Introduction
The 本識三問答 (Honshiki sanmondō, “Three Dialogues on the Original Consciousness”)(Kimura Kyūho n.d.) is a martial-arts text bound after the Tengu geijutsuron in the 武術叢書 (Bujutsu sōsho, 国書刊行会, 1915; NDL 945805).(国書刊行会 (Kokusho Kankōkai, ed.) 1915) Honshiki (本識; Skt. mūlavijñāna) is the Yogācāra “root consciousness,” a synonym of the ālayavijñāna.
It expounds the method of Yagyū Munenori (柳生宗矩; styled Tajima no Kami 但馬守) and treats 西江水 (seikōsui, “West River water”) as the highest secret of the school — the culmination above the whole gokui series 手字・手裏劔・神妙劔・水月・迎捧心 (the source’s own ordering of the series varies).
This makes it the fullest swordsmanship witness to the phrase whose Chan life is set out in the West River piece: here 一口吸盡西江水 has become a sword gokui, complete with a waka that “swallows the river in one gulp.”
Below are passages that define and expound 西江水 (not the whole text, which also covers the 三心 dialogue, the 氣/理 discussion, and an archery analogy). Source readings follow the Bujutsu sōsho print; section headings are unique to this essay.
The Honshiki sanmondō is an Unchū-ryū (運籌流) document; Unchū-ryū is, in content, Edo Yagyū Shinkage-ryū under a licensed alias. The name originates with Kimura Tomoshige (木村友重, 1585–1654), known by his common name Kimura Sukekurō (木村助九郎) — head disciple of Yagyū Munenori, later counted among the “Yagyū Shitennō,” and from 1634 a 600-koku retainer of Tokugawa Yorinobu in Kishū. Out of deference to his teacher’s school name he called his own teaching Unchū-ryū; in Kan’ei 11 (1634) he was permitted to use “Yagyū-ryū” publicly, and the Unchū-ryū name passed as second generation to his fellow student Debuchi Heibei (出淵平兵衛) of the Echizen Matsudaira house. When Heibei was in turn permitted to call his art Yagyū-ryū, the Unchū-ryū name was formally returned to the Yagyū house. (Hinatsu Shigetaka 1716) (Wikipedia contributors 2026)
A Nihon Budō Gakkai conference abstract by Takahashi Shōichi states that Unchū-ryū comprises an Echizen line and a Yagyū line — not branches of one another but separately constituted — and that the content of both is Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. The Echizen line was carried by Kimura Kyūho (木村久甫), who wrote the Honshiki sanmondō (本識三問答) and the Kenjutsu fushiki hen (剣術不識篇); the Yagyū line by Hirayama Kōzō (平山行蔵), author of the Kenchō (剣徴) and Kensetsu (剣説). Hirayama assumed the fourth-generation headship of Unchū-ryū through his teacher Yamada Mohei’s (山田茂兵衛) period of entry into Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. (Takahashi Shōichi 1999)
The Honshiki sanmondō is itself an Unchū-ryū text: the Shinpen bujutsu sōsho prints it as 本識三問答附運籌流剣術要領, attributed to Kimura Kyūho, and the NDL authority record likewise lists Kimura Kyūho as author. (Budōsho Kankōkai 1968) The seikōsui passages translated below thus come through the Echizen line.
Methods and Sources
The translation is a new rendering made directly from the primary text with machine assistance (Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic). No published translation of the Honshiki sanmondō was consulted, and none is known to me.
The base text is the 本識三問答 as printed in the 武術叢書 (Bujutsu sōsho; Kokusho Kankōkai, 1915; NDL 945805), pp. 183–188, bound after the Tengu geijutsuron; the 西江水 material continues briefly into the appended 運籌流剣術要領 leaves. (国書刊行会 (Kokusho Kankōkai, ed.) 1915) (Kimura Kyūho n.d.)
The text is classical prose — wabun with kanbun tags (千金莫傳 and the like) — not sōrōbun; embedded Chinese phrases are given readings where they occur.
Writing conventions follow house style:
- uncertain or supplied readings are marked 〔…〕;
- characters that are gaiji or too faint to read in the 1915 print are marked 〓 in the transcription;
- readings requiring confirmation against another witness are flagged in the Notes and collected under “On the source and this selection.”
Honshiki Sanmondō
Seikōsui as the apex above the whole curriculum
此上に西江水と云事有り、目錄悉くの習ひを極めて其上の儀也。西江水を傳受すれば右悉くの習皆役にたたず、西江水一つにて濟む事也。悉くの習ひは結句柳に成るといへり。是は凡慮の及びがたき所也。（…）此習ひを昔は見詰とも言へり。（…）有程の事を悉く丸くして合する儀也、こゝを以て西江水也。但馬守萬法の輪を得德して一口の心を以て名付得るとなり。此流の一振太刀是也。
“Above [all the rest] there is what is called seikōsui. It is the matter that lies beyond mastering the entire catalogue (mokuroku) of studies. Once seikōsui is transmitted, all those studies become useless — it is settled by seikōsui alone; all the studies, in the end, ‘turn into willow’ (結句柳に成る). This is a place beyond ordinary reckoning. (…) In old times this study was also called ‘the fixed gaze’ (mizume 見詰). (…) It is the making-round of everything there is and bringing it together — and this is seikōsui. Lord Tajima [Munenori], having attained the wheel of the myriad methods, named it out of the mind of ‘one gulp’ (一口の心). This is the single sword-stroke of this school.”
Notes. 結句柳に成る — “turns into willow” — the supple willow that yields and is never broken (cf. the 枯木/楊柳 pairing in the 良移心当和 clause of the Tsuki no Shō kishōmon, working transcription p. 65, whose 剛を父とし弱を母とす states the same supple-willow doctrine). 一口の心 — “the mind of one gulp” — is the text’s own gloss on the 一口 of 一口吸盡西江水: Munenori is said to have coined the name from that phrase. 得德して — the reading is suspect (得道? 會得?); to be checked against the print. 此流の一振太刀 — 振 being the sword counter, an alternative rendering is “the one sword of this school.”
Seikōsui as no-sword (mutō)
西江水の心得は又格別也。敵の懸待表裏を知らず、敵劔戟をつかはず、我又劔戟をつかはず、我も敵も畢竟無刀の道理也。是に依て但馬守も無刀流と名付けんものをといひ給へり。西江水に至ては尤の儀也。千金莫傳可祕云々。
“The understanding of seikōsui is again of a different order. One does not [attend to] the enemy’s engaging-waiting-and-deception (ken-tai-hyōri); the enemy does not use blade, and I too use no blade — in the end both enemy and I are the principle of no-sword (mutō). For this reason Lord Tajima said, ‘I would have named it the No-Sword School (無刀流)’ — at seikōsui this is exactly right. ‘Not to be transmitted for a thousand in gold; to be kept secret,’ and so on.”
Notes. This ties 西江水 directly to 無刀 (mutō) — the core Yagyū concept — and reports Munenori’s own remark that he might have called the school 無刀流. 千金莫傳 (“worth a thousand gold, transmit not”) is a recurring densho tag (it also closes the passage at §5). Munenori’s counterfactual naming finds a later, unrelated echo in Yamaoka Tesshū’s actual Mutō-ryū (無刀流); no transmission link is implied.
The waka — “swallow the West River water in one gulp”
西江水に至りての歌 兵法は懸待表裏みつなれど、つゞめて見れば、たゞひとつなり 兵法の敷の習を打ちすてゝ、西江水を一口に呑む
“Poems on reaching seikōsui: — In swordsmanship there are the three — engaging, waiting, and deception — but gathered up and seen whole, they are just one. — Casting off the manifold trainings of swordsmanship, swallow the West River water in one gulp.”
Notes. The second waka is the swordsman’s direct reflex of the Chan kōan 一口吸盡西江水 — 一口に呑む (“swallow in one gulp”). This is the passage that most sharply shows the Chan phrase functioning as a sword gokui. 敷の習 — translated as 數の習 (“the manifold studies”); the 1915 print’s 敷 is likely a graph confusion, and the emendation should be confirmed against another witness.
The iron gate — three fearsome gatekeepers
我家に一つの劔術の眼有り、西江水と號す。目錄の習悉く濟みて捧心迄至るといふとも、懸待表裏を心にかくる劔術也。西江水に至りての上は、懸待表裏を心にかくる事は迷の相也。（…）西江水を傳授の上は、水月の鐵門は關の戶さゝぬ風情なりと言ひて、舊弟子に傳授有りけり。其後は鐵門もなし。尤懸待表裏といふおそろしき三人の門番、突棒さすまたも見えざりけりとかや。
“‘In my house there is a single eye of swordsmanship, named seikōsui. Even when one has finished the whole catalogue and reached [mukō-]hōshin, so long as one keeps engaging-waiting-deception in mind, it is [still merely] swordsmanship. Once one reaches seikōsui, to keep engaging-waiting-deception in mind is the mark of delusion.’ (…) ‘Once seikōsui is transmitted, the iron gate of suigetsu is like a barrier-gate with its doors left unbarred’ — so ran the transmission to his disciples of long standing. After that there was no iron gate; and those three fearsome gatekeepers called engaging, waiting, and deception — their push-poles (tsukubō 突棒) and catch-forks (sasumata 刺股) were no longer to be seen — so it is told.”
Notes. The gatekeepers’ implements are Edo arrest gear — the tsukubō and sasumata of the 三つ道具 — checkpoint apparatus apt to the 門番 image. The closing とかや carries the hearsay flavor rendered “so it is told.”
The eye of the school; the five things not to abandon; the tile-and-gate
西江水は柳生流の眼也。此外別にあらず。心に捨てざる事五つあり。心の下作り西江水、靜に步む事、あたらぬと云事、太刀を打とめぬといふこと、勝を急がざる事是也。千金莫傳。（…）前の習事は門をたたく瓦の如し。其瓦の德にて門を開くべきことを得て內に入り、兵法の根本の所を見付けたり。扨門を破りて後は、瓦は少しも役にたゝず、今は瓦を捨ること肝要なり。尤も是は西江水に至りたる上のこと也。
“Seikōsui is the eye of Yagyū-ryū; there is nothing else besides. There are five things not to be abandoned in the mind: the mind’s underlying preparation [that is] seikōsui; moving quietly; the matter of ‘not-striking’; the matter of ‘not stopping the sword’; and not hurrying to win. Not to be transmitted for a thousand in gold. (…) The earlier studies are like a tile used to knock at a gate: by the tile’s merit one gets the gate opened, enters within, and finds the root-place of swordsmanship. But once the gate is broken through, the tile is of no use at all — now it is essential to throw the tile away. This, of course, is [only] after one has reached seikōsui.”
Notes. The tile-knocking-at-the-gate (敲門瓦子) is a Chan commonplace — the expedient discarded once it has served (cf. “the finger pointing at the moon”). Here the whole technical curriculum is that tile. Three further waka in the source press the same point (e.g. 「有體の習をいだし西江水を打たんとすれば 打太刀になる」 — “if you bring out the studies-as-they-stand and try to strike seikōsui, you become [only] the striking-sword”). 打太刀 (uchidachi) is the attacking, “losing” role in paired kata — the 遣ひ方／打太刀 contrast that structures the omitted 三問答 — so becoming the uchidachi means taking the defeated part. あたらぬと云事 is rendered “not-striking,” but あたる could equally be “clashing,” i.e. not meeting the opponent’s sword force-on-force; the ambiguity is left open pending the fuller context.
Syncretic Gloss
Here we find the identification (西江水 = 空理 = 本來の面目 = 明德) of Seikōsui with other capstone teachings:
西江水といふ事、柳生流の奧義、最深微妙の位なり。（…）つら〓〓〔つらつら〕あんずるに、萬物は大元空の一理より始り、又終に一理に歸す。此理といふもの、有にあらず無にあらず、色もなく香もなし、しかも又顯然たり。是を柳生流にて西江水と名付けて奥意とす。予が運籌流にては劔矢當と號す。佛法にとくは無量不可思議といひ、また本來の面目に逢ふなどと云。儒道にては明德と號す。神道にては內外清淨と云と見えたり。是に至りたるを、神道にては神とあがめ、佛道にては佛と敬ひ、儒道にては聖人と貴ぶ、凡人の中にては名人と賞翫すと云。一切萬物、名と形は異なるといへども、其成す所の大元は皆悉く一理のみと見るべし。
”‘Seikōsui is the innermost secret of Yagyū-ryū, the rank of deepest and subtlest wonder. (…) Pondering it carefully: the myriad things begin from the one principle of the Great-Origin Emptiness (大元空の一理), and in the end return to the one principle. This principle is not existent, not non-existent; without color, without scent; and yet manifestly evident. This the Yagyū school names seikōsui and takes as its innermost meaning; my own Unchū-ryū (運籌流) calls it “sword-arrow-hit” (劔矢當). In the Buddha-Dharma it is expounded as the immeasurable and inconceivable, or as “meeting one’s Original Face (本來の面目)”; in the Confucian way it is called “illustrious virtue (明德)”; in Shintō it is called “inner-and-outer purity (內外清淨).” One who reaches this, Shintō reveres as a god (kami), the Buddha-way honors as a Buddha, the Confucian way esteems as a sage, and among ordinary people is prized as a “master” (meijin). For all the myriad things, though name and form differ, the great origin from which they are wrought is in every case one principle only.’”
This is spoken by Kyūho (久甫) — presumably the author Kimura Kyūho himself, to whom the NDL and NIJL records attribute the text — in the appendix that gives the 1968 edition its fuller title (the 運籌流剣術要領), recounting a dream in which his own teacher glosses the Yagyū 西江水 by cross-tradition equivalences. It is the clearest statement that 西江水, on the sword side, was read as 空理 (the empty principle) — made equivalent to 天理 at §8 — the same “one principle” the Chan, Confucian, and Shintō vocabularies each name differently. (The equation to 明德 is the Daxue; 本來の面目 is Chan.)
What “West River water” names — and why the studies are “cast off,” not annihilated
西江水に至りては悉くの習ひ捨る儀なり。又捨るといへども、無に歸るにはあらず。手字、手裏劔、神妙劔、迎捧心などまでは、其位々々に着する心あり、又持つ所あり。西江水に至りては持所をはなれ、着する心もなく、自然に手字、手裏劔、神妙劔、迎捧心、水月等を具足し、一物なき中より、夫々の事自然に應ず。是をさして右の位を捨るといふ。（…）西江水とは西の海の廣く限りなき名なり。空理の限りなく、都卒天・金輪際迄も行渡りて有るといふ事をなぞらへて、西江水といふと見えたり。此位に至りては、我より彼れを打つにあらず、彼來て打たるゝなり。
“At seikōsui, all the studies are cast off. Yet though cast off, they do not return to nothing. Up through shuji, shuriken, shinmyōken, mukō-hōshin, there is a mind that clings to each rank, and a place one holds. At seikōsui one leaves the held-place, has no clinging mind, and — of itself — is [still] furnished with shuji, shuriken, shinmyōken, mukō-hōshin, suigetsu and the rest; out of a midst where there is not a single thing, each matter answers of itself. This is what is meant by ‘casting off’ those ranks. (…) ‘West River water’ is a name for the west sea, broad and without limit. It seems to be called seikōsui by analogy to the empty principle’s being limitless, reaching upward even to the Tuṣita heaven and downward to the golden-wheel limit (金輪際; the nethermost base of the world). At this rank, it is not I who strike him — he comes and is struck.”
Notes. The etymological gloss — 西江水 = the boundless “west sea,” figuring the limitlessness of the 空理 — is the text’s own reading of the phrase, independent of the Chan source. “He comes and is struck” (彼來て打たるゝ) is developed in the source through the simile of a ruler’s edicts: the wrongdoer is not killed by the ruler but by his own crime. 手字 is read shuji, as in the Heihō kadensho compound 手字種利剣 (shuji shuriken); the catalogue’s 手字・手裏劔 pair looks like that complex split into two entries — reading to be confirmed against Imamura’s Shiryō Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. 都卒天 is a graph variant of 兜率天 (Tuṣita).
空理 = 天理
空理といふは則ち天理の事なり。空理西江水の位は、行くに形なく來るに路なき物なり。然れども初心の人、西江水を唯無一物なりと計り心得て、すべて無見に堕すべからず。心頭無一物とて、空虛の事にあらず、氣は剛健活達なる事を善とす。
“The empty principle (空理) is precisely the heavenly principle (天理). The rank of the empty-principle seikōsui is a thing with no form in its going and no road in its coming. Yet the beginner must not take seikōsui to be merely ‘not one thing’ and so fall wholly into a nihilistic view (無見). ‘No single thing in the mind’ is not empty vacancy: the ki being firm, robust, and free-flowing is what is good.”
Notes. The caution against 無見 (a nihilistic misreading of emptiness) and the insistence on robust ki (氣剛健活達) guard the seikōsui/空理 doctrine from quietism — a standard Zen-and-sword move. 心頭無一物 echoes the Platform Sutra’s 本來無一物; 行くに形なく來るに路なき echoes the Chan formula 來無所從、去無所至.
Analysis
Willow, Storm and Settled Mist
In the 良移心当和 clause of the Tsuki no Shō kishōmon (working transcription p. 65), the willow arrives with its contrast partner: 剛を父とし弱を母とす sets the hard and the pliant as complementary parents, and the 枯木/楊柳 pairing plays them out — under the 嵐, the withered tree snaps where the willow bends and survives. The Honshiki sanmondō keeps only the surviving term: at seikōsui the whole curriculum 結句柳に成る, “turns into willow” (§1), with no withered tree in sight. Read against the kishōmon clause, the sword text’s image resolves naturally: what the studies lose at seikōsui is their 枯木 quality — fixity of form — and what persists is pliancy alone. The storm has its counterpart as well: in §4 the discriminating test is the encounter itself, where keeping 懸待表裏 in mind is 迷の相 — rigidity failing under pressure, as the withered branch fails in the wind.
The clause’s closing image, 「風は〔をさまりて?〕霞の動かざるが如し」 — “the wind 〔having subsided?〕, like the mist that does not move” — completes the sequence: storm, then stillness. The Honshiki sanmondō’s structural equivalent is the iron gate standing open with its three gatekeepers gone (§4): once the end state is reached, the apparatus of testing simply vanishes. The unmoving mist also keeps company with §8’s 行くに形なく來るに路なき — a stillness that is not inertness, consistent with that section’s caution against 無見 and its insistence on robust ki.
The remaining tail clauses sit in the same doctrinal register. 土水火風の得理此中に籠もる — the attained principles of earth, water, fire, and wind contained within — is the jūjutsu-side analogue of §6’s reduction of many names to 一理; and 賢きも愚となす — “even the wise is made foolish” — echoes the ripened-wisdom motif of the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku (see the companion translation), where matured wisdom withdraws inward and its bearer looks like one who knows nothing. Since both texts stand in Munenori’s student orbit — Kimura’s Unchū line here, Fukuno’s 良移心当 in the kishōmon clause, which attributes the founding to 七郎左衛門 — the shared imagery is most economically read as common Edo-Yagyū dōjō stock rather than borrowing in either direction; the Fukuno–Munenori teacher–student link is itself a traditional-account item, interested readers should consult the Honchō bugei shōden and Watatani.
Comments
- Source: 本識三問答, in 武術叢書 (Bujutsu sōsho), 国書刊行会, 1915 (NDL 945805), pp. 183–188 of that volume (running header 本識三問答; the 西江水 material continues briefly into the appended 運籌流剣術要領 leaves).
- Selection: the passages above are the seikōsui-defining ones; the surrounding text (the master– disciple 三問答 on 遣ひ方 vs 打太刀, the 氣/虛實 discourse, the archery analogy) is omitted.
-
The kishōmon clause’s founder attribution reads 七郎左衛門, where Fukuno’s name is elsewhere given as 七郎右衛門 (Fukuno Shichirōemon Masakatsu). The 左/右 alternation in -emon names is among the most common mechanical slips in Edo-period copying and typesetting — a one-graph substitution between the two highest-frequency name suffixes — so the variant is more plausibly scribal than evidence of a distinct person.
- Flags: a few characters are gaiji/faint in the print (marked 〓 in the transcription); the Unchū-ryū (運籌流) name and its 劔矢當 term, and the reading of 迎捧心 (mukō-hōshin?), would benefit from confirmation against another witness (text example).
- Further flags in the Notes: 得德 (§1), 敷→數 (§3), and the shuji reading of 手字 (§7). The 良移心当和 locus (§1) is confirmed against the Tsuki no Shō kishōmon, working transcription p. 65 (to appear).
End Notes
References
primary
secondary
