The Kyushu area Shinkage-ryū densho and the Tsuki no Shō of Yagyū Mitsuyoshi both provide descriptions of gokui and kuden level Shinkage-ryū teachings, the first in the form of makimono that list topics and the second in commentary by Mitsuyoshi. We examine hidden kata in Shinkage-ryū and how they evolve over time, ending with an example from Kashima-shinden Jiki Shinkage-ryū practice.
The 集字手利劔大事 phrase in the Kyushu denhso contains the nine kuji mantra syllables, then shurimi (手裏見; seeing the shuri), then the Manura gāthā as one entry. Comparing with the Tsuki no Shō, p. 21, 十字手裏見之事, where we see:
種字ト云習之心持、九字ノ大事トテ、真言ノ秘法ニアリ。此クジニひとつ入テ十字也。…「手裏見」ハ手の内也。
the same three elements are present in the same entry:
- the 手利劔 gokui
- the kuji
- 手裏見.
This Kyushu line was passed down from Ōno Matsuemon (大野松右衛門), a prominent early Edo-period swordsman, a senior disciple of Yagyū Sekishūsai Munetoshi, and later granted the prestigious Yagyū family surname, becoming Yagyū Matsuemon-no-jō (柳生松右衛門尉). Matsuemon-no-jo taught the Arachi family, who passed their teachings down to the Miyake.
It is interesting to compare both documents, as the example from Kyushu diverged at the generation of Yagyū Munenori so provides an example of Yagyū teachings present at the time of Sekishūsai, but before Munenori wrote the Heihō Kadensho or Mitsuyoshi wrote the Tsuki no Sho.
Both the Tsuki no Sho and the Kyushu densho utilize the same character variants: 亦, 无 for 無, and the conjunction 亦 — 无喜亦无憂. The Kyushu document and the Tsuki no Shō both agree against the earlier standard use of 復 from Zutang ji.
The identification of 種字 with 九字 appeared idiosyncratic at first because Shugendō corpora do not make that identification. The identification is now attested to in two Shinkage branches, which makes it a Shinkage-internal convention rather.
In the Tsuki no Shō, 集字 (the collected graphs) becomes 手字 (hand-graph, pulled toward 手裏見/手の内) and then 種字 (seed-graph, pulled toward bīja and 真言ノ秘法). Tsuki no Shō shows both later readings live at once and adds t裏 as 衣＋里 wordplay.
Importantly, the nine syllables are not a late Yagyū borrowing but part of the founder-level 手利劔 teaching. In fact, 集字 may be an older orthography. The term ‘collected graphs’ then refers to the ten (9+1) and sets up the pattern of one set of teachings with a hidden oku appendix.
Common to multiple kata teachings and the mikkyō annointment ceremony we find a public set and a concealed increment that completes it. The mudra sequence itself encodes it — 前 is 遠行印, glossed 隱形 (concealment). This theme is carried in both the original Empi (6+2) and Tengushō (8+1) sets of Kamizumi:
- Enpi 6+2 — six omote, with two oku no fuzui-dachi (獅子奮迅・山霞) appended.
- Tengushō 8+1 — eight named kata, with the ninth ninin kata (二人懸) withheld.
Meanwhile, kuji (9) is nine syllables, plus a silent or unvoiced (invisible) tenth that completes the 5x5 grid written onto the palm for protection 「此クジニひとつ入テ十字也」, and the Shugendō corpus’s parallel 「切九字、今入一字爲十字樣有」.
The Tsuki no Shō’s wordplay makes the concealment explicit at the graph level: 裏 = 衣 + 里, the village wrapped inside the garment — 里 being 中墨・高上・神妙剣, i.e. the concealed increment is the school’s core teaching, hidden inside the outer form. 手裏見 is then literally “seeing what is wrapped.”
Thus, the 集字手利劔大事 is not a list of separate items. It is one teaching stated in three registers — the count (ten), the operation (concealment), and the perception (seeing the concealed) — with the Manura gāthā as its doctrinal ground: the mind turning through all objects, the turning-place 實能幽, truly able to be hidden. Even the gāthā is about the concealed increment.
If the increment is transmitted separately from the named set, then the same set will appear with different counts in different witnesses depending on whether the recipient had the oku. That is a mechanism, not a copying error — and it predicts exactly the pattern of the Ogasawara/Takahashi shedding, where 圓飛 disappears entirely rather than being reduced.
Regarding Tengushō, the Tsuki no Shō p. 7 commentary says 「此ノ余ニ、キラレヌ構を専トシテつかふ太刀二つアリ」 — beyond these, two swords used with the uncuttable stance as essential — which is an appended-pair formula sitting right after the Tengushō list.
The Tengushō oku is not merely withheld but categorically different: it addresses how to engage two opponents instead of one. The Empi oku also – it introduces teachings against uchidachi who holds two swords instead of one; as do the last two omote kata of Tengushō. The two sets relate to one another in this specific manner.
On Tsuki no Shō p. 7, after the Tengushō list, Mitsuyoshi writes 「ふたつクソク打もの、二人あひてにして勝心持ヲ、此内ニテ秘事とするなり」 — striking with two implements, the mind of winning against two opponents: this is made the secret matter within these. That is 二人懸 and 二具足, named as the concealed item, in the Yagyū text, at the right place in the list.
The Hikita entry has 集字手利劔大事 — the completed form of the kuji teaching, ten not nine. So that line presents the increment explicitly in its densho. It is not a witness that lost the oku stratum; it held it, at the most restricted tier (一國一人傳授之), in the same entry with 手裏見 and the Manura gāthā. This is in lieu of the commentary of Munenori and Mitsuyoshi in the Edo line of practice.
However, the line of Yagyū in Kyushu lacks the seikōsui gokui (西江水) placed above shinmyōken in Edo Yagyū, even though it explicitly lists the oku Tengushō and juji gokui of kuji having an oku tenth cut. This is in alignment with the analysis that places seikōsui as a Yagyu Sekishūsai invention that was made at the end of his life, after Matsuemon-no-jo graduated from his studies, and passed down to Munenori and then Mitsuyoshi.
It then likely entered Jikishinkage-ryū practice with Yamada Ippūsai.
Sangakuen
The concealment mechanism also bears on Sangaku (三学). Kamiizumi’s five kata reduce to three at Ogasawara and at Takahashi. If the Sangaku-en likewise carried a concealed pair, the “reduction” is loss of the increment rather than arbitrary pruning. It is Jikishinkage-ryū lore that one Sangaku-en kata was moved into the tō no kata (thus lightly concealed by being displaced into a later practice), however this later reframing is not as clean as the earlier structure Kamiizumi imposed.
And it reframes the JSKR 法定: four of five 三学円之太刀, renamed and installed as foundation. On this reading Kamiya did not merely discard the canon — he took the omote of one set and made it the whole, which is precisely what a line that had lost the oku would do.
Jiki Shinkage Parallels
Karukome’s kata tables shows one cannot determine whether Ogasawara’s 圓飛 denotes the six-form set plus the two, or only the first sword. The ambiguity is diagnostic — the appendix travels concealed, so a receiving line can inherit the name without the explicit increment. However, in the Fujiwara line of Jiki Shinkage-ryū, the final fifth kata set of marubashi is silent.
In Jiki Shinkage-ryū we instead find five circles manifested:
- ensō (円相; circular form), the foundational suburi practice
- The ritual johanen (上半円) upper semicircle and gehanen (下半円) lower semicircle contained in Hōjō practice
- The last enren (圓連) kata in Tō no kata, which has two parts
- Enkai (圓快) – repeated in kodachi and marubashi),
- The final kata set and final kata itself within the set, shadowing the name, marubashi (圓橋).
I think this is an echo of the earlier Shinkage-ryū concealment structure, but focused on the circular marubashi and ensō imagery, rather than the kuji.
While Taisha-ryū chants the Manura before practice, Jiki Shinkage-ryū recites the Hōjōken kokoro-e shō, performing a similar function, albeit in what is likely an 18th or 19th century adopted Shintō register.
