Shintō Munen-ryū

Shintō Munen-ryū (神道無念流) was founded by Fukui Hyōemon (福井兵右衛門), born in Shimotsuke province in Genroku 13 (1700), who first trained in Ichien-ryū before a long warrior pilgrimage musha-shugyō (武者修行; martial arts pilgrimage) and a period of austerities at the Iizuna shrine on Mount Togakushi in Shinano, after which he is said to have grasped the inner principle of the sword and established the school, opening a dōjō at Yotsuya in Edo. The style became widely known through Togasaki Kumatarō Terufusa (戸賀崎熊太郎暉芳) and, above all, through Saitō Yakurō (斎藤弥九郎), whose Renpeikan (練兵館) was one of the great Edo dōjō and whose pupils included many Chōshū men (Katsura Kogorō, Takasugi Shinsaku and others). Yakurō (1798–1871), who had trained under the third-generation head Okada Jūmatsu (岡田十松) at the Gekkenkan, opened the Renpeikan in 1826 at Kudanshita near the Manaita-bashi; it later stood at Kudan-zaka-ue, on what are now the Yasukuni Shrine grounds, with daily instruction led by his sons — notably Saitō Shintarō (斎藤新太郎), later the second Yakurō.

Nicknamed “the Saitō of power” (力の斎藤), the school favoured heavy, decisive cutting over light touches — light strikes were not counted as valid — and was known for hard practice with reinforced armour. After the Meiji Restoration the line was carried on by Negishi Shingorō (根岸信五郎) and Nakayama Hakudō (中山博道).

In the Gekiken Sōdan (1790)

Two generations before Saitō Yakurō, the Gekiken Sōdan catches the school at the moment it first rose to prominence in Edo. Its kan 2 entry — bracketed in the mokuroku with Shintō-ryū (神道流) and Mijin-ryū (微塵流) — makes Togasaki Kumatarō its foremost living exponent:

一、神道無念流を唱へて當時江戶にて第一と稱せらるゝ戶ケ崎熊太郞は、元武州〔清〕久の產なり。今江戶駿河臺に住す。

Togasaki Kumatarō (戶ヶ崎熊太郎), “who professes Shintō Munen-ryū and is reckoned foremost in Edo at present,” was a native of 〔Kiyo〕ku in Musashi, then living at Surugadai in Edo — a rōnin who claimed close standing with a senior councillor. His fame, Mikami notes, grew all the greater after a young servant in his employ carried out a vendetta for his father.¹ Earlier, hearing of a highly-reputed teacher at Yotsuya, Kumatarō had sought a bout and beaten him at once; when the man, unable to bear the humiliation, pursued him homeward calling for a fight, Kumatarō turned, closed, and felled him with a body-blow (むね擊) — “the degree of his training may be judged from it.”

The entry’s most consequential passage describes the school’s method:

此流勝負を以て仕立つる〔教〕也。尤も勝負あとをつむる也。しなへも重き篠しなへを用ゆ。面・小手已下の道具皆丈夫に製す。皮也。

“This school forms its students by means of bouting, and moreover presses the follow-up after the exchange. For the shinai it uses a heavy split-bamboo shinai (篠しなへ), and the equipment from men and kote downward is all stoutly made — of leather.” This is a c. 1790 description of full-contact shiai with heavy split-bamboo shinai and durable leather bōgu, and continuous pressing of the attack — competitive practice of substantially the modern kind, at a named Edo dōjō, a half-century before the Tenpō–Kōka period usually credited with consolidating it.