Fujikawa Yashirōemon Chikayoshi (藤川弥司郎右衛門近義; 1726-1798), the tenth-generation head of Jikishinkage-ryū, whose Edo town-dōjō at Shitaya Chōjamachi (下谷長者町) opened in Hōreki 6 (1756), was reputed to have three thousand students and to have produced Akaishi Gunjibei Fusuke alongside Sakai Ryōsuke (Nakabayashi Shinji, n.d.).
Nakabayashi’s encyclopedia treatment frames him as the senior disciple of Tsunasato who continued the orthodox Naganuma line, before opening the Shitaya Chōjamachi town-dōjō in 1756. In the dōtō register his formal style is Fujikawa Yashirōemon-no-jō Fujiwara Chikayoshi (藤川弥司郎右衛門尉藤原近義). (Kashima-shinden Jikishinkage-ryū Isseikai, n.d.).
Kurakome (2013) details the formation of the Fujikawa-ha, noting that Fujikawa Yashirōemon Chikayoshi entered Naganuma Kunisato’s school and then after Kunisato’s retirement trained under Naganuma Shōbei. He opened a dōjō at Shitaya Chōjamachi. When he died, his adopted son Chikanori took over the dōjō, but died shortly thereafter.
The adopted son-in-law Chikanori married Chikayoshi’s daughter (fn. 264), so two young heirs were left after Chikanori’s sudden death — Chikatsune and Seisai. They were not yet adult at the time, so Akaishi Gunjibei Fusuke served as guardian to the brothers.1
Fujikawa Seisai (藤川整斎) is the author of Reiken ryakukai (1857, Tokyo National Museum) and Seisai zuihitsu (National Archives). Karukome notes that the Seisai zuihitsu (整斎随筆, National Archives) records, as a kikigaki, a description of a match by Seisai’s grandfather Fujikawa Yashirōemon Chikayoshi, through which the character of Fujikawa-ha matches can be glimpsed.
Sakai Ryōsa
Sakai Ryōsa / Ryōsuke (酒井良佐 / 酒井良佑) was a Fujikawa-ha swordsman whose match is described in Shimizu Rekishū’s Ariya nashiya, and gives the actual line: “Ryōsa, with a great shout, [struck] from jōdan toward the crown of the head…” — i.e. the same upper-stance, striking-from-above style the school is known for. The source is the Edo essay Ariya nashiya by Shimizu Rekishū, reprinted in Zoku Nihon zuihitsu taisei vol. 8. His given name is written 良佐 by Karukome but 良佑 (glossed Ryōsuke) by Kotobank
References
General references are available, the disseration and monograph of Karukome as most relevant to the above. Readers can find more details there.
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End Notes
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According to Ishigaki, Chikanori was brought in from the Kōno (河野) family of the same domain and married to Chikayoshi’s daughter. ↩
