Musashi-ryū (武藏流) heads kan 4 of the Gekiken Sōdan (imgs 107–108, printed pp. 213–215), with Enmei-ryū (圓明流) bracketed under it. The entry is unusual among the two-sword notices in that Mikami repeatedly sets competing versions side by side without adjudicating between them, and twice marks his own uncertainty about which is right.
1. The name of the founder
一、武藏流は宮本武藏守義恆が流也〔諸書に皆政名に作る。今、古免狀に依て改む〕。武藏守は美作國吉野郡宮本村の產也。父は新免無二齋と號して十手の達人也。
Item. Musashi-ryū is the school of Miyamoto Musashi-no-kami Yoshitsune (宮本武藏守義恆) 〔the books all write the name Masana (政名); here [I] have emended it on the authority of an old menkyo〕. Musashi-no-kami was a native of Miyamoto village, Yoshino district, Mimasaka. His father was styled Shinmen Muni-sai and was a master of the jitte (十手).
The interlinear note is the same editorial move Mikami makes elsewhere — overriding the received form (政名, as the Honchō Bugei Shōden and others have it) on the authority of a transmission document he has seen. Record the emendation and its warrant together; the menkyo is not further identified.
2. From jitte to two swords
Musashi, having trained thoroughly in his father’s jitte art, reasoned that the jitte is not an implement one carries as a matter of course, whereas the swords never leave one’s waist; the essential thing is therefore a technique for defeating an opponent with what one always has. On that ground he devised anew and founded a two-sword school, travelling the provinces and becoming widely renowned.
The gokui is described concretely elsewhere in the same stretch:
極意の飛龍劔と名付くる太刀は、刀を右の手に指上て持ち、左の手にて脇差を振廻して敵に近付き、間を見て短劔を向の面に打付て、直に長劔にて切て勝つ也。此短劔を手裏劔に打つ事、圓明流・一方流・寶山流等、總て二刀の極意、此態を傳ふる也。
The tachi named Hiryūken (飛龍劔), the innermost technique: holding the long sword raised in the right hand and whirling the short sword in the left, one closes with the opponent, judges the interval, hurls the short blade into his face, and wins by cutting immediately with the long. This throwing of the short sword as a shuriken is transmitted as the two-sword gokui in Enmei-ryū, Ippō-ryū, and Hōzan-ryū alike.
3. Two accounts of the Ganryū bout
Mikami gives the story twice, in two incompatible forms, and says so.
First version. In a bout with a man called Kishi-ryū, Musashi begged a pole from a boatman and used it as his second sword; his opponent fought with a live blade; Musashi won and struck him dead. Mikami refers the reader to the Saigyokuwa (碎玉話) for details rather than repeating them.
Second version, introduced as 又一說有り and closed with 是非を詳にせず (“[I] do not determine which is right”): the opponent is Sasaki Ganryū (佐々木岸柳). Before the bout, the students of each side, fearful, exchanged intelligence — Musashi’s student Yamada telling Ganryū’s student Ichikawa that per the Musashi Monogatari Ganryū favoured an exceptionally long sword, so a wooden sword was being prepared to smash it down; Ichikawa telling Yamada that Ganryū had a critical technique called Torakiri (虎切), so strong that it did not trouble itself about the opponent’s blade, and that he would probably use it. Yamada reported this back in full. Musashi said he had heard of Torakiri and expected it. On the day, Musashi — a man of matchless agility — let Ganryū commit fully to Torakiri, sprang up, and though the skirt of his leather hakama was cut, shattered Ganryū’s brow and won.
4. The Yoshioka bout and the “Tenka-ichi” title
Mikami relates that by another account, Musashi went up to the capital toward the end of the [Ashikaga] shogunate, fought Yoshioka Kenpō of the hyōhō-sho, defeated him, received the title Tenka-ichi (天下一; “first under heaven”) from the shogun, and made his name shine throughout the east. It is also said that in both the Kenpō bout and the Ganryū bout he used a single sword and not two.
Mikami then asks if these bouts are true (實に然るにや) – is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one, and he immediately supplies the documentary counterweight: the school’s menkyo bear a “Tenka-ichi” seal and are written 天下一宮本武藏守義恆. He does not say the documents settle the story — only that they exist.
The chronology here is the problem Mikami leaves standing: “toward the end of the shogunate” places the Kenpō bout in the Ashikaga period, which cannot be reconciled with Musashi’s dates.1
5. The dream-poem
Mikami notes that Musashi’s musō (dream) poem is ‘universally known’ and is copied at the end of the school’s transmission document called Heidō-kyō (兵道鏡):
中々に 人里近く 成にけり 餘りに山の 奧をたづねて
Nakanaka ni / hitozato chikaku / narinikeri / amari ni yama no / oku o tazunete
“Contrary to expectation, I have come near to human habitation again, having sought too far into the depths of the mountain.”
6. Curriculum (Enmei-ryū line)
Mikami reports that the school’s own name for itself may be Enmei-ryū (此家にては流名を圓明流と稱するにや), and that a menkyo issued in Keichō 12 (1607) which he saw gives the school throughout as Enmei-ryū.
Omote: sashiai-giri (差合切), tenpen hazusu kurai (轉變はづす位), uchiotosaruru kurai (打落さるゝ位), in no kurai (陰位), kōtotsu (口咄), yō no kurai (陽位), hazusu kurai (はづす位).
Ura, given as a set of six sense-gates: Ganmi Iro Gen (眼見色現) , kita-oto (耳聞聲出) , Hana Iri Ka Akira (鼻入香顯) , Shita Uguisu Aji Bun (舌鶯味分), Kokoro Shitau Chugyō (心思觸行), I Satoshi Hō Gaku (意悟法學).2
Hi-ō (祕奧): shin’i (眞位), umu niken (有無二劔), shurikin uchiyō (手裡劔打樣), tateki no kurai (多敵の位), jitte-dori (實手取), kore kiwame ittō (是極一刀), aitachi fu-aitachi (相太刀不相太刀), jikidō no kurai (直道位).
A gokui couplet is then transmitted as the mark of awakening:
春風桃李花開日 秋露梧桐葉落時
“Spring wind, the day the peach and plum blossoms open; autumn dew, the hour the paulownia leaves fall.”
7. Descent and teachers current c. 1790
Musashi’s eldest son Iori (伊織) served the Ogasawara house of Kokura in Buzen and his descendants entered the roll of house elders, the present holder styled Shume. Whether that house also transmits the school Mikami does not know. A Miyamoto Kakuhei (宮本角平) founded a house of his own, and Mikami cannot determine whether he was Musashi’s son (in which case a younger son) or a student who inherited the surname.
Teachers named as current at the time: in Kyushu, Murakami Heinai (村上平內) and Shikata Yazaemon (鹿田彌左衞門) at Higo-Kumamoto; Ōtsuka Noboru (大塚登) at Chikuzen-Fukuoka; Seki Heidayū (關平太夫) and another at Hasu-no-ike in Hizen; and Matsu〔…〕 at Inaba-Tottori. In Bizen the school was formerly taught by Takahara Kōhei-ma (高原口平馬) and others, Shinto priests of Kasuga; their transmission Mikami does not detail.
8. The two Chishin-ryū
Onko Chishin-ryū (溫故知新流) is likewise two-sword and is said to be a downstream branch of Musashi.
Mirai Chishin-ryū (未來知新流) is also two-sword but is not of Musashi’s line — and is distinguished by holding the long sword in the left hand and the short in the right (此流に限り多くは長劔を左、短劔を右に持つ也), the reverse of the usual arrangement, though some techniques take sword in the right and wakizashi in the left.
Mirai Chishin-ryū omote names: gorin-kudaki (五輪碎), denten (電天), uja saja (右邪左邪), shimu-ja (思無邪); single-sword: kogi shin-jaken (狐疑心邪劔), eigetsu getsuin (詠月月陰), fudōken (不動劔). The school also carries iai and spear.
