Iba Sōtarō [伊庭惣太郎]

Register record

Identity & authority

Attestation

corroboration: —

Names

type	kanji	romaji	reading
myoji		Iba
tsusho		Sōtarō

The Kōbusho’s Iba Sōtarō (伊庭惣太郎) is the ninth head of Shingyōtō-ryū, formally Iba Gunbei Hidetoshi (伊庭軍兵衛秀俊, 1822–1886; sobriquet Jōshinshi, 常心子). Originally a disciple named Haga Sōtarō (垪和惣太郎), he so excelled among the students at the Renbukan that the eighth head, Hidenari, named him heir over his own son, Iba Hachirō, in keeping with the school’s practice of merit-based adoption; he duly succeeded as the ninth head and served as a Kōbusho kenjutsu master-instructor. He should not be confused with the tenth head, the homophonous Iba Sōtarō (伊庭想太郎, 1851–1907), who was Hidenari’s fourth son. Hidenari’s biological son, the celebrated one-armed swordsman Iba Hachirō Hidesato (伊庭八郎秀穎, 1844–1869), fought with the Yūgeki-tai (遊撃 隊; commando corps) and died in the Boshin War at Hakodate; he was thus the ninth head’s younger (adoptive) brother, not his predecessor.

The institutional history of the Kōbusho explains how he came to serve there at all. When the academy was founded the summons went to the eighth head, Hidenari, who declined it and sent in his place Sōtarō Hidetoshi together with two nephews — Mitsuhashi Torazō and Minato Nobuhachirō, both sons of Hidenari’s elder brother. Sōtarō then succeeded to the headship and took the house name Gunbei (「惣太郎は家督を繼いで軍兵衛と成り」), rising from kyōju-kata to shihan-yaku, and from okuzume to field commander of the Yūgeki-tai, under Takahashi Deishū as tōdori. At the Tokugawa transfer he moved to Yokosuka in Tōtōmi, afterwards returning to Tokyo, where he died in Meiji 19 (1886).¹

This is worth stating plainly, because Gunbei (軍兵衛) is the Iba house succession-name and not a personal one — Hidenari is himself styled Iba Gunbei Hidenari (伊庭軍兵衛秀業) in the same source. An “Iba Gunbei” on a Kōbusho roster is therefore this man, Sōtarō, and not his adoptive father; accounts that place a Gunbei and a Sōtarō side by side on the staff have doubled one person.