The Kōbusho (講武所), the shogunate’s martial academy, opened in 1856 and was absorbed into the Rikugunsho (陸軍所) ten years later. Its instructors were bakufu officials, so they were printed, year by year, in the commercial registers of office-holders called bukan (武鑑). Those registers are now online. This note shows three documents for two Jikishinkage-ryū men, then follows three names through the registers as an example of what such a search looks like, so that readers can see what the sources look like and how far each can be trusted.
The commands used, for those who want to repeat the search or look for someone else, are in a separate note on method.
Three documents
We examine records for Odani Seiichirō (opens in a new tab) (男谷精一郎), Sakakibara Kenkichi (opens in a new tab) (榊原鍵吉), and Amano Shōshō (opens in a new tab) (天野将曹). Each links to his record on jikishinkageryu.org.
Odani Seiichirō in the register of 1860
Odani Seiichirō among the Kōbusho directors, 1860
This is one cell of a printed page. The upper name, in the large hand used for the holder of a post, is 男谷精一郎. Above it is his crest; beside it in small type are his stipend and residence; below it are the spear and the 馬 (horse) mark that show the regalia his rank allowed in procession. The second name in the cell belongs to the next director. The page it comes from is shown further down.
Amano Shōshō’s appointment card, 1863
Appointment card of Amano Shōshō, Bunkyū 3 (1863)
A handwritten slip of the kind the bakufu kept for each retainer. It is headed 高貳百俵 (a stipend of two hundred hyō), is dated 文久三亥年九月 (the ninth month of 1863), records his appointment as kenjutsu kyōju-kata (剣術教授方; sword instructor) and is signed 天野將曹. It gives his age as forty-five, which puts his birth about 1819, and names his grandfather and father as retainers of a daimyō house, so that he entered direct shogunal service in his own generation. Amano’s record discusses it further.
A match ledger of 1851
The third document records gekiken bouts headed Yorihito kazu shiai shōbu-tsuki (寄人数試合勝負附), dated to the fifth month of Kaei 4 (1851), listing pairs of fencers by school — Odani, Chiba, Saitō, Momonoi, Ōishi — with the points each took.
Amano Shōshō appears in it, among other bouts against the second Ōishi Susumu, seven points to five with one simultaneous strike. It is printed in Uryū Tōkatsu (瓜生等勝), ed., Shin shiryō Kijima Matabē monjo (新資料 来嶋又兵衛文書), which the National Diet Library holds as pid 12230039 (opens in a new tab). The page was photographed and posted by a Japanese researcher (opens in a new tab) online.
The sources
| Year | Source | Where | Kōbusho section |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1856, 1860 | Rikugun rekishi (陸軍歴史), vol. 2, 1889: rosters copied from bakufu records | NDL 988906 (opens in a new tab) | koma 96–108 (the review of 1856), 125–132 (night duty, 1860), 147–152 (appointments) |
| 1858–1868 | Zoku Tokugawa jikki (続徳川実紀), vols. 4 and 5, 1906–1907: the shogunate’s daily chronicle | NDL 773008 (opens in a new tab), 773009 (opens in a new tab) | by date; see the separate article |
| 1860 | Ansei bukan (安政武鑑), officials | NDL 14950262 (opens in a new tab) | koma 68–72 |
| 1861 | Taisei bukan (大成武鑑), vol. 3, part 1 | NDL 2547105 (opens in a new tab) | koma 73–77 |
| 1862 | Taisei bukan, officials | NDL 2547098 (opens in a new tab) | koma 76–80 |
| 1863 | Shūchin bukan (袖珍武鑑), a pocket edition | Waseda University Library (opens in a new tab) | not yet located |
| 1864 | Taisei bukan, officials | NDL 2547156 (opens in a new tab) | koma 81–84 |
| 1865 | Taisei bukan, vol. 3, part 1 | NDL 2547163 (opens in a new tab) | koma 23–28 |
| 1866 | Taisei bukan, officials | NDL 2602907 (opens in a new tab) | koma 21–26 |
| 1867 | Taisei bukan, officials | NDL 2547111 (opens in a new tab) | koma 26–31 |
A koma (コマ) is one camera frame, normally an opening of two pages, and it is the unit the library’s viewer counts in. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2547156/1/82 opens frame 82 of that volume. The right-hand page is the earlier one.
The bukan were commercial publications, revised and reissued every year from the same blocks. A name that left office was cut out and a new one let in, which is why some cells are blank and why the lettering differs from cell to cell. The names are in a cursive hand. Rikugun rekishi is a Meiji compilation in movable type, far easier to read, but it reproduces only the rosters its editors chose.
These are three kinds of source, and they answer different questions. A register gives the holders of each office in one year, and nothing below instructor rank. The chronicle, the Zoku Tokugawa jikki, records what was done at the castle day by day: it names a man when he was appointed, rewarded, received in audience, retired or punished, with the date, and it reaches men of very modest rank, clerks and trainees among them; but it does not list the ordinary membership of a corps. A companion article describes it and gives the Kōbusho men it names in 1861. The third kind is the personnel slip of an individual retainer, such as Amano’s card above. A search for a person does best when it asks all three.
The National Diet Library’s digitized run of the Taisei bukan has no edition for 1863, so that year has to come from another library. The pocket edition at Waseda is complete, but its pages are small and worn and I have not yet found the Kōbusho entry in it.
Searches
Odani Seiichirō
Odani appears twice in the register of 1860: among the directors (同頭取), and as the head instructor of swordsmanship (同師範役 劔術).
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1860, koma 68, left page. Odani is in the lower half of the page, under the star-shaped crest; this is the cell shown above.
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1860, koma 69. Right page: 同師範役 劔術, with 男谷精一郎 beneath his crest. Left page: the sword instructors continue, then the spear.
The same blocks serve in 1861 and 1862, with small changes.
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1861, koma 74.
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1862, koma 77. The small × marks beside some names are a feature of this edition.
By 1864 he has been promoted. The sword instructors are now headed by Matsudaira Kazusa-no-suke (松平上總介) as associate, with Toda Saburōbei (戸田三郎兵衛) beside him — likely the Toda Hachirōzaemon (opens in a new tab) (戸田八郎左衛門) of the earlier registers under a new name taken on his promotion, since the stipend of six hundred koku and the residence are the same, and the man whose diary Enomoto Shōji (榎本鐘司) used in his analysis of the Kōbusho personnel rosters; the register of 1865 gives him a court title — and Odani stands at the head of the academy’s section as 男谷下總守, with the mark 並 for associate magistrate (奉行並) and, as I read the small type beneath, the ninth month of Bunkyū 2 (1862).
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1864, koma 81, right page: 講武所御奉行. 男谷下總守 is in the lower row.
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1864, koma 82, right page: 同師範役 劔術, with 松平上總介 (並) and 戸田三郎兵衛 (六百石) in the left-hand column.
The night-duty roster of 1860 in Rikugun rekishi, drawn up after the Sakuradamon incident, has him at the head of the first sword division.
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Rikugun rekishi, koma 127 (p. 25): 壹番類 劍術師範役 男谷精一郎.
Sakakibara Kenkichi
Sakakibara is among the sword instructors seconded to the academy (同教授方出役) in every edition from 1860 to 1864, and a head instructor from 1865. In the pages above he is on the left-hand page for 1860, 1861 and 1862, written 榊原鍵吉 in the cursive of the block. In 1864 he is still there:
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1864, koma 82, left page. The right-hand columns are the sword instructors (同教授方出役): 榊原鍵吉 is in the second column of names, and at the foot of the third I read 天野将曹. The spear instructors (鎗術) begin in the middle of the page.
From 1865 the section is printed near the front of the volume, among the new army offices, and no longer where it stood in 1860 to 1864; a search that looks only in the old place will conclude, wrongly, that the academy has gone. The register of 1867 shows it after its reorganization. It now reads: the Kōbusho magistrates (講武所御奉行), the head of the Yūgekitai (遊撃隊頭) and its officers, then the sword and spear instructors, then the instructors of the Rikugunsho (陸軍所教授方). The Yūgekitai was the guard corps formed from the academy’s instructors and men; its head in this edition is Imahori (opens in a new tab) Toyotarō (今堀登代太郎), one of the sword instructors of the earlier registers.
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1867, koma 27. Right page: 遊撃隊頭, with 今堀登代太郎. Left page: 遊撃隊調方頭取. Most cells are empty: the office was new.
Sakakibara had by then risen. He is one of the head sword instructors (同劔術師範役) in the editions of 1865, 1866 and 1867, in the last of them with Inoue Hachirō (opens in a new tab), Mitsuhashi Torazō (opens in a new tab), Momonoi Shunzō, Iba Gunbei and Minato Shinpachirō.
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1867, koma 29, right page. Right half: the head sword instructors, with 榊原鍵吉 in the lower row. Left half: 同劔術教授方, where I read 天野将曹 in the second column.
In Rikugun rekishi he is in the roster presented at the shogunal review of 1856 (koma 96, the page shown at the head of the roster article) and in the night-duty roster of 1860:
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Rikugun rekishi, koma 128 (p. 27): 三番類, 教授方 榊原鍵吉.
Amano Shōshō
Amano’s card dates his appointment to the ninth month of 1863. He is accordingly absent from the registers of 1860 to 1862 and present in 1864, in the page shown above, with 二百表 beside his name: the two hundred hyō of the card. He is still a sword instructor in 1865, 1866 and 1867. Here a document from a private hand and a printed register agree on a man, a post, a stipend and a date, which is as much as one can ask of either.
