Kyōshin Meichi-ryū (鏡新明智流) was founded by Momoi Hachirōzaemon Naoyoshi (桃井八郎左衛門直由, 1724–1774), the first to bear the name Momoi Shunzō. Originally a retainer of the Yanagisawa house of Yamato Kōriyama, he became a rōnin and, after study of Toda-ryū iai, Ittō-ryū, Yagyū-ryū and other lines, devised his own school on the basis of a Toda-ryū secret cut, adding elements of Muhen-ryū spear. The name was first written 鏡心明智流 — the kyōshin (鏡心; “mirror-heart”) taken from a Toda-ryū form name — and later 鏡新明智流. In An’ei 2 (1773) he opened the Shigakukan (士学館) in a tenement at Minami-Kayabachō in Nihonbashi, Edo; under the second head, Naokazu (直一), the dōjō moved to the Asari-gashi (蜊河岸), by which it was long known. The school nearly foundered under the third head but revived decisively under the fourth, Naomasa, after whom the Shigakukan was counted one of the “three great Edo dōjō.” Its hallmark was kurai (位; poise, bearing, dignity) rather than force, summed up in the contemporary tag “poise — that is Momoi” (位は桃井), set beside “technique — that is Chiba” and “power — that is Saitō.”
As a continuous transmission Kyōshin Meichi-ryū did not survive the Meiji period intact, and it is best treated today as a largely historical school; what circulates under the name rests on later reconstruction rather than unbroken lineage, so caution is warranted before describing any present-day practice as the original tradition.
