Kubota Sugane [窪田清音]

Summary

Kubota Sugane (窪田清音 (opens in a new tab), 1791–1867) was a hatamoto military scientist, swordsman and prolific writer on the martial arts, and one of the six men appointed tōdori (頭取; director) when the Kōbusho opened its doors in Ansei 2 (1855). He was the senior figure of the martial world of his generation, credited with thousands of students in military science and hundreds in the martial arts, and with something like a hundred and thirty works. Two things complicate his place in a register of swordsmen: the post he actually held at the academy was in heigaku (兵学; military science) rather than in any weapons department, and the sources disagree about which spear line he carried.

The Kōbusho appointment

He appears in the founding cohort of Ansei 2 (1855)/2/5 — tōdori Udono, Odani, Morikawa, Ōkusa, Hasegawa and Kubota — in both of the compilations that record it, the Tōkyō shishi gaihen volume on the Kōbusho and the Rikugun rekishi.¹ The former prints him as 「寄合窪田助太郎清音」 (yoriai Kubota Suketarō Sugane), which is what ties the roster’s Kubota Suketarō to the author Kubota Sugane; a later page of the same volume gives Suketarō (助太郎) and Gendayū (源太夫) together.² He was among those who received the shogunal gifts distributed to the senior staff.

His teaching post there was in military science, on the strength of the Yamaga-ryū strategy he headed, so it is not clear that he taught any of his weapon arts at the academy. That his school had a presence on the staff is nonetheless documented: the Fujiokaya nikki, quoted in the same source, lists among the kyōju-kata one Ōta Rokurōzaemon (太田六郎左衛門) of the koshōgumi, entered as a Tamiya-ryū pupil of Kubota Suketarō.³

Tamiya-ryū

Shimokawa’s 1925 survey, describing the Kenpō sōsho (剣法叢書), names him tenth-generation head of Tamiya-ryū (田宮流第十世) and dates the bulk of that collection to what he transmitted to Horie Shirō (堀江四郎) between Tenpō 12 and 15 (1841–1844) — twenty-five essays on the art, in four manuscript fascicles.⁴ The branch he carried is accordingly known as Kubota-ha Tamiya-ryū (窪田派田宮流); he demonstrated its iai before Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyoshi in Tenpō 12 (1841). His instruction was noted for an unusual emphasis on shissō (疾走; sprinting), so that the swordsman could deliver full power under any condition.

The Kenpō sōsho is a separate work from the Kenpō ryakki (剣法略記) of Tenpō 10 (1839), the seven-section technical treatise printed in the Bujutsu sōsho and treated at length in the chapter on the Kenpō ryakki, in which he refers to himself by the name Sugane in the first person.

Two open questions

The Tōkyō shishi gaihen art-set gives his spear as Muhen-mukyoku-ryū (無辺無極流), not the Hōzōin-ryū attributed to him in some earlier accounts; the conflict is recorded here and not resolved. And the tsūshō 助太郎 is more likely Suketarō than Sukedayū, but the reading is not settled by any source consulted.

He should not be confused with the jūjutsu teacher Kubota Shigekatsu (窪田鎮勝) of Kyūshin-ryū (扱心流), adopted into the shogunal-retainer Kubota house from the Eguchi of Higo, with whom he is occasionally conflated.

Notes