From the Kōbusho to the Butokukai: Swordsmanship in Transition (opens in a new tab), Inner Dharma, 2026. 405 pages. The late Edo period Kōbusho, the martial academy of the Tokugawa, its swordsmen and their styles, and the institutions that followed it into the modern era.1
In this work, I examine details of many late Edo practitioners of Jikishinkage-ryū, the bakumatsu Kōbusho many of them taught at, and important traditions that had lasting impact as Japan modernized, including important 19th and 20th century Japanese martial figures.
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These volumes attempt to be precise but are not academic histories. Instead they are close readings of historical sources. In doing so, we relate the statements made about many older martial traditions by their witnesses and practitioners, but each surviving faction or group will have their own in-tradition orthodoxy ↩
