Register record
Identity & authority
- Disambiguation
- Hōzōin-ryū spearman of the Kōbusho, pupil of the instructor Komai Hangorō, who beat the academy's teaching staff so regularly with a foot-entanglement that the complaints never ceased, and was himself later appointed kyōjuhō sewa-kokoroe.
- Reliability
- No dates, parentage beyond the roster entry, or later career are recorded. Everything here rests on the Kōbusho institutional history and the Rikugun rekishi roster; he has no entry in the standard biographical dictionaries.
- Attestation
- corroboration: external
Names
| type | kanji | romaji | reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| myoji | 井戸 | Ido | いど |
| tsusho | 金平 | Kinpei | 〔きんぺい〕 |
Dates
- Floruit
- Ansei–Bunkyū (the Kōbusho years); described as about thirty at the time of the bouts below
Origin & status
- Status
- 小普請組 小笠原彌八郎支配; third son of Shin'emon (新右衛門三男)
- Offices
- 講武所槍術教授方世話心得 (sōjutsu kyōjuhō sewa-kokoroe)
Lineage & parentage
- Father
- Ido Shin'emon (井戸新右衛門) — he is entered on the roster as the third son
- Teacher
- Komai Hangorō (駒井半五郎)
- Attestation
- external
Summary
Ido Kinpei (井戸金平) was a Hōzōin-ryū spearman attached to the Kōbusho, a pupil of the instructor Komai Hangorō, and about thirty years old in the years when the academy made bouting rather than kata the substance of its practice. He is worth a record for a reason that has nothing to do with rank: the fullest surviving account of what actually happened on the Kōbusho floor is an account of his matches. He appears on the roster in the sewa-kokoroe tier of the spear department, entered as of the kobushingumi under Ogasawara Yahachirō and as the third son of Shin’emon.1
What he did
His method was a deliberate refusal of the decorous exchange. With only about two shaku of the spear’s point showing, he would press inside his opponent’s hands, and on the beat of the thrust take him down with ashigarami (足搦; a foot-entanglement).2
Every instructor lost to it, and the complaints never stopped. Each time, Kinpei answered by speaking of what decides victory and defeat in a real fight, and would not entertain the objection at all — which made him, in the chronicler’s phrase, very hard going for the teaching staff. The narrator adds, fairly, that leaving the ashigarami trick aside, his actual skill was no ordinary thing.
The match with Yoshida Katsunosuke
The episode that shows what his presence cost the academy is his challenge to the instructor Yoshida Katsunosuke. Yoshida — himself a Hōzōin-ryū man and a pupil of Inō Ichiunsai — was challenged to a bout and, as the source puts it without ceremony, had of course no prospect of winning. The matter was not resolved on the floor. The superintendent, Kugai Inaba-no-kami, stepped in and talked the thing down, and it was only just got through without an incident.2
That is the point of the anecdote. A sewa-kokoroe could beat a shihan-yaku so plainly that the academy’s senior officer had to intervene to protect the rank rather than let the result stand.
The match with Takahashi, and the end of the technique
Kinpei was afterwards appointed kyōju-kata sewa-kokoroe, and by the chronicler’s account wielded considerable authority in the post. Then, on the twenty-seventh of the fourth month (the source gives no year), Takahashi Kenzaburō — the later Deishū — took up duty, already spoken of as the finest spear in the realm. Kinpei challenged him at once, on the reasoning that to beat the man called first in the realm was to become first in the realm himself, and went in intending the usual technique.
Takahashi had heard about the ashigarami in advance. After a crossing or two of the spears Kinpei prostrated himself and said it had been a most obliging bout; and it is related that from that day the foot-entanglement was given up.3
The school’s own telling of this bout, in which Deishū beats Kinpei using Kinpei’s own technique against him, is the more satisfying story. The period account is plainer: Takahashi simply knew what was coming.
Notes
