太刀を近世さやまきの太刀といふはあやまりなり、太刀に鞘卷といふものなし、鞘卷は刀なり.

This closes the etymological loop left open in kan 1. If wrapping is generic to field-mounted tachi and exists for grip, then what the name nagamaki isolates is not the wrapping but its length — which is precisely the criterion the mountings taxonomy uses (長柄よりも又長き). The two definitions given in kan 1 are therefore one criterion stated twice, not two competing ones.

Against the antiquarians — fukugen, koma 271

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 armour, hitatare and ōkuchi, and the tachi of famous men — and the response is blunt: that runs counter to the intent of it.¹⁷ 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.¹⁸

That an archaic weapon is taught by someone who states this position makes the testimony more useful rather than less: it is not a revivalist’s reconstruction.

Modern Interpretations

Several positions in the current literature can be set against these passages.

That nagamaki denotes a heavy ō-naginata. This definition is not supported here. The taxonomy places the object among swords throughout and defines it by hilt. Where the fukugen compares the handling to a naginata, it withdraws the comparison in the next clause: once one is accustomed to handling it, it differs in no respect from a tachi.¹⁹ “The naginata resemblance is a beginner’s approximation, not a classification.” The criticism of over-built fittings at koma 238 concerns tsuba, scabbard and hilt fittings and dōgane on ordinary swords and says nothing of nagamaki.

That the nagamaki is a blade on a hilt of some four shaku. Contradicted. Hilts run two shaku three or four sun on a three-shaku blade and three shaku on a blade of three shaku five to seven sun, with 先づは三尺をかぎりとは傳へたり. The hilt does not exceed the blade; overall length falls between roughly five and seven shaku.

That nagamaki stands in contrast to ōdachi or nodachi. Contradicted directly at koma 278 and 242, where the terms share a referent.

That the ōdachi was a field weapon that simply fell out of use. The work says instead the ōdachi was displaced by the spear in the economy of battlefield distinction, with a corresponding change in what was worn after Ōnin.

That the nagamaki was an easier weapon, adopted for its imposing appearance or taught to those unequal to the spear. The reverse is stated: “Without constant practice, the nagamaki is difficult to handle,” and “merely hearing or seeing things is not enough to accomplish any real work.”²⁰ Its role in the fukugen is mounted work and the engagement against the spear, where the advantage claimed for it is reach — “length is particularly advantageous.”²¹

3. Conditioning — yōjō (養生)

Kan 2, koma 246.

Short and programmatic. The opening prescription is 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;²² should the emergency come and no man be equal to it, nothing can be done.

The polemical core is explicit: the warrior’s nurture is the obverse of what present-day physicians argue.²³ 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.

The section closes on an inversion of the Su Qin (蘇秦) awl-in-the-thigh topos: 股に錐せんよりも心に錐して — rather than putting the awl to the thigh, put the awl to the mind.

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Solo practice, musha shugyō, and the duties of the office (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

The entry begins historically. Formerly musha shugyō was constantly in men’s minds: one travelled, 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 travelling, a substitute programme 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.²⁴

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.²⁵

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.²⁶

What follows is a checklist, given as one or two instances out of many: examine one’s own form for kuse-yamai; 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,²⁷ 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.²⁸

The sword in the exercise of office — koma 251–255

A block of seven consecutive entries treats what a man in service may actually be required to do with a sword. It is the clearest indication in the work that the curriculum was not conceived as a sporting one.

Shimono and hanashi-uchi (仕物・放し打ち, koma 251). Shimono is being ordered by one’s lord to cut a man down, whether in the lord’s presence or by going on ahead. If one blunders and is cut instead, the failure becomes the lord’s misjudgement, and not one’s own affair alone²⁹ — so the preparation must be made in advance. The method: state the reason to the man, and in the instant between the words ending and not ending, draw and strike (其言葉をいひ終ると終らざるきわに、ぬきかけてうつべきこと). This is explicitly not a declared duel; where one addresses an opponent, both draw and cross, the thing is different. Old transmissions on it survive because 古には常に有しことなれば, it was formerly routine.

Hanashi-uchi is putting one’s own household retainer to death by one’s own hand for misconduct, without judicial binding and beheading. The warning is practical: performed in the garden, some flee, and some take up whatever is at hand and resist. Even where there is no resistance, letting one escape is a great disgrace.

Cornered fugitives (籠り者, koma 252). A man who has done something impermissible and holed up in a shrine, temple or storehouse, keeping under cover and coming out at those who approach, cannot be taken without finding an approach and going in. Killing him while taking a wound oneself is useless and shameful. The approach varies with the place and cannot be fixed in advance, which is exactly why it must be studied in advance: 時にのぞみていかはゞせんとてまよひなどするはたらきにては打ちがたし — the working of a man who hesitates over what to do when the moment comes will not take him.

Todome (koma 252). The coup is treated as evidentiary — giving it is the proof.³⁰ It is therefore to be given in a killing done under a lord’s command; in private matters where there is cause; and in vendetta. In unfrequented places it may be given for the sake of later proof. Servants and the like are simply cut down. Giving it where one should cut down, or omitting it where it is required, is a great disgrace.

Seppuku (koma 252–253). The typology divides on guilt.

Guiltless: remonstrative death where admonition was not accepted; junshi; death in the field; at a castle’s fall; as a captive in enemy territory. Guilty: by the lord’s command; for one’s own inescapable fault; and, having unavoidably killed a man and being in truth blameless but unable to let the matter pass, cutting one’s belly privately without waiting for the lord’s word.

Guilty seppuku is a formal proceeding with a custodian (預り主), and the forms differ by period and by house, so no single account can be given — but the principal must know them as well as the custodian. Guiltless seppuku in the field, in a besieged castle, or in captivity has no ceremony at all, since the object is the display of courage: 十字にも又すだれにも切て、いかにもいさぎよく、晴やかに花々しくするをほまれとはする — cutting crosswise or in sudare fashion, done cleanly, openly and conspicuously, is what counts as honour.

Kaishaku (koma 253). The entry opens with an etymological digression. Kaishaku means assistance generally; because assisting at a warrior’s belly-cutting is the gravest form of it, the word narrowed until it names only this. Parallels are offered — 調度 came to mean bow and arrow, 具足 to mean armour, 腰物 and 大小 to mean the paired swords — each by the same process of a general term collapsing onto its most weighted instance.

The types: appointed by the lord where the seppuku is by command; requested by the custodian; or assigned by the custodian to his own retainer. Selection is by competence, since the kaishaku must handle the whole affair from beginning to end without omission. Being passed over and seeing the office go to another is いかにもくやしくもはらだたしくもはづかしきことなり.

Private cases include requests from the principal or from his kin, and tsumebara where one has another cut and acts as kaishaku directly. The entry notes that kaishaku did not exist in high antiquity but has been universal since the middle ages.

Judicial execution (死罪, koma 254). Binding and beheading is 下ざまのもののわざ, the work of low persons, and one might expect not to need it — but it is done with a sword, and one may be asked about it. The response is a statement of method: 尊きわざいやしきことも、なべてつばらに其次第をわかちて、其ゆへをもわざをも傳ふべしとおもへばなり — noble techniques and base ones alike are to be set out in full, in order, with their reasons and their execution transmitted. The passage is a further attestation of 清音 in the third person.

Taking heads (koma 254). Mounted, the man is pulled against the front of the saddle and the head taken with the koshigatana. Against the war tales: 古戰記などに記したるごとく… いとも安くこともなげに、畑のくだ物など取る如くには切がたし — it is not done as easily and casually as the old records describe, like picking fruit in a field. The neck is thin but has bone and sinew: easy to sever with a stroke, hard to saw through. The nodowa compounds it — helmet and hōate may come away of themselves but the nodowa does not, and cases are recorded of a man sawing repeatedly without effect because it was still in place. Sugane attributes the tales’ ease to the fact that in former times everyone had seen it done and so nobody bothered to explain it, with the result that later ages do not know.³¹

Testing (居物だめし and 居物のしざま, koma 254–255). Two further entries treat testing blades on bodies and the manner of doing so.

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4. 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.

This is argument for shiai is made on physiological rather than doctrinal grounds — a point of some interest given the date.³²

5. Targets of cuts and thrusts

Two distinct treatments, which should not be merged: 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 organised by mono no gu (物具; armour) against suhada (素肌; bare skin).

Against armour. 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 armoured men being cut down are explained as reflecting armour 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 armour 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 armour 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 armoured 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: centre, 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 centre 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.³³

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

6. Kiai — 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 judgement 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, notably as the warrant for the three-shaku-three-sun practice sword and for the three-grade kamae.³⁴

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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.³⁵ 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. Armour 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.³⁶

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, and within them 上 is the base, with 中 and 下 practised 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.³⁷ 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,³⁸ three thrusts within that, the thrust just above the centre 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 criticised 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.³⁹

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.⁴⁰ 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 colour shows in the point and in the body — what shows outside the mind is a thing to be ashamed of.⁴¹

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 centre 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 — 劔をめぐらすむねをよく得たりとはいひがたし without that return. 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.

The four tome and hazushi.⁴² 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 practised, 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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7. 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.⁴³

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, savouring 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 armour, 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.

An attribution pattern

Sections (c) and (d) both close on a claim of originality in nearly identical wording:⁴⁴

“This was something never done before, but recently, seeing me do it, quite a few others have begun to imitate the practice.”⁴⁵

and

“This, too, was something not otherwise done, yet there were those who observed the practice and imitated it.”⁴⁶

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Notes