Shingai Tadaatsu

Shingai Tadaatsu (真貝忠篤, 1842–1920) was a Keishichō gekken instructor and Butokukai hanshi of the Kubota-ha Tamiya-ryū (窪田派田宮流), reckoned in his last years one of the “three elders of the Tokyo kenjutsu world” alongside Tokunō Sekishirō and Negishi Shingorō.¹

Born the seventh son of a Mino Ōgaki-domain samurai at the domain’s Edo residence, he entered the Kubota-ha Tamiya-ryū of Shimamura Yūyū at twelve; orphaned at seventeen, he trained on while working as a menial, in time surpassed his teacher, and took a character from the teacher’s name to restyle himself Torao. He followed the Ōgaki domain through the Boshin War and later served in the Owari domain’s Kijun Seiki-tai; the campaign also cost him his nose to disease. After the war he was kenjutsu master at the Owari domain school, the Meirindō, and after the abolition of the domains he lived by gekken exhibition (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.).

Around 1882–83 he took a post as a Keishichō gekken sewakari, and went on to serve as kendō master to the Imperial Household Ministry’s Palace Police, the Gakushūin, and Keiō. In 1908 he received the hanshi title from the Dai Nippon Butokukai, and he sat on the committee that framed the Dai Nippon Teikoku Kendō Kata (Japanese Wikipedia, n.d.; Dai Nippon Butokukai (大日本武徳会), n.d.). He died in 1920, felled by a cerebral hemorrhage on his way to the Saineikan dōjō and carried home to Yotsuya; his grave is at Aoyama.²

Open Questions

• His surname is read Shingai (しんがい) in his own biographical article but Magai (まがい) elsewhere; the reading is not settled and should be confirmed against a furigana or family source before print.
• His exact contribution to the 1911 kata committee — as against the principal drafters — is not specified in the sources used, and should be resolved from the Butokukai records rather than inferred from membership.

References

secondary

End Notes