Ittō-ryū

Among the roughly 114 ryūha the Gekiken Sōdan records is Ittō-ryū, one of the most famous kenjutsu traditions, and much has been written about it in the literature. The work gives a full founder-legend, a five-generation lineage, the Ono-ha succession duel, and a roster of teachers current c. 1790 for this important ryūha. Mikami views Ittō-ryū as a great house of realm-swordsmanship ranking next to the Yagyū.

For in-house narrative, the authoritative work is 笹森順造『一刀流極意』(Sasamori Junzō, Ittō-ryū Gokui), first published 1965 by the 「一刀流極意」刊行会 (a dedicated publication committee), 640 pages, A5, illustrated, with a fold-out genealogy, which has been reprinted several times. Sasamori Junzō (1886–1976) was the sixteenth sōke of Ono-ha Ittō-ryū, and his extensive volume is the foundational in-tradition overview — history, curriculum, training methods, and philosophy — and is treated as essential reading for advanced students and scholars of the school.¹

Lineage root

The Gekiken Sōdan descends Ittō-ryū through the Chūjō line of swordsmanship: Chūjō-ryū (中條流) to Toda-ryū (富田流), then Kanemaki-ryū (鐘捲流) that Itō Ittōsai learned. It anchors the root of Chūjō-ryū at the Shugendō cave shrinelocated in the Udo grotto (鵜戶の岩屋) in Hyūga.²

Mikami writes that Chūjō Hyōgonosuke learned sword and spear from the monk Jion (慈音) at Udo grotto (鵜戶の岩屋) and there attained mastery. The author immediately cross-notes that Aisu Ikō (愛洲惟孝) also attained his sword-mastery at the same Udo cave — so the two great sword genealogies of the book (Ittō-ryū and Kage-ryū) share an origin site. Ittōsai is then made by Mikami to be Kanemaki’s pupil.³

Itō Ittōsai Kagehisa (伊藤一刀齋景久)

一、一刀流の祖、伊藤一刀齋景久は世に雙なき劔術の達人なり。諸國を武者修行して、名有る者と勝負するに、一度も負たる事なし。

The founder of Ittō-ryū, Itō Ittōsai Kagehisa, was a peerless master of swordsmanship. Roaming the provinces in warrior-training, he fought every reputed man and was never once beaten.

The night assassination

A man Ittōsai had beaten in Kyoto became his disciple, nursed a grudge, and drew four or five fellow pupils into a plot. They brought sake one night and got him drunk; beforehand they had induced his mistress (愛妾) to steal his two swords and leave the door open. Attacking his sleeping quarters at midnight, it being summer, a mosquito net was hung; as they burst in he cut its four corner-ties so it dropped [on them], woke, groped for his swords and found both gone. His hand fell on the evening’s sake vessels, which he hurled one after another at the men closing in, and he wrenched away a sword one of them held. Ittōsai, who could not be struck even bare-handed, now with a blade in hand was “like a tiger given wings” (虎に翼を添るごとし). He cut them down at will; with deep and shallow wounds they carried off their casualties and fled, and the mistress too had vanished. He was left ashamed at having trusted the woman.

The jizuri no seigan duel

A rōnin who had mastered a stroke called jizuri no seigan (地摺りの晴眼; a “ground-sweeping” seigan) believed it unbeatable, and asked Ittōsai to teach him its counter (留樣, tomeyō). Ittōsai kept agreeing but leaving without teaching it; the rōnin, concluding Ittōsai could not counter it, ambushed him — attacking with the very stroke while demanding the transmission. Ittōsai cut him in two with a single draw-cut (拔打).

They remarked that it was a pity he “expired at the very instant of being taught how to stop the jizuri seigan” — a fit “parting-gift for the road to the underworld” (冥途の土産). Such episodes, the author adds, filled Ittōsai’s life.

The five generations (一刀流五世)

1. Itō Ittōsai Kagehisa (伊藤一刀齋景久)
2. Ono Jirōemon Tadaaki (小野次郞右衞門忠明) — originally Mikogami Tenzen (神子上典膳)
3. Itō Tenzen Tadanari (伊藤典膳忠也) — Tadaaki’s son
4. Kamei Heiuemon Tadao (龜井平右衞門忠雄)
5. Itō Heishirō Tadatsura (伊藤平四郞忠貫)

Ono-ha Ittō (小野流一刀) — the Kamewari duel

The first Jirōemon Tadaaki was a man of Ise (勢州), first named Mikogami Tenzen (御子神／神子上典膳), Ittōsai’s foremost pupil. Another disciple, Zenki (善鬼), reckoned “but for Tenzen, none would surpass me”; the two were never on good terms.⁴

The two men fought at Koganehara in Shimōsa (下總國小金原). Zenki, losing, snatched up a great jar (瓶) to hurl as he fled, but Tenzen split the jar and cut his head, felling him dead on the spot. That sword, named Kamewari (瓶割, “jar-splitter”), became a treasure of the Ono house.

Tenzen then served Ieyasu (東照神君); at Sekigahara he accompanied Hidetada (台廟) up the mountain road and crossed spears at the siege of Ueda, ranked among the seven spears of Ueda (上田七本槍) with Nakayama Kageyu (中山勘解由), Toda Hanpei (戶田半平), and others. Hidetada, admiring his art, studied under him daily, granted him a character from his own name (御一字) — hence Tadaaki (忠明) — and he later took the surname Ono Jirōemon.

Second head — Ono Tadatsune (小野次郞右衞門忠常)

No lesser than his father, the second head is drawn in pointed contrast with the Yagyū. Iemitsu (猷廟) studied both Yagyū and Ono, but where Munenori 「御意に叶ふ樣にあしらひまゐらせらる」 (handled it so as to please the shogun), Tadatsune, blunt and proud by nature (天性氣がさなる人), struck the shogun in earnest — 「此故にや恩遇柳生に及ばず」 — and so his favor never matched Yagyū’s. Anecdotes follow: leaping a huge construction-stone that blocked the Sakurada-gate bridge in a single bound; a dōjō brawl won with a hananeji (鼻捻) truncheon; and a note that after a doorway-ambush affair his conduct turned erratic, 「狂氣の如く有しとぞ」. Later heads: 3rd Tadaoki (忠於), 4th Sukekurō 」.

Other Figures

Mikami lists the Kaji-ha Ittō (梶流一刀), a branch split off by Kaji Shin’uemon Masanao (梶新右衞門正直), a pupil of the second Ono head, Tadatsune. Mikami also lists several living Ittō-ryū teachers of his time in Edo: one Sakakibara〔男依〕, a Sanbanchō bannerman (幕下の士), teaching koryū no Ittō-ryū (古流の一刀流, old-style Ittō-ryū); Tsuzuki Hikozō (都筑彥三); and Nakanishi Chūzō (中西忠藏).

The branches gathered here

From Ono Jirōemon Tadaaki the school divided into the many ha that carried Ittō-ryū through the Edo period and into modern kendō, and the swordsmen in this chapter belong to several of them.

The Ono-ha (小野派一刀流) is the senior transmission, held in the Ono house across the five generations traced above and long treated as the orthodox line; Kajikawa Yoshimasa represents it here.

The Nakanishi-ha (中西派一刀流) split from that line under Nakanishi Chūzō — the very teacher the Gekiken Sōdan already lists as active in Edo in 1790 — and it was in this branch that the padded bōgu and split-bamboo shinai were adopted, first making full-speed competitive matching possible; from it most of the great late-Tokugawa Edo lines descend, Takano Sasaburō’s among them.

The Hokushin Ittō-ryū (北辰一刀流) is Chiba Shūsaku’s synthesis of his family’s Hokushin line with the Nakanishi-ha, taught at his Genbukan dōjō and reckoned one of the three great bakumatsu halls — “technique, that is Chiba” — and of all the Ittō lines the most heavily represented in Meiji police and Butokukai kendō, with Naitō Takaharu, chief instructor of the teacher-training Busen, at its head here.

The Chūya-ha (忠也派一刀流) descends from Itō Tenzen Tadanari, the third of the five generations above and Tadaaki’s son, whose line diverged early from the Ono house; Matsuoka Yorozu carries it.