Ōnishi Hidetaka
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Ōnishi Hidetaka [
Ōnishi Hidetaka was captain of the Kendō Club of Hitosubashi University and underwent a seven-day ordeal practicing Hōjō 100 times a day for seven days at a mountain temple in Yamanishi prefecture before receiving his final license from Yamada Jirokichi. Intense mountain training of Hōjō was also undertaken at Mt. Kurotaki Fudo-ji Temple in Gunma inspired by a retreat conducted by Amano Hachiro of the Shogitai, a famous Jikishinkage-ryū practitioner.
Ōnishi recounts the following description of his own meeting with Yamada:
In May 1925, when I participated in the Kyoto Butokukai Headquarters Tournament, I wanted to receive instruction from Yamada Sensei, so I went to Tokyo accompanied by two of my students and immediately visited him at his residence in Okachimachi, Shitaya, without any prior introduction. Yamada Sensei opened the shoji screen of the room on his left side to welcome this unknown guest, saying,
"I have been waiting for you this morning. When I washed my face and bowed to the sun, I sensed that three unusual guests were coming from far to the south. Please come in." Upon being greeted by their warm and sincere demeanor, as if they were old acquaintances and with no estrangement whatsoever, the man said he felt an indescribable sense of nostalgia, as if struck by a mysterious electric current.
The disciple who was accompanying him hesitated, thinking that Yamada Sensei had mistaken him for someone else, but was urged repeatedly by the Sensei to enter the tatami room. As soon as he sat down, he was surprised to be served tea and snacks that had already been prepared for all four people.
When we met with Professor Yamada during our student days, there were many times when we had questions and wanted to ask him, but he would carefully explain them to us without us even having a chance to ask.
Yamada Jirokichi died in December 1929. Ōnishi writes:
On November 23, 1929, just 40 days before Yamada Sensei passed away, Yamada Sensei and I performed the habiki kata at the Hitotsubashi Dōjō. That day was the Hitotsubashi Kendō Club's Kendō Tournament and many instructors, as well as kendō players from universities throughout Tokyo, attended. The packed hall was intoxicated for a moment by the spirit and flash of light and we all forgot ourselves as we watched. Sensei demonstrated to the fullest the quintessence of Japanese martial arts, a masterful technique that unites stillness and movement. His tremendous spirit overwhelmed the packed hall and his majesty was so great that words are lacking to describe it. This sensitivity and courage are great mental strengths that can be applied to all kinds of everyday situations.
One item we can deduce from the above is that Ōnishi trained under Yamada Jirokichi in Jikishinkage-ryū kata for an intense period of 4 years, from 1925 to 1929, which had a profound effect on him then and later in life. Kawashima also trained under Yamada Jirokichi for what was likely a similarly brief but intense period. I think an important difference between training in the 1920’s versus today is that these masters were already extremely proficient at the kendō of that period before training in Jikishinkage-ryū. Jikishinkage-ryū was viewed as a finishing school of sorts, where people would learn Hōjō and other parts of its curriculum to improve their already high-level swordsmanship.
It was thirty-four years later in 1963, after the death of Kawashima, that Ōnishi Hidetaka declared himself to the be the successor to Yamada Jirokichi as 17th generation headmaster of the art, retroactively naming the deceased Kawashima as its 16th generation headmaster and revived the school. I suppose Kawashima was so well respected by his contemporaries in the art, they went without having another headmaster in his stead for many years, whether he regarded himself as such. Or they were so impressed by his kendō that it felt appropriate. Or, the idea of a headmaster was not necessary, as each person was already an advanced kendōka who viewed their Jikishinkage-ryū practice as the culmination of their training – training in Sakakibara’s art with similar privations such as intense hojo practice famous samurai conducted being a modern-day version of musha shugyō.
So, there is a period from the death of Yamada Jirokichi in 1930 and the announcement by Ōnishi after August 1957 where Kawashima is in Taiwan and focusing his efforts on kyudō practice and Ōnishi is first in Hong Kong and then returns to Japan, during which time both men were isolated from other contemporary students of Yamada Jirokichi.
This is not a small break in training during the post-WWII ban on the practice of Japanese martial arts, but rather a long period where Jikishinkage-ryū was fragmented, with its senior adherents attending to more pressing matters than dōjō practice of kenjutsu.
It was known that during the postwar period Kawashima would open ceremonies at the Kashima Jingu hono enbu (martial arts offering), performing aspects of ritual blessing called harai with bow and arrow. Pictures of him without his keikogi show an extremely powerful man – some of the kyudō commentary cited includes descriptions of his pulling a very large bow with only two fingers. While not much is found in English language sources about Kawashima, he is clearly regarded as a senior member of the martial arts community of his time.
One can only wonder what he experienced or what acts he committed that caused him to decline accepting the lineage of one of the most powerful and brutal forms of Japanese swordsmanship from Yamada.
Today many people train in koryū without having learned judo or kendō. At least for Jikishinkage-ryū in the early twentieth century, this was very much not the case. Kendō has since evolved, but it is likely current exponents of the art, not having tested themselves in shiai, practice with a somewhat different mindset than that of Yamada, Kawashima and Ōnishi, despite their best efforts.
Ōnishi Hidetaka died in 1963 at the age of 60. His posthumous Buddhist name was Hyakuren-in Shaku Eiryu Koji. Family temple is the Jorinji Temple (6-17-10 Higashiueno, Taito-ku)
End Notes
- Mount Kurotaki Fudo-ji Temple
不動寺 1267-1 Oshiozawa,大字 Nammoku, Kanra District, Gunma 370-2801, Japan (5PP2+FC Nammoku, Gunma, Japan) is a location known for its association to Jikishinkage-ryū in the 19th and 20th centuries, centered around it being a location for intense hōjō training sessions.