The Police Swordsmanship of the Keihōkan and Keishichō

A prehistory before the 1879 revival of police-centered gekken.

1868 Keihōkan

There was an earlier, failed police adoption. In 1868 (Meiji 1) the new government’s Keihōkan (刑法官; penal-law office) took on martial-arts instructors — for kenjutsu, Hokushin Ittō-ryū’s Shimoe Hidetarō (下江秀太郎) and Kyōshin Meichi-ryū’s Momonoi Naoyuki (桃井直行); for jūjutsu, Tenjin Shin’yō-ryū’s Iso Mataemon (磯又右衛門) and Tani Torao (谷虎雄), and a Yōshin-ryū Totsuka (戸塚英美) – either 戸塚英美 (Hidemi) or the Kōbusho’s Totsuka Hidetoshi (英俊).

The 1871 bureaucratic reorganization into the Shihōshō (司法省; Justice Ministry) dismissed them all, and the Keishichō proper was only created under the Naimushō (内務省) in 1874 (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

Shimoe, described in some detail below, was already a government kenjutsu instructor in 1868, a decade before the sewakari, which deepens his bridge role.

Iso Masatomo’s documented government jūjutsu post was this 1868 Keihōkan, not the 1860 Kōbusho as told in some accounts. Descriptions of Kano Jigorō’s instructor Fukuda may have historically conflated the Meiji police predecessor with the bakufu academy.

1879 Keishichō

The 1879 establishment of the Keishichō and its school politics.

When the sewakari was set up at the Junsa Kyōshūjo (巡査教習所; patrolman training institute) in 1879, the selection judges were Momonoi Shunzō (桃井春蔵) and Sakakibara Kenkichi (榊原鍵吉). Kawaji Toshiyoshi delivered a formal exhortation there (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.; Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

Momonoi’s role as judge had a lasting effect: the so-called “Momonoi four heavenly kings” (桃井の四天王) — Ueda Umanosuke, Sakabe Daisaku, Kubota Shinzō, and Kanematsu Naokado — made Kyōshin Meichi-ryū (鏡新明智流) the dominant house at the Keishichō, which is why the force still preserves Kyōshin Meichi-ryū forms today even though the school otherwise died out (Bakumatsu kara uketsugare genson suru kenjutsu ryūha (幕末から受け継がれ現存する剣術流派), n.d.).

There is a datable anchor for the roster, an 1888 official list, “警視庁撃剣世話係たりし者及びその階級” (former Keishichō fencing-instructors and their grades), that places five men at the top (second) grade, each with a police-station posting (Meiji-jidai no denshō to Keishichō-ryū (明治時代の伝承と警視庁流), n.d.):

• Shingai Tadaatsu
• Tokunō Sekishirō
• Mitsuhashi Kan’ichirō
• Shimoe Hidetarō (下江秀太郎)
• Kanematsu Naokado

The first-hired and senior sewakari include (in the 1888 grade-list):

• Monna Tadashi (門奈正)
• Kobayashi Sadayuki (小林定之)
• Ueda Umanosuke (上田馬之助) — Kyōshin Meichi-ryū (鏡新明智流); one of the 1879 first-hire trio and of the “Momonoi four heavenly kings”; a celebrated early-Keishichō swordsman.
• Henmi Sōsuke (逸見宗助) — Tatsumi-ryū (立身流); first-hire trio; his prominence drew other Tatsumi-ryū men into the force; documented via the Tatsumi-ryū sources.
• Kajikawa Yoshimasa (梶川義正), the third of the first-hire trio;
• Tokunō Sekishirō (得能関四郎) and Mitsuhashi Kan’ichirō (三橋鑑一郎) — senior sewakari in the 1888 top grade; Mitsuhashi later a Butokukai figure and the witness who named Shimoe the strongest.
• Sakabe Daisaku (坂部大作), Kubota Shinzō (久保田晋蔵), Kanematsu Naokado (兼松直廉) — Kyōshin Meichi-ryū, the remainder of the “Momonoi four kings” cohort that made that school dominant at the Keishichō. Sakabe and Kubota stand at the top (second) grade of the school.
• Shibata Emori (柴田衛守) and Shingai Tadaatsu (真貝忠篤) — further senior sewakari.

Recruited into the sewakari after the first trio were several Shigakukan men who survive mainly as names in the grade-lists. Sakabe Daisaku (坂部・阪部大作) and Kubota Shinzō (久保田晋蔵), both of the Kyōshin Meichi-ryū and reckoned — with Ueda — among Momonoi’s “four heavenly kings”. Kanematsu Naokado (兼松直廉) was placed at the top grade at the Ogawamachi station in 1888, then about fifty (so born c. 1838) and is recorded as the only Keishichō man to fight to a draw at an 1889 tournament. His school is given as Kyōshin Meichi-ryū in the “four kings” grouping but as Tatsumi-ryū in the Dai Nippon Kendō-shi. (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.; Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.)

The development of Keishi-ryū

The Keishi-ryū kata, in more detail. Because the sewakari came from mixed schools, a unified set — Keishi-ryū (警視流; also 警視庁流) — was compiled and announced at the 1886 (Meiji 19) Yayoi-sai (弥生祭) tournament (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.). Its parts: the kidachi-gata (木太刀形; bokutō forms, also called gekken-gata), ten techniques taken one each from ten kenjutsu ryūha; the tachi-iai (立居合), five iai forms; and a jūjutsu component, Keishi kenpō (警視拳法), of sixteen forms plus seven hayanawa (早捕法; quick-arrest methods) and kappō (活法; resuscitation) (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.). These are the forerunner of the Nihon Kendō Kata (日本剣道形) in being a cross-school composite — the same integration logic the Butokukai would apply in 1912, prototyped here a generation earlier (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

Because the kata was built for police in Western dress with a sword (洋装帯剣), its movements diverge from the source schools’ own kata — a deliberate institutional adaptation, not a loss of transmission (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.). Keishi-ryū is still transmitted by Keishichō kendōka.

Nakayama Hakudō practiced it actively (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.). Note also that a grading system, the gekken kyūi (撃剣級位), was instituted alongside it in 1879 (Kendō no rekishi (剣道の歴史), n.d.) — the same office-and-grade logic (not ryūha license) that ran through the Kōbusho and points toward the Butokukai’s shōgō.

National Tournaments

The tournaments, venues, and culture.

The 1885 (Meiji 18) tournament the Keishichō held at Yayoi Jinja (弥生神社) at Mukōgaoka (向ヶ岡) is called the first national-scale kenjutsu tournament. Yayoi became the era’s principal gathering-point (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.; Kendō no rekishi (剣道の歴史), n.d.).¹

Under the fifth Superintendent-General Mishima Michitsune (三島通庸, from 1885) came what is called the golden age of Keishichō kenjutsu — matches against other prefectures’ swordsmen (Takayama Minesaburō, Okumura Sakonta) and against the Imperial Household Ministry’s Saineikan (済寧館) dōjō, and participation in the 1887 tenran kabuto-wari (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.) that Sakakibara participated in.

The training culture was notoriously severe — tachikiri-geiko (立ち切り稽古; continuous last-man bouting), with the saying that if you could survive the Keishichō morning practice and get home to breakfast you were a made man (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

The young instructors of this milieu — Takano Sasaburō, Takahashi Kotarō, Kawasaki Zenzaburō, Naitō Takaharu, Monna Tadashi — are exactly the cohort that dominated Taishō and early-Shōwa kendō, i.e. the Butokukai/Busen leadership (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

Jūjutsu sewakari

The jūjutsu parallel (for the other arc). The jūjutsu sewakari followed four years later, in 1883, after the Keishichō invited the Kurume jūjutsuka Shimosaka Saizō and, on his recommendation, Hisatomi Tetsutarō (Shibukawa-ryū), Naka Danzō (Sekiguchi Shinshin-ryū), and the Ryōi Shintō-ryū men Uehara Shōgo and Nakamura Hansuke (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

The Kōdōkan (講道館) entered the Keishichō tournament — the episode fictionalized in Sugata Sanshirō — where its men fought mainly against Totsuka-ha Yōshin-ryū and, winning all but a few, secured jūdō’s adoption by the Keishichō (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

References

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