Matsudaira Chikaranosuke [松平忠敏]

Register record

Identity & authority

Attestation

corroboration: —

Names

type	kanji	romaji	reading
myoji		Matsudaira
tsusho		Chikaranosuke

Matsudaira Chikaranosuke, personal name Tadatoshi (松平忠敏) and styled Kazusa-no-suke (上総介), was a son of Matsudaira Chikayoshi (松平親芳), the sixteenth head of the Nagasawa Matsudaira house. He learned Ryūgō-ryū from Naoi Hidekata (直井秀堅; also recorded as Naoi Katsugorō, 直井勝五郎), a student of the founder Okada Sōuemon. When the Rōshi-gumi (浪士組; the masterless-warrior corps that was the forerunner of the Shinsen-gumi) was organized in Bunkyū 2–3 (1862–63), he was named one of its first supervisors (rōshi-toriatsukai / torishimari-yaku), though he resigned the post early; the following year he became a Kōbusho kenjutsu shihan-yaku.

His Kōbusho years left him a minor celebrity as well. The nishiki-e series Taihei eiyū kagami (泰平英雄鏡), which portrayed the academy’s instructors as warriors of the Genpei wars, drew Matsudaira — then a kyōju-kata shutsuyaku — as Kajiwara Genta Kagesue, in a set of five that sold eight hundred sheets before the authorities confiscated the blocks.¹

He was also accomplished in waka poetry and is said to have given Katsu Kaishū instruction in verse. After the Restoration he served as a poetry official at the Outadokoro (御歌所; the imperial Bureau of Poetry), and he died in Meiji 15 (1882).