The Truth of the Ancient Ways: A Critical Biography of the Swordsman Yamaoka Tesshu by Anshin Anatoliy

Author:Anshin, Anatoliy [Anshin, Anatoliy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kodenkan Institute
Published: 2019-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

“The Truth of the Ancient Ways”— The Beginning of the Quest

Ten Fists

Y amaoka’s stance on the turmoil in the internal politics of the Bakumatsu period may be characterized as aloofness, and the only evidence of his involvement in political events of the time was his minor affiliation with the Society of the Tiger’s Tail (1860–1861) and his short-term participation in the Rōshigumi affair (December 1862 – April 1863), which were discussed in the previous chapter. Instead, in the late 1850s and 1860s, he devoted as much time as possible to his own musha shugyō , as well as to teaching swordsmanship at the Military Institute. Yamaoka’s aloofness with regard to politics may be explained by his belief that participation in political struggles and intrigues would inevitably put him at risk of misusing his swordsmanship skills with the consequent unnecessary loss of human life. This was against his moral principles (and religious conscience) and contradicted the very foundations of his musha shugyō , which strove for the ideal of the “life-giving sword.” Yamaoka does not appear to have ever explicitly used the term “life-giving sword,” but, in one of his writings on swordsmanship, he stated that “a swordsman who pursues the [ultimate] truth of swordsmanship” must avoid bloodshed. 1 Furthermore, the fact that there is no evidence that, as a senior swordsman, he was entangled in any kind of bloodshed in the Bakumatsu turmoil may be regarded as the direct realization of the concept of the “life-giving sword.”

As noted earlier, Yamaoka held the chūmokuroku menkyo rank of Hokushin Ittō-ryū swordsmanship. This gave him the right to establish his own branch training hall and have disciples. However, he chose to reject this. By this time, he had already started to question the practicability of Hokushin Ittō-ryū sword skills in actual combat. From Yamaoka’s point of view, Chiba Shūsaku’s “modernization” and “rationalization” now seemed to be nothing more than a distortion of the original Ittō-ryū tradition. In another writing on swordsmanship, Yamaoka even criticized Chiba’s famous match with Ōishi Susumu, which took place in the early 1830s. Implicitly pointing to the fact that Chiba’s whole technical system was removed from the realities of the battlefield, he wrote:

A match between Ōishi Susumu and Chiba Shūsaku was held. They say that Ōishi used the bamboo sword of more than five shaku long, 2 and to oppose him Chiba used as a guard of his bamboo sword a lid of a large barrel. 3 Their match was a mere lark, and was not what I call “swordsmanship.” 4

Written criticism of the founder of a contemporary swordsmanship school, especially a school that was one of the most famous in the Bakumatsu period and early Meiji era, was extremely rare. This shows the degree to which Yamaoka was upset with what he saw as the deviation of Hokushin Ittō-ryū from his standards of the genuine warrior culture.

Nor was Yamaoka satisfied with what he saw at other private swordsmanship training halls or the Bakufu Military Institute, and his

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