Kashima Shin-ryū

The Kashima Shin-ryū (鹿島神流) of the Kunii house is treated here as a school; for its reviver, see Kunii Zen’ya, from whose record the material below was drawn.

Shinryū Contrasts

The Kashima Shin-ryū (鹿島神流) revival of Kunii Zen’ya (1894–1966) contains explicit mention of tengu-related material, but in a different manner to that of Shinkage-ryū. ¹

Regarding his combative acumen people do not much argue. An analysis of kata sheds some light on the relationship between Kashima Shin-ryū kata, different lines of Jikishinkage-ryū, and Maniwa Nen-ryū. One striking similarity between Nen-ryū and Kashima Shin-ryū is the use of deep lunge-like stances with the forward hip open in both of their introductory practices. But it is the history of his art, if older than a synthesis of approaches, is more pertinent to this discussion, especially in how it handles early Jikishinkage-ryū attested figures and tengu-related material in a more modern nativist Shintō fashion.

Kashima Shin-ryū history names Matsumoto Bizen-no-kami Ki no Masamoto as ryūso (流祖), the Kunii house as sōke (宗家) and Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami (上泉伊勢守) among the shihanke (師範家), asserts that the shihanke renamed the art “Shinkage-ryū” to evade Bakufu suppression, and holds that the twelfth sōke Kunii Daizen (国井大膳〔kanji to confirm〕) received a Jikishinkage-ryū kenjutsu licence from an Ono Seiuemon (小野清右衛門), at which point sōke and shihanke merged. That then positions the entire Shinkage and Jikishinkage complex as its own renamed offshoots — a strong claim not independently established, and the reverse of the mainstream Shinkage-ryū Kamiizumi-from-Kage-ryū account shared by multiple, geographically distinct traditions from Kyushu to Edo.

The school today treats the story that Matsumoto received the “Tengu-gaki” via Yoshitsune’s dedication at Kashima as a public “front” (建前; tatemae), relocating the real claim in the older Kashima divine-transmission attributed to Kunima Mahito (国摩真人).

The Kashima Shin-ryū kihon-dachi is said to correspond to the “Hōjō no kata” (法定の形) handed down in that shihanke line during the period when it was known as Jikishinkage-ryū. As I have written elsewhere, Hōjō was originally five exercises, likely Sangaku-en no Tachi (三学円之太刀) of Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami, that were reorganized into four by the fourth-generation Ogasawara Genshinsai (小笠原源信斎). ²

In the Kashima Shin-ryū, they were expanded back into five forms. Their lore mentions Kunii did so using tengu-related transmission or information. So, it may be profitable to examine Shinkage-ryū history related to the term Tengu-gaki. Placing the Hikita Tengu-gaki (乱勝・釣極・雲截) and the Kashima Shin-ryū Tengu-gaki document side by side, we notice some clear differences, important to highlight since Japanese homophones are easy to conflate in English-language retellings.

Hikita lineages generally contain three Tengu-gaki called chū-gokui (中極位): Ranshō, Chōkyoku and Unsai. Dōjō that also contain Yagyū transmission will also have the eight Tengu-shō and oku (ninin-kakari) set — some groups might arrange Tengu-shō into six omote and three oku; either way typically nine exchanges. In the Yamamoto-line Higo Shinkage-ryū 〔note: distinguish from the Hikita line tabled below〕 the long-sword forms are given as Kuraizume (位詰) and 天狗書, the latter read “Tengu-sho” — so even with 書, the reading lands on the same syllables as Yagyū’s 抄.

In Kashima Shin-ryū, the Tengu-shō is instead a physical scroll that acts as a credential in their internal attestations of levels of attainment. The kanji shō (抄; excerpt, used in Shinkage-ryū) is different to shō (書; writing, used in Kashima Shin-ryū) and is often read inconsistently across lines, which is the seam where English-language accounts fuse them:

Category	Hikita (Higo) Shinkage-ryū	Kashima Shin-ryū
Written	天狗書 (Yagyū writes 天狗抄)	天狗書
Read	“Tengu-sho”	Tengu-gaki
What it is	A kata rank — chū-gokui (中極位)	A document — a one-scroll densho
Contents	Ranshō (乱勝), Chōkyoku (釣極), Unsai (雲截)	Sword secrets; held as the founder’s autograph
Status	A transmission level in the mokuroku	The shihanke’s proof of legitimacy
Attributed origin	Kage-ryū to Kamiizumi to Hikita Kagetomo	Granted to Matsumoto at Kashima; said to be Yoshitsune’s dedicated book

Across the older non-Hikita Shinkage lines the sequence Enpi (燕飛) / Sangaku (三学) / Kuka (九箇) / Tengu-gaki (with Maruhashi 丸橋) tracks the Yagyū mokuroku closely, while the Hikita system diverges substantially in structure and form-names. In other words, Hikita’s 天狗書 is the same curriculum slot as Yagyū’s 天狗抄, albeit populated with different kata.³

On the Kashima Shin-ryū side, the object is a scroll, not a rank. Matsumoto Bizen-no-kami Ki no Masamoto is said in Kashima Shin-ryū lore to have prayed at Kashima and been granted the Tengu-gaki recording the essence of swordsmanship; the scroll passed down in the shihanke is held to be his own autograph and is positioned as the shihanke’s proof of centrality to the Kashima area tradition. (Matsumoto Bizen-no-kami Ki no Masamoto 〔undated; traditional attribution〕)

The school’s orthodox-history page is unusually candid about the legend’s relevance: citing its Heihō Denki (兵法伝記), it relates that Matsumoto, living in Hitachi and praying day and night before the shrine, received in a dream a one-volume book — the very book dedicated by Minamoto no Kurō Yoshitsune (源九郎義経) — and that because this was a divine transmission the art was called Shinkage-ryū (神陰流). (Kashima Shin-ryū (shihanke, official site) 〔accessed 2026〕)

The text then explicitly treats the Yoshitsune-dedication story as a public legend (建前) and relocates the real claim in the older direct divine transmission running back to Kunima Mahito in the Taika era.

This may be due to researchers placing the addition of Matsumoto into the Jikishinkage-ryū lineage during the Edo-period time of Naganuma Kunisato. In that revision to Shinkage-ryū history (which can be found on the Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai account of Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryū), Matsumoto is said to receive a one-volume heihō scroll at Kashima and breaks a cherry branch before the shrine to make a wooden sword — the reason the Hōjō no Kata bokutō is straight — and the art is briefly named Shinkage-ryū (神陰流).

Before Naganuma, the founder of the art is named not as Matsumoto but as Kamiya Denshinsai (神谷伝心斎; 1582–1663?), Ogasawara’s successor and the originator of the Jikishin line. This is the reading carried in the densho of the two masters who immediately followed him: the sixth-generation Takahashi Danjōzaemon Shigeharu (高橋弾正左衛門重治, 1610–1690; gō Jikiō, founder of the Jikishin-shōtō-ryū) and the seventh-generation Yamada Mitsunori (山田一風斎光徳; Ippūsai). Karukome’s analysis of the transmission documents is explicit that in Takahashi’s and Yamada’s generations the founder was Kamiya Denshinsai, and that the Matsumoto-as-ryūso framing was a later revision by the eighth, Naganuma Kunisato. (Karukome Yoshitaka 2013; Karukome Yoshitaka 2020) That early framing also highlighted the Ming-dynasty influence on the art via Ogasawara, which was maintained even as an increasingly Japan-centric emphasis grew over time.

The “Kashima scroll to Matsumoto to Kamiizumi” spine is the in-house tradition of the Kashima-shinden family (both the Kashima Shin-ryū and Jiki narrative branches), but not the independent record. The Gekiken Sōdan (撃剣叢談) traces the old Shinkage menkyo lineage instead as Udo Daigongen to Aisu Ikō to Aisu Koshichirō (some Shinkage-ryū lines omit this step) to Kamiizumi Ise-no-kami and beyond. Whether Hikita or Yagyū or Okuyama, the lines then diverge. Matsumoto is not found until the 1768 mokuroku of Naganuma.

The recognition of Kamiya Denshinsai as the founder of what became Jikishinkage-ryū conflicts with the later narrative imposed by Kashima Shin-ryū. Notably, in our previous work, we highlighted that several koto (事; matters or topics) entered in the mid-eighteenth century with Naganuma Kunisato, including kiriotoshi (切落) and ginmi (吟味). These are absent from the previous Heihō Zakki (兵法雑記) of Yamada Mitsunori (Ippūsai) but do appear in Kashima Shin-ryū’s ōyō shinri (応用心理〔reading/kanji tentative〕), which is an Edo-period Jikishinkage-ryū influence flowing into the Kashima Shin-ryū rather than the reverse.

This is likely explained by Kunii receiving Jikishinkage-ryū instruction at an early age. Whether that line sits within the Fujikawa-ha (藤川派) specifically cannot be established from the academic literature: Karukome’s study treats only the Naganuma, Fujikawa and Odani branches and does not mention the teacher of his family (Motooka Chūhachi) at all, so the Fujikawa-ha attribution is at present uncertain.⁴

The use of the phrase Tengu-gaki is more commonly found in Hikita Kage-ryū than Yagyū lines of Shinkage-ryū. Hikita’s Tengu-gaki is a kata practice cognate containing three Kage-ryū kata. Kashima Shin-ryū’s Tengu-gaki is instead a credential-scroll whose tengu provenance the school itself brackets as a front for an even older claim (similar in spirit to Daitō-ryū claiming descent from the Minamoto).

The genuine tengu lineage remains the Kage-ryū to Shinkage to Yagyū transmission of kata; however, Kunii was not said to primarily learned kata from his early Shinkage-ryū instructor. The Kashima “Tengu-gaki,” and the Matsumoto founder it authenticates, both sit on the unverifiable middle of the splice.

The published record shows the Kunii line aware of the connection to Jikishinkage-ryū but not engaging the direction of the doctrinal flow.

His student, Seki Humitake (関文威撰) of the University of Tsukuba, carries the nineteenth shihanke line, and the tradition is now maintained through Tsukuba. There is also a rival faction from the aikidō teacher Inaba, also stemming from Kunii. Seki, as nineteenth shihanke, states that Zen’ya’s Kunii-house Kashima Shin-ryū was formed by the fusion of the Kunii-sōke Kashima Shin-ryū with the Jikishinkage-ryū shihanke line of Motooka Chūhachi Fujiwara no Inshitsu (本岡忠八藤原因質〔imina reading uncertain〕) and that the two are therefore “not separate schools.” (Seki Humitake 1976; Seki Humitake 2009) ^{5 6}

This is not independently corroborated.

What is absent from Seki’s narrative is the next step — recognizing that the aishaku / kiriotoshi / ginmi cluster surfacing in its ōyō shinri is not ancient Kashima divine-transmission at all but a Naganuma Kunisato innovation of the mid-eighteenth century. It thus cannot serve as evidence of a Kashima source predating and generating Jikishinkage-ryū. The tradition absorbed Edo-period Jikishinkage-ryū material and then re-narrated it as primordial.

Kata Comparison

Kunii Zen’ya’s training spanned all three streams compared here — the Kunii-house Kashima Shin-ryū and Jikishinkage-ryū as house transmissions, and Maniwa Nen-ryū (with Myōdō-ryū) under Suhara Kuniyasu. Two of them are also among the heihō sandai genryū (兵法三大源流; the three source-streams): the Nen (念) line and the Kage/Shinkage (陰) line from which Jikishinkage-ryū descends. Comparing the three curricula therefore tests two things at once: what material if any Kunii actually synthesized, and whether the modern Kashima Shin-ryū curriculum carries Jikishinkage-ryū or Nen-ryū structural features — which bears directly on the transmission-direction argument (influence flowing into a reconstructed Kashima Shin-ryū from the better-documented schools, rather than out of an ancient Kashima font).

Jikishinkage-ryū (直心影流)

Source: Karukome 2013 dissertation and the Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai entry. The koto cluster and the jū-no-kata “龍尾→曲尺” were added by Naganuma Kunisato (see the densho-tables file).

• Hōjō (法定) — 4 principal forms, hardwood bokutō (straight tō): Ittō-ryōdan (一刀両断), Uten-saten (右転左転), Chōtan-ichimi (長短一味), Hassō-happa (八相発破). Their ura is the Habiki (刃挽), performed with a live blade.
• Jū-no-kata (十之形) — the basic shinai-uchikomi set, enumerated as 14 items under 7 named forms: Ryūbi (龍尾), Omokage (面影), Teppa-shintai (鉄破進退)〔reading tentative〕, Matsukaze (松風), Hayafune (早船), Kanejaku (曲尺), Enren-tōren-tairen (圓連刀連体連)〔tentative〕. Four are 左/右 pairs, Teppa-shintai is one form of four items, and the last two are independent (see the jū-no-kata composition file).
• Tō-no-kata (韜之形) — 14 forms, fukuro-shinai.
• Kodachi (小太刀) — 6 short-sword forms.

Kashima Shin-ryū (鹿島神流)

Source: the school’s own site (kashima-shinryu.jp), the Inaba Minoru / BAB instructional material, and the school’s Wikipedia entry. Transmitted as Kunii-sōke / Seki-shihanke in current times. (Kashima-Shinryū Budō Renmei 2026; Inaba Minoru, n.d.)

• Principle sets: go-ka no hōjō (五ヶ之法定; five unities — 動静一体・起発一体・攻防一体・虚実一体・陰陽一体) and the physical base hō-en-kyoku-choku-ei (方円曲直鋭).
• Ichi-no-tachi (一之太刀) — the kesa-giri (袈裟斬) cut attributed to Matsumoto Bizen no Kami.
• Kihon-dachi (基本太刀) — 5 forms, bokutō: Kesa-giri (袈裟斬), Ashibarai-ukifune (足払浮舟), Kiriwari (斬割), Waritsuki (割突), Kurai-dachi (位太刀).
• Ura-dachi (裏太刀) — 10 forms, fukuro-shinai: Men-dachi-zuke (面太刀付), Kesa-dachi-zuke (袈裟太刀付), Sokui-dachi (続飯太刀), Gedan-kote-dome (下段籠手止), Kyo-dachi-kote-giri (虚太刀籠手斬), Sokui-zuke (続飯付), Mikiri-ken-chūtai (見切剣中体)〔reading tentative〕, Chokutai-chūken (直体中剣)〔tentative〕, Kesa-giri-sodezuri (袈裟斬袖摺), Enpi-ken (燕飛剣).
• Musōken (無想剣) — attributed to the 12th shihanke, Kunii Daizen Minamoto no Kuriyama (國井大善源栗山).
• Jūjutsu — reiki-no-hō (霊気之法), with居捕・立業・投業・組業 groupings and an extensive named-technique inventory (e.g. kata-mune-dori 片胸捕, kiri-otoshi 切落, tsubame-gaeshi 燕返, sakui-zuke 続飯付, karate-kenpō-yaburi 唐手拳法破).
• Other arms: battō (祓太刀 harai-tachi), naginata, kaiken, jō, yari, bō.
• Implements: bokutō for kihon-dachi, fukuro-shinai from ura-dachi onward.

Maniwa Nen-ryū (馬庭念流)

Source: the Nen-ryū sōke site (nen-ryu.jp), the Takasaki City cultural-property listing, and Ozawa 1971. Registered with the Kobudō Shinkōkai simply as “Nen-ryū”; “Maniwa” is the customary name. (Nen-ryū Sōke (Higuchi-ke) 2026; Takasaki City (高崎市), n.d.; Ozawa Takashi 1971)

• Omote go-hon (表五本) — 5 forms, bokutō: Jōryaku (上畧), Geryaku (下畧), Chūryaku (中畧), Mugamae (無構), Gasshō (合掌).
• Ura san-bon (裏三本) — 3 forms, fukuro-shinai: Kiriokuri (切送), Jōdan-giri / Jōdan-uchikomi (上段切／上段打込), Sandan-giri (三段切).
• Kumi jippon (組十本 / 裏五本) — 10 forms, live blade. Sono ichi: Uchikomi-ranshō (打込乱勝)〔tentative〕, Sakairi (逆入)〔tentative〕, Byōbu-gaeshi (屏風反), Tachi-sabaki (太刀捌), Gasshō-kuzushi (合掌崩). Sono ni: Shishi-hōge (獅子峰下)〔tentative〕, Nakazumi (中墨), Chūō-ōzume (中央大詰)〔tentative〕, Sumi-iri (澄入)〔tentative〕, Shishi-funjin (獅子奮迅).
• Naginata go-hon (長刀五本), Yari go-hon (槍五本).
• Yadome-jutsu (矢留術) — headmaster (or top licensee) only.
• Supplementary: tsuke-tachi-no-koto (附太刀之事, 5) and te-no-uchi-no-koto (手之裡之事, 9).
• Implements: bokutō for omote; self-made head-protector and cloth kote with fukuro-shinai for uchikomi.

Structural comparison

Tier	Jikishinkage-ryū	Kashima Shin-ryū	Maniwa Nen-ryū
Foundational set (bokutō)	Hōjō (4)	Kihon-dachi (5)	Omote go-hon (5)
Applied set (fukuro-shinai)	Tō-no-kata (14)	Ura-dachi (10)	Ura san-bon (3)
Inner / live-blade or secret	Habiki (live blade); kodachi (6)	Musōken; ichi-no-tachi	Kumi jippon (shinken, 10)
Long arms	— (sword school)	naginata, yari, bō	naginata (5), yari (5)
Unarmed	—	jūjutsu (reiki-no-hō) + large inventory	—
Sparring tradition	fukuro-shinai → later shinai/bōgu (kendō ancestor)	fukuro-shinai (ura-dachi onward)	fukuro-shinai with self-made headgear

The shared architecture is a bokutō foundational set → fukuro-shinai applied set progression, present in all three. That progression is real but weak as evidence of specific descent: it is the general Edo-period two-implement pattern, and all three schools sit in or beside the Shinkage / Nen orbit where it was common.

There are school-specific overlaps (Kashima Shin-ryū ↔ Jikishinkage-ryū). The Kashima Shin-ryū sword sets carry several terms that cluster in the Shinkage and Jikishinkage lines rather than in Nen-ryū: enpi (燕飛, KSR ura-dachi #10 Enpi-ken) is the signature Shinkage form-name — Kamiizumi’s Enbi / the Kage-ryū Sarutobi lineage that heads the Shinkage sangaku; kiri-otoshi (切落), which appears in the KSR jūjutsu inventory, is one of the four koto Naganuma Kunisato added to Jikishinkage-ryū in 1764; sokui (続飯, KSR ura-dachi #3 and #6) and kesa (袈裟, KSR ichi-no-tachi and kihon #1) likewise sit in the Shinkage-derived vocabulary. This is consistent with — though it does not by itself prove — Jikishinkage-ryū vocabulary having flowed into the Kunii-house curriculum, the direction the ōyō shinri argument already points to.

However, generic posture/structure names (上段/下段/中段, left-right pairings, “three-step” cuts) recur across all three and across most kenjutsu and carry no descent information. The shared gasshō (合掌) between Nen-ryū’s omote and its kumi is internal to Nen-ryū and has no Kashima/Jiki echo. The bokutō→fukuro-shinai tiering, as noted, is a period-wide pattern. Kashima Shin-ryū uses Maniwa Nen-ryū styled fukuro shinai, not those historically favored by Jikishinkage-ryū.