Late Edo Masters

The lineage of what is considered today the main line of Jiki Shinkage-ryū was very likely almost broken with the death of its 14th headmaster, Sakakibara Kenkichi, who had an illustrious martial career: bodyguard to the last shogun, keeper of Edo castle, and inheritor of the Odani-ha Jiki Shinkage-ryū. Sakakibara had issued several upper-level licenses in the art over time, but the most likely successor being fellow student of Otani Nobutomo named Shimada Toranosuke (1810–1864) who predeceased him.

The late Iwasa Minoru in the Japanese magazine titled “Budo” viewed Sakakibara’s death as having broken the main Seito-ha line of the art; in the discussion below I take a more charitable view but still tend to use the term Odani-ha instead of Seito-ha for consistency.

Sakakibara's later life dōjō was famous for sparring and would only do traditional kata practice periodically, or at the very least emphasized it much less than they did jigeiko and shiai. Namiki Yasushi maintained that Jikishinkage-ryū had practices such as yawara and sojutsu that were were lost over time — telling, because Matsumoto Bizen no Kami, the founder of Jiki Shinkage-ryū, was most famously reported as a spearman and other lines of Shinkage-ryū maintain sojutsu at their upper levels of training.

This loss may be explained not by neglect of some kind but more likely the specialization that occurred during the Edo period. For example, Odani Nobutomo was also licensed in Hozoin-ryū sojutsu while Shimada Toranosuke practiced Kitō-ryū jujutsu.