Namiki Yasushi

After Ōnishi Hidetaka revived his lineage of Jikishinkage-ryū, there is divergence in what different groups claim as the lineage that follows.

It is known that the Hyakurenkai was subsequently founded in 1973. Kobudo organizations recognized the Hyakurenkai as the official line of Jikishinkage-ryu Odani-ha, while Kashima Jingu recognized Namiki Yasushi as the next head. The Hyakurenkai maintain that Ōnishi requested Itō Masayuki (1930-2001) be his successor, only for him to leave the Hyakurenkai at the urging of Namiki Yasushi (1926-1999).

Both men had trained under Ōnishi and Kawashima — Namiki also trained in Heki-ryu Sekka-ha Kyujutsu under Kawashima; Itō may have as well. Both groups stemming from the Odani faction of Jikishinkage-ryū (i.e., the Hyakurenkai and Namiki’s Hōjōkan) trained it seems mostly separately from 1974 onward.

In Namiki’s case, his death in 1999 left Itō Masayuki in place only for two years as his successor before he too passed away in 2001. In similar fashion possibly to Ōnishi, Yoshida Hijime named himself Itō’s successor and later had a falling out with Namiki’s two adult sons, expelling them from his dojo. They then continued training in Jikishinkage-ryū independent of Yoshida at their own Ku-unkai.

Namiki Kazuya continued his practice of kyudō and would wind up demonstrating at events Yoshida’s group also attended – the former presenting bow and the latter presenting sword. I wonder if this was some uneasy truce, or more to do with who kobudo organizations or shrines recognized as being representatives of respective arts.

I had first thought of this quick succession (Namiki to Itō to Yoshida) as a uniquely disruptive event, but looking back on the hundred and twenty-years prior, from the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate to the rise of modern Japan, we see a lineage that is not simply broken but might be more aptly be described as having been shattered. Shattered not in being destroyed but into shards that have then been reworked into different vessels, hopefully with care in the style of pottery woven with silver or gold, retaining its rustic charm. But maybe Jikishinkage-ryū was more of an idea – preserving the methods taught by historical figures of Sakakibara – than an uninterrupted flow through time.

This narrative might not be unique. It might instead point to the idea that modern ideas of ryūha having unbroken lineage or flowing from generation to generation along a single line of transmission, without side interactions, or other knowledge being introduced into a way of practice, as being overly simplistic and idealized. Although there is limited information available, these descriptions from parallel sources (such as kyudō research, in the case of Kawashima’s biography) point to a much more fertile environment than potentially what we see today, with different factions of even a single art only interacting in limited manner, sometimes even within the same line of practice and with the background of pre-war kendō that is not often examined in koryū circles or writing, due to the subsequent divergence between kendō and kobudō.

Maybe Yamada’s preservation of Jikishinkage-ryū was born out of extremis where the art was in danger of dying out and Saito Akinobu helped him as a fellow kenshi who practiced the same art. In that way maybe it should be honored and respected, especially if kenshi as strong as Kawashima and Ōnishi resulted from those efforts. Maybe the spirit of Sakakibara’s swordsmanship lived on in those men, even if some had their own demons they sought to tame with the majesty of hōjō swordsmanship.

End Notes

1. There are also parallel lines of practice from Ōnishi’s contemporary, Ōmori Sogen (1904-1994), which this essay does not describe. Sogen was closely associated to right wing ultra nationalism during the Japanese 20th century imperial period, in addition to Zen.