From the research for my book From the Kōbusho to the Butokukai: Swordsmanship in Transition on 19th and 20th century Japanese swordsmanship.
Alongside the practitioners, I kept a record for each school they belonged to: its founder, where it came from, and what the early sources say of it. The fuller records are gathered here.
- Hōzōin-ryū (宝蔵院流). The Hōzōin cross-spear tradition, whose Kōbusho line was the Takada-ha and whose founder In’ei learned the sword from Kamiizumi alongside Yagyū Munetoshi.
- Ittō-ryū (一刀流). The Ittō-ryū entry and its vignettes in Mikami Genryū’s Gekiken Sōdan (1790)
- Jikishinkage-ryū (直心影流). The Kashima-shinden sword line — Edo’s most prestigious late-Tokugawa kenjutsu tradition — whose Odani-ha supplied the Kōbusho’s founding instructors and carried swordsmanship across the Restoration into modern kendō through Sakakibara Kenkichi’s gekken exhibitions and the police masters who followed.
- Kashima Shin-ryū (鹿島神流). The Kunii-house tradition revived by Kunii Zen’ya, set against its parent streams — Jikishinkage-ryū and the Nen line — through its tengu material and a kata-by-kata comparison.
- Katōda Shinkage-ryū (加藤田神陰流). Some historical details of the formation and content of the Kurume-han Shinkage-ryū lineage of Katōda Shinsaku.
- Kitō-ryū (起倒流). The throw-centric jūjutsu tradition taught at the Kōbusho, source of jūdō’s Koshiki-no-kata, and its disputed Chén Yuánbīn origins.
- Kyōshin Meichi-ryū (鏡新明智流). The swordsmanship school founded by Momonoi Naoyoshi, first to bear the Momonoi Shunzō name, whose Shigakukan was prized for poise (kurai) as one of the three great Edo dōjō.
- Musashi-ryū (武藏流). Edo-period source material on Musashi-ryū (武藏流) and Enmei-ryū (圓明流), the two-sword transmission, and the competing accounts of the Ganryū and Yoshioka bouts, drawn from the Gekiken Sōdan and the Honchō Bugei Shōden.
- Ōshima-ryū (大島流). We examine a densho from 1792 of Ōshima-ryū, a spear tradition stemming from Ōshima Hanroku Yoshitsuna who studied methods passed down from Yuasa Shinroku. Its signature weapon was a long suyari and it held a long-time rivalry with the Hōzōin-ryū.
- Seigō-ryū (制剛流). A brief discourse on the jūjutsu associated or affiliated with different branches of Shinkage-ryū.
- Shingyōtō-ryū (心形刀流). The swordsmanship school founded by Iba Zesuiken, whose headship passed to the ablest disciple and whose Renbukan supplied three of the Kōbusho’s kenjutsu instructors.
- Shintō Munen-ryū (神道無念流). The swordsmanship school founded by Fukui Hyōemon, spread through Saitō Yakurō’s Renpeikan, favoring heavy decisive cutting and known as “the Saitō of power.”
- Taisha-ryū (たい捨流). Edo-period source material on Taisha-ryū (たい捨流), Marume Kurando, the Shinkan-ryū offshoot, and the teachers current at Hitoyoshi and Saga c. 1790, drawn from the Gekiken Sōdan and the Honchō Bugei Shōden.
- Tamiya-ryū (田宮流). The iai and battō tradition founded by Tamiya Narimasa, a student of the progenitor of iai, whose Kubota-ha line served the Kōbusho.
- Tenjin Shin’yō-ryū (天神真楊流). Tenjin Shin’yō-ryū descends from the Yōshin-ryū grappling stream, but its founding by Iso Mataemon at Kitano Tenmangū is a Tenjin-cult devotional act, not a mountain-Shugendō revelation like Kage-ryū’s — the tengu and Kurama material survives only as okuden iconographic residue. Its Chinese-origin legend likewise collapses on inspection to a Nagasaki medical/kappō residue, while the actual technical lineage runs through its own period of inspiration and innovation
- Totsuka-ha Yōshin-ryū (戸塚派楊心流). The hard, randori-centric jūjutsu of Totsuka Hidetoshi, a Yōshin-ryū line briefly taught at the Kōbusho, descending through Miura Yōshin from the Chén Yuánbīn tradition.
The Ittō-ryū article takes in its Hokushin and Chūya-ha branches.
The rest
These are a selection. From the Kōbusho to the Butokukai treats over twenty traditions, and the whole register, with an index, is published as a data set on GitHub: the kobudo-register (opens in a new tab). The practitioners have a list of their own.
