[ glossary · methodology · references ]
Details on research methods and conventions for the Inner Dharma writing project.
Inner Dharma is a writing project concerned with traditional martial arts and culture, especially my practice of classical kenjutsu and its relationship to internal martial arts training and Sino-Japanese philosophy and religion. I hope these notes are of interest to the broader community, independent of my more personal essays and reflections.
General Conventions
Some details on methods:
- As automated tools have matured (e.g., Gemini, Claude, etc.), I have been able to access more primarily language sources and historical documents associated to older martial traditions and explore both the arts and their historical practitioners in some detail.
- I have standardized in 2026 on using Claude Opus and Fable when available. AI is used for proofreading, federated search and collation of results, machine translation, and in maintaining the code underneath this site.
- Historical searches are based on primary documents available from Japanese libraries and universities online. Often images are availabe, which then can be read with machine tools.
- In some cases, full-text corpora are available (e.g., Buddhist Canon) to search directly, in others OCR is provided by the institution and can be quickly checked and then individual folios examined direclty in more detail.
Romanization
- Terms are defined with kanji at first use. Please consult the glossary, which we do our best to update.
- Words in common usage may have their kanji elided.
- Mandarin is written using Pinyin conventions.
- We standardize on using Jikishinkage as the romanization of 直心影流 but several variants exist.
Historical Naming Conventions
Historical Japanese names generally have several portions or variants:
- gō (号; art-name / sobriquet)
- imina (諱; true given name / “taboo name”)
- tsūshō (通称; common name / by-name) — the everyday name plus any titular suffix, e.g. Shōbee-no-jō (庄兵衛尉).
The gō is a self-chosen style-name, usually ending in -sai (斎; abstinence/ritual purity), -an (庵) and the like; the master’s “studio name.” In this house, Katsuzensai (活然斎), Shinpansai (真帆斎), Seisai (静斎), Ittokusai (一徳斎).
The imina, the real personal name, used formally and posthumously but avoided in direct address in life (hence “taboo”). This is the element carrying the Naganuma generational character 郷 (sato): Kunisato (国郷), Tsunasato (綱郷), and so on.
The tsūshō is the common name, the everyday name plus any titular suffix, e.g. Shōbee-no-jō (庄兵衛尉).
A full name would read tsūshō + gō + uji + imina. For example, Naganuma Shōbee-no-jō (tsūshō) Katsuzensai (gō) Fujiwara Tsunasato (imina).
Voicing pre-Meiji names
Dakuten (濁点; voicing mark) and handakuten (半濁点) were not obligatory before the Meiji orthographic reforms, and Edo-period kana and furigana routinely left voicing unmarked. An unmarked or singly-attested older reading therefore underdetermines voicing and is not evidence for a voiceless value; where a name’s reading is contested, the lineage transmission governs, and a modern source’s voiced or voiceless gloss is recorded as that source’s editorial marking, not as an independent attestation.
A major example in our work is that 男谷 is read Odani by transmission, and a modern おたに gloss is treated as an anachronistic marking rather than a variant reading.
Links to content organized by high-level theme are available on the front page.