Yamada Jirokichi

Yamada Jirokichi (1863-1930) was an important figure both in the rise and development of kendō and the preservation of aspects of Jiki Shinkage-ryū as Sakakibara’s successor. It is said by Ishigaki and Iwasa that Yamada Jirokichi had to go to another line, the Fujikawa-ha, to learn the upper-level kata after Sakakibara's passing – Sakakibara died when Yamada was only 31 years of age. So, some of what is done in what is called the mainline or standard line of Kashima-shinden Jiki Shinkage-ryū practice today might be drawn from that Fujikawa-ha kata practice and possibly not Sakakibara's complete transmission of the Odani-ha.

Sakakibara, who was bodyguard of the last Tokugawa shogun and keeper of Edo castle, was a famous kenshi and deserving of much praise for his efforts to maintain a practice of swordsmanship relevant to Japanese society as it modernized. A peculiarity of the historical record is while there are stories maintained of Sakakibara providing Yamada an upper-level license in the form of a densho his teacher had provided him, Yamada's menkyo-kaiden in Jikishinkage-ryū according to Iwasa Minoru was stamped by Sakakibara's widow after Sakakibara died. It is unclear why both Iwasa and Ishigaki would focus on those irregularities in their writing.

According to Ishigaki, Yamada’s document has siddham characters towards it end reading kanman – a reference to intuition and fudoshin – used in the Fujiwara line instead of the siddham characters for A-Un used in the Odani-ha Sakakibara was part of. So, Yamada potentially copied from a Fujikawa example he found or paid quiet homage to where he completed his training under Saito Akinobu between 1909 and 1911, after Sakakibara's passing.

その斎藤明信から山田次朗吉が明治四十二年前後の 二年間に渉って法定四本之形などの奥儀を受けたのは 事実のことだから、彼はこの時受けた伝書中のカンマ ソの文字を榊原伝も同様と思い込んでしまったのでは ないだろうか — 小笠原源信斎『真之心陰兵法目録』寛文 10 年, 真之心陰兵法免状』寛文 13 年，小田原市立図書館蔵

Unless this is the copy Sakakibara provided and those characters change from time to time. In any case, Yamada Jirokichi was a great teacher, practitioner and scholar of kendō— his books on the history of Japanese swordsmanship, both older styles and kendō, seem monumental in their scope. He wanted to increase the martial vigor of kendō instruction as it spread and associated to his efforts and those of others, practice of the foundational kata of Jiki Shinkage-ryū was introduced to several kendō clubs. Jiki Shinkage-ryū documents contain the following passage:

反面、己自身にも虚実二気が生じることを忘れては ならない。その為には己の息の出し入れを察知されな いよう充分心掛け、平素から荒い呼気を押え、7の気 とウンの気が一つに合い和する修練を積まねばいけな

We must not forget that we also have two energies, real and false. We must be careful not to let others notice when we breathe in and out and we must practice suppressing rough breathing and harmonizing the seven energies and the a-un energies into one.

Given the teaching above, I wonder if the loud kiai and ibuki style breathing found in the main lines of contemporary Jiki Shinkage-ryū were actually a later invention, that became out of balance over time in a desire to instill proper fighting spirit to a very large audience – first at Sakakibara's dōjō and then later the many people learning kendō in the early twentieth century.

One cannot underestimate the impact four events had on Japanese budō. First, the banning of the wearing of swords, effectively abolishing the samurai caste. Second, the forced separation of Buddhism from Shinto, damaging the psycho-spiritual underpinnings many forms of budō leveraged. Third, the quick modernization of Japan. Fourth, the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II and the ban on the practice of martial arts. Historians can provide long analyses of each of these events and their circumstance, effects and outcomes, but here I will focus much more narrowly on the impact modernization had on Jiki Shinkage-ryū. Successive inheritors of the art had extensive periods of time where they were not training in Jiki Shinkage-ryū, but I will address that below.