Naitō Takaharu [内藤高治]

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Identity & authority

Attestation

corroboration: —

Names

type	kanji	romaji	reading
myoji		Naitō
tsusho		Takaharu

Dates

Born

(1862)

Died

(1929)

Naitō Takaharu (内藤高治, 1862–1929) of Hokushin Ittō-ryū (北辰一刀流) was, with Takano Sasaburō, one of the two figures who shaped the kendō of the Dai Nippon Butokukai (大日本武徳会) — paired in the saying “Naitō of the west, Takano of the east” (西の内藤、東の高野).

A Mito swordsman, he passed the influence of Chiba Shūsaku’s lineage from bakumatsu gekken into the standardized kendō of the modern era: raised in the Mito Tōbukan transmission, seasoned in Metropolitan Police gekken, and installed as chief kendō instructor at the Butokukai’s teacher-training school, where he formed the interwar generation of masters.¹ His title was kendō hanshi (範士).

Born in Mito as the sixth son of the Ichige (市毛) house — his father Ichige Takanori (市毛高矩) a domain archery instructor, his mother a daughter of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū instructor Watanabe Seizaemon (渡辺清左衛門) — he grew up amid the Tengutō disturbances of the late Mito domain.² From 1869 he studied Chinese letters, swimming, and swordsmanship; at twelve he entered the Tōbukan of Ozawa Torakichi (小澤寅吉), taking kirigami (切紙) at fourteen and mokuroku (目録) at eighteen,³ with his lifelong associate Monna Tadashi (門奈正) as fellow-student. At twenty he was adopted into the Naitō family (Naitō Takaharu (内藤高治), n.d.).

In 1883 he went to Tokyo and trained for about a year chiefly at the dōjō of Sakakibara Kenkichi (opens in a new tab) (榊原鍵吉) at Shitaya Kurumazaka, followed by musha-shugyō and mountain austerities; on returning he challenged and repeatedly defeated serving Keishichō gekken instructors (gekken sewakari 撃剣世話掛), among them Kawasaki Zenzaburō (川崎善三郎) and Takano Sasaburō.

In 1888 he entered the Metropolitan Police himself as a first-class patrolman, posted — through the arrangement of Shimoe Hidetarō (下江秀太郎) — to the same station as Monna. During the Sino-Japanese War (1894) the police dispatched gekken instructors to Korea to protect residents; Naitō went with Monna but returned after developing acute pleurisy.⁴

In 1897 he received the Butokukai seirenshō (精錬証). When the Butokuden (武徳殿) was completed in Kyoto in 1899, the Butokukai named Naitō one of five men to strengthen its teaching staff (see the Butokukai section); that September Naitō gave up the base he had built in Tokyo and took up service at the honbu.⁵ The Butokukai formally established its teacher-training institute, the Bujutsu Kyōin Yōseijo (武術教員養成所), on 1 October 1905 — six years after the honbu appointment — the school later known as the Busen (Dai Nippon Butokukai Budō Senmon Gakkō 1927). As its chief kendō professor Naitō trained the future tenth-dan holders Mochida Moriji (持田盛二) and Saimura Gorō (斎村五郎). His 1901 bout with Takano Sasaburō at the sixth Butokusai great embukai, drawn one-to-one, was long remembered as a model match (Naitō Takaharu (内藤高治), n.d.).

In 1911 he sat — with Monna, Ozawa Ichirō (小澤一郎), and Sasaki Masayoshi — on the committee that drafted the Dai Nippon Teikoku Kendō Kata (大日本帝国剣道形), the standardized forms the Butokukai promulgated as it consolidated the many shinai-kenjutsu lines into a single kendō.⁶ A memorial stele styling him kensei (剣聖; sword-sage) stands in Kyoto (Sakyō-ku) (Naitō Takaharu (内藤高治), n.d.). Through Naitō, the Hokushin Ittō-ryū of Chiba Shūsaku became one of the principal channels feeding modern kendō.

End Notes