Heki-ryū (日置流) is the foundational tradition of Japanese foot-archery (歩射). It is traced to Heki Danjō Masatsugu (日置弾正正次), a late-fifteenth-century figure whose innovative practical shooting is credited with reviving Japanese archery; he transmitted the art in 1494 (Meiō 3) to Yoshida Kōzuke-no-suke Shigekata (吉田上野介重賢) of Ōmi, whose house carried it forward as Yoshida-family archery, and from that main Yoshida line the Sekka-ha, Dōsetsu-ha and other branches split off, supplying archery instructors to daimyō and shogun through the Sengoku and Edo periods. The Sekka-ha (雪荷派) itself arose in the mid-sixteenth century out of a succession crisis: when Shigekata’s successor Yoshida Shigemasa (重政, Izumo-no-kami, gō Ichiō) fell into conflict with his lord Rokkaku Yoshikata over surrendering the family transmission, he — fearing the teaching would be lost — gave it to his fourth son Shigekatsu (重勝) and had him move to Kyoto, and Shigekatsu’s line came to be called the Sekka-ha (雪荷, Sekka, being his gō; the parallel line that stayed with the heir became the Izumo-ha). The Sekka-ha is said to have preserved much of the Yoshida-ryū’s technical substance and produced eminent adherents such as Gamō Ujisato and Hosokawa Yūsai. It put down particularly deep roots in western Japan and Kyushu — the milieu of Sakai Hikotarō, under whom Kawashima trained, and of Sasaki Kosui, the Fukuoka Sekka-ha man who led the 1929 Butokukai touring party.
Archery in the Butokukai. The Dai Nippon Butokukai gathered archery, like swordsmanship and grappling, into a single cross-school division — kyūjutsu, reframed in the period as kyūdō (弓道) — but what was taught remained the substance of the surviving ryūha rather than any one “Butokukai style.” Those schools fell into two broad currents: the ceremonial Ogasawara-ryū (小笠原流), the 礼射 tradition of front-raising (正面打起し), and the practical Heki-ryū lineages (印西派, 雪荷派, 竹林派 and others), the 武射 tradition of oblique-raising (斜面打起し); alongside them the modern Honda-ryū (本多流), founded by Honda Toshizane out of the Heki-ryū Owari Chikurin-ha and adopting front-raising, became enormously influential in the university-and-Butokukai era and underlies much of the eventual standard form. The Butokukai did try to impose unity on this patchwork: in 1934 (Shōwa 9) representatives of the various schools and the Butokukai archery-division officers met at headquarters and, after fierce debate, enacted the “Kyūdō Yōsoku” (弓道要則) — but it drew sustained criticism, was mocked in the press as a “chimera shooting method” (鵺的射法), and was followed in 1944 by a “Kyūdō Kyōhan” (弓道教範) that re-admitted the conventional front- and oblique-raising methods; genuine standardization, the 射法八節, came only after the war under the Nihon Kyūdō Renmei from 1949. The practical upshot for your figures: a man holding Butokukai kyūdō rank
References
Heki-ryū and the Sekka-ha
- Inazu Yūko (稲津裕子), “日置流弓術の起源：吉田重賢とその祖先について” (The origins of Heki-ryū archery: Yoshida Shigekata and his ancestors), Supōtsu-shi Kenkyū (スポーツ史研究 / Japan Journal of Sport History) No. 27 (2014), p. 17 — https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjshjb/27/0/27_17/_pdf/-char/ja.
- All-Japan Kyūdō Federation (全日本弓道連盟), “弓道の歴史” — https://www.kyudo.jp/howto/history.html.
- Sources differ on whether it was Yoshida Shigekata or his successor Shigemasa who made the grant to Shigekatsu; the Kansei Chōshū Shokafu genealogy is itself confused on the elder Yoshida names.
