In examining the Tsuki no Shō and the opening passages quoting Kamiizumi on his founding summary relating to divine inspiration, we find mention of deities including Mañjuśrī and Marīcī. Kamiizumi’s founding document has two distinct statements — Mañjuśrī’s sword is the fountainhead; Marīcī takes it as her secret art — where in the Tsuki no Shō copy of 落索 collapses them into 「摩利支尊天専可謂兵法濫觴」, making Marīcī herself the fountainhead. This is a substantive variant, not just orthographic: the Yagyū copy promotes the role of Marīcī. The last sentence is the crux. 「予究諸流奥源、於陰流別抽出奇妙、号新陰流」 — Kamiizumi’s own first-person statement that Shinkage-ryū is an extraction from Kage-ryū.
This is precisely what Karukome in his analysis deploys against the Jiki Shinkage-ryū densho tradition, which denies the Aisu Ikōsai connection: the founder says in his own hand what the later writings of Naganuma Kunisato denies on his behalf.
This is continued on the kata/koto level in Naganuma’s commentary on 面影 and 松風 — one school (Jiki) arguing with its own documentary record stemming from the same source (Yagyū) and more specifically, developing a narrative in counterpoint to the prominent Edo line of Yagyū, flowing from Munefuyu that Yamada Hirozaemon himself practiced. That is a political framing and one can be excused for coming to the conclusion that Naganuma Kunisato doth protest too much: the Jiki Shinkage-ryū he inherited from Yamada Heizaemon is not as separate from Edo Yagyū as he presents it to be. However, Naganuma’s commentary 「柳生公にては、日に影がうつる心持はよし。此方、影無を自分に付、打込むと也」places praise on the Yagyu approach, reinforcing that in practical terms during Naganuma’s lifetime, the two lines were related.
What Jiki Shinkage-ryū’s origin-myth actually does is displace the founder upstream — Matsumoto Bizen at Kashima, divine revelation, 霊剣 → 法定 — and deny Aisu Ikōsai, against Kamiizumi’s own 「於陰流別抽出奇妙、号新陰流」.
Ippūsai is known biographically to have studied Jiki Shinkage-ryū in his youth, was injured during hard training and possibly lost an eye, and changed to the Edo line of Yagyu for many years. Late in life he returned to Jiki Shinkage-ryū and was its inheritor, and worked with Kunisato to develop early bogu. This is well documented in Kendo histories.
I am coming to the conclusion that what Naganuma learned was a mixture of Yamada’s early learning from Jikishinsai and Edo Yagyu material. That is one potential reason why he takes care to distinguish his line from the Kage-ryu history shared by Edo Yagyū. The removal of Aisu as a lineage influence is hardened in later writings (切紙聞書之辨書 from 1806):
或人云、九州鵜戸岩窟ニ而、愛洲惟孝ト云人、霊夢ヲ得而、兵法ヲ自得シタリ、上泉其伝ヲ得タリト言ハ非也
This is around the time Jiki Shinkage-ryū has introduced the use of bogu and began to emphasize shiai and could be related to anxiety around appearing to (an actually) innovate, in a Confucian culture where older knowledge is valued.
This is a continuation of the claim of orthodoxy on the part of Jiki Shinkage-ryū. Jikishinkai (高橋弾正左衛門重治) named his line Jikishin Seito-ryū (直心正統流) — 正統, orthodox transmission — and Karukome dates his activity 寛永→元禄 with the 免状 at 天和3 (1683).
In terms of Kunisato’s writing, the 直心影流目録口伝書 (1764) does not mention Aisu at all. Matsumoto Bizen no Kami to Kamiizumi. There is no mention of Kuka, Empi, Tengusho or the other early Shinkage ryu teachings outside of the Hojo kata that overlap with Sangakuen, and Menkage. Sangaku is not mentioned, but Shinmyoken is, with Fudō bonji.
Karukome’s 表 1-12 collates 『直心正統流兵法目録』 — 元禄7年 (1694), given by Yamada Mitsunori to Yamada Jinnosuke — against the 1856 Ogawa mokuroku. The 直心正統流 極意 column reads:
右口伝 ／ アウン（梵字） 功妙剣 口伝 心妙剣 口伝 ／ 権体勇〔不行不帰不止〕口伝 ／ 西江水 口伝 ／ 惣体之〆 口伝 ／ 口上極意之事 口伝 ／ 以上 右條々極意者有口伝、以理為誠、以誠為理也… ／ 右者従先師神谷氏伝信大居士目録之、雖為奥儀…
Two dates attach to this document. Karukome’s n.224: 「光徳が書いた奥書の前に、延宝7年（1679）に高橋弾正左衛門重治が山田平左衛門光徳に与えたというもう一つの奥書がみられる」 — Takahashi conferred it on Ippūsai in 1679. And the colophon derives its content from Kamiya Denshinsai’s mokuroku, i.e. from before c. 1663.
Ippūsai was seventy in 1708, so born c. 1639. He received this mokuroku, with 西江水 in it, at about forty — from his own teacher, attributed to his teacher’s teacher. And Karukome’s 表 1-10 comparison of 新陰流 against Ogasawara’s 『真之心陰兵法目録』 (1670) puts 水月・懸待用・種子・法心・相分・西江水・打留太刀・光明剣・神妙剣・真心明剣 in the 真新陰流 column. So, 西江水 is present in Jiki Shinkage-ryū by 1670-79, at the time of Kamiya Denshinsai.
Ogasawara’s list contains: 水月, 種子, 神妙剣 — the Kamiizumi triad from p. 69 of the Tsuki no Shō (手字手利剣・水月・神妙剣) — plus 西江水. That is structurally identical to the Yagyū arrangement: founder’s three, with 西江水 as a supernumerary. Both houses show the same shape, which points to a shared horizon in the early-to-mid seventeenth century — the Sekishūsai/Munenori–Ogasawara generation — not to a later transfer.
The Shinkage canon is four sets — 燕飛, 三学, 九箇, 天狗抄 — as in Kamiizumi’s 影目録 (1566). If Kunisato’s 1764 kudensho carries none of them, then by 1764 Jiki Shinkage-ryū had not mixed the Shinkage curriculum with Yagyū material. It had in fact replaced it. This continues a trend. Tengushō was no longer present in the 1670 mokuroku Ogasawara issued. Empi is till found (written 圓飛 ) and three of the Sangaku-en kata: 一刀両断・右転左転・長短一味, without the first and frame-setting Hasso. In 1679/1694 mokuroku issued from Jikishinsai to Ippūsai, Hasso appears as Hasso Happa (八相・発破) and Empi is seems to have been replaced with 圓連・刀連・体連.
Kunisato in 1764 adds 龍尾・面影・鉄破・松風・早船・曲尺 — the 十之形 — and the Kashima myth. Before that time, founders are named one per generation. Jikishinsai lists Kamiya Denshinsai (神谷伝心斎) as the founder. This is an important point. The process of evolution from Shinkage-ryū kata as taught by Kamiizumi changed in the 17th century in what later became Jiki Shinkage-ryū, with Kamiya:
- Kamiya (c. 1663): discards the inherited canon, declares himself founder of a reformed art. The 極意 stratum — bonji, 功妙剣, 心妙剣, 権体勇, 西江水, 惣体, 口上極意 — is what he keeps.
- Takahashi → Ippūsai (1679–1708): transmit that reduced curriculum intact; Ippūsai’s Yagyū years contribute at the practical level (kodachi, habiki, and whatever the technical comparanda finally support) but do not introduce the gokui vocabulary.
- Kunisato (1764): adds the 十之形 and the Kashima origin — supplying, a century later, an ancient authority for a break that had happened at stage 1 and a training method that was new at stage 2.
The myth is doing legitimation work; it is legitimating Kamiya’s rupture, not Ippūsai’s borrowing. Which is why it names Matsumoto — to establish priority, one needs a founder older than the line they have severed themselves from.
What is eventually preserved in common with Yagyū is found in the kuden: shinmyōken, seikōsui, sōjaku, kodachi, habiki, carried back by Yamada Ippūsai from his years in the Edo Yagyū line. The Kashima founder-myth, which derives the Hōjō from Matsumoto Bizen’s divine reiken, is the legitimation this restructuring required — not of a borrowing, but of a replacement.
By 1764 Jikishinkage-ryū had replaced the Shinkage kata canon entirely: Enpi, Sangaku, Kyūka and Tengushō are absent from Kunisato’s mokuroku-kudensho, which retains only the Hōjō — four-fifths of the Sangaku-en set, renamed — supplemented by Kunisato’s own Ten Forms.
The 法定 four are 一刀両断・斬釘截鉄・(左右転化/右転左転)・長短一味 — four of the five 三学円之太刀 (the fifth, 半開半向, dropped). Hōjō is not merely “overlapping” with Sangaku-en; it is a four-fifths subset of it, extracted, renamed as a set, and installed as the school’s foundational form. Everything else — Enpi, Kūka, Tengushō, and the Sangaku rubric itself — is gone.
This serves to explain why Yagyū fingerprints show up in the kuden stratum (西江水’s 置所/気海丹田, the 陰/陽 stance logic, 相尺’s two-shaku definition) rather than in form-names. Also, it helps explain the densho notes. The 松風 commentary — 「エンクハイ〔円飛/燕飛〕ト云ハ、古ハ猿飛ト相記スよし。小笠原源信斎…」 — is an attestation that the school knows the Enpi/Sarutobi name and its Ogasawara transmission, and glosses its own 松風 against it.
That is not a school preserving Enpi; it is a school explaining what its own form stands in place of it. Same with 面影 explaining itself against 柳生公’s practice, but in the case of empi, they have discarded a practice that Ogasawara had maintained. So, this is not simply a distinguishing between two Shinkage factions in Edo, but instead a more radical break.
The founder legend does one specific job: it derives the Hōjō from Matsumoto’s Kashima revelation. That is exactly the form-set that replaced the Shinkage canon. A school that has discarded Enpi, Sangaku, Kyūka, and Tengushō cannot claim to transmit Kamiizumi’s forms — so it needs its own forms to have an origin older and higher than Kamiizumi. Kashima, Takemikazuchi, the 霊剣 vision, and Matsumoto as 流祖 supply precisely that, and they supply it for the Hōjō in particular.
The myth legitimates discontinuity of form, not concealment of borrowing. And that is why it appears with Kunisato — the generation that finished the replacement (adding the 十之形) and changed the training method (bōgu, shinai) — rather than with Ippūsai, who did the borrowing but at a level requiring no legitimation.
At the same time, all mention of mikkyō and shugendō, aside from the Fudō bonji associated to the shinmyōken teaching, are lost.
Reiken
It appears that by the late 17th century, in Jiki Shinkage-ryū writings, Marishiten has a narrative and charismatic function (a dream granted sword, and avatar epithet, a founder’s invocation), where in the Shugendō corpus she maintains an operational register (mudras, annointment of armor, etc.).
Reiken (霊剣) is a named Jiki Shinkage-ryū teaching with its own commentarial literature (佐藤郡兵衛『霊剣傳解』1819; 藤川整斎『霊剣略解』1857).
In 『霊剣略解』 (Fujikawa Seisai, 1857) we find a doctrinal definition:
kanji
聊モ刀剣ニ不限、惣テ槍矛或ハ弓鉄砲其他ノ武器悉ク死物ナレトモ、人之ヲ運用活動スルトキハ、自ラ活物トナル訳ナレトモ、人之ヲ活物ニ為サネバ、如何ナル名刀良弓ト雖モ死物也。然レバ之ヲ活物ニ為サンニハ他事無シ、只我ガ精神ヲ其兵器ニ移シテ使用運転セザレバ、却テ其兵器ノ用ヲ失テ害アリ。…故ニ気ハ気ニ移ルモノナレバ、我ガ気ヲ其太刀ニ移シテ修行セザレバ、実地ノ用ニハ立チ難カルヘシ。
Not only blades — spear, halberd, bow, gun, every weapon is a dead thing (死物); when a person wields them they become living things (活物); if he fails to make them living, the finest blade is still a dead thing. The way to make it living is nothing else: transfer one’s own spirit (精神) into the weapon; ki transfers to ki.
So in this school 霊剣 is the weapon made living by the spirit transferred into it — not a magic sword. There is also a reading of reiken as on the level of origin myths. The founder legend (as in 『直心影流極意教授図解』 1901 and 『直心影流伝書集』 1909) has Matsumoto/Sugimoto Bizen-no-kami granted 「神伝霊剣ノ妙術」 in a divine dream after a seven-night Kashima vigil; testing it with a bokutō cut from the sakaki (cherry tree) before the shrine, 「心気剣一致シテ剣道ノ真理ヲ悟ル」 — mind, ki, and sword became one. And crucially: 「此霊剣ヨリシテ法定ノ太刀筋ヲ生ス」 — from this reiken the hōjō sword-lines were born.
So 霊 carries numinous coloring from the revelation-narrative, but the content it names is the mind-ki-sword unity that the 19th-century commentaries gloss as spirit-transfer but is more akin to infusion or empowerment.
The 死物/活物 logic is a close structural parallel to Yagyū’s 殺人刀/活人剣 — same 活/死 opposition, applied to the weapon rather than to the opponent.
In contrast, the term 天劔/天剣 is not found in Karukome’s dissertation, while 霊剣 occurs twenty-one times. The concept of a heavenly sword (天劔) is Yagyū-side variant, not common to the Jiki lines.
