Kawashima Takashi [川島堯]

Register record

Identity & authority

Reliability

Unusually well corroborated for this circle: three independent sources agree on the kyūdō hanshi grade of May 1934 and the April 1883 birth, and Matsuo and Goga's work on Sakai Hikotarō's 619-name disciple register independently attests the Sekka-ha affiliation and the shinan menkyo. Two claims in the 1939 Asahi list are treated as that source's error: the 竹林派 attribution, which the disciple register contradicts, and the 九州帝大師範 affiliation, refuted by a documented Tainan-bound trajectory rather than by explicit denial.

Attestation

corroboration: external · contested

Names

type	kanji	romaji	reading
myoji	川島	Kawashima	かわしま
imina	堯	Takashi	たかし

Dates

Born

Meiji 16.4 (April 1883) (1883)

Died

(1957)

Origin & status

Province

下総

Locality

千葉県 (Chiba)

Status

Entered the Imperial Navy at twenty-two and served in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) with the Yokosuka naval corps. Aspired in youth to be a Confucian scholar.

Offices

• kendō instructor to the Taiwan police, from the spring of his twenty-ninth year (c. 1911-12)
• educator at Tainan Commercial High School, 1927
• Police Affairs Department; opened the Kakushinkan (覚眞館) kyūdō dōjō at his residence, 1930
• resigned his kendō post at the police normal school (警察師範学校) in 1931 to devote himself to kyūdō

Lineage & parentage

— kenjutsu

Attestation

—

— kenjutsu

Rank

license received during naval service

Attestation

—

— kenjutsu

Teacher

Shida Utanosuke (信太歌之助), also recorded as Aoyagi Kumakichi (青柳熊吉)

Attestation

—

— kenjutsu

Teacher

Yamada Jirōkichi (山田次朗吉)

Generation

16th

Attestation

internal

— kyujutsu

Teacher

Sakai Hikotarō (酒井彦太郎, 1867-1951)

Rank

shinan menkyo (指南免許); the first person to enroll in Tainan

Attestation

external

Relations

Students

• Namiki Yasushi (並木靖)
• Itō Masayuki (伊藤雅之)

Output & material record

Works

• Kyūdō Retrospective (1952), published in Kamisakai Village, Chiba Prefecture

Honours

• Kyūdō hanshi (範士), Shōwa 9.5 (May 1934), following his Sekka-ha teacher.

Kawashima Takashi [ 川島堯, 1883-1957 ] trained in Jikishinkage-ryū first under Shida Utanosuke and then, probably after Shida’s death, under Yamada Jirōkichi.

Factions of Jikishinkage-ryū do not consistently describe the role of Kawashima Takashi in its 20th century history. Information from the memorial stele erected to Kawashima at Kitashimizu Fudō-in, Yokoshiba, Chiba, by Ōnishi Hidetaka Namiki Yasushi, Itō Masayuki and others can be found here (opens in a new tab).

Early Life

Kawashima was born in Chiba, studied Fujishin-ryū (不二心流)¹ in his youth and aspired to be a Confucian scholar. At age 22 he entered the Imperial Navy, and fought in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). He was part of the Yokosuka naval corps, receiving his Ittō-ryū license during service. He crossed to Taiwan in spring 1910, settling in Tainan that June.

His memorial stele states plainly that “in the spring of his twenty-ninth year he took up the post of kendō instructor to the Taiwan police” from roughly 1911–12. Other sources write that he moved to Taiwan in 1910 at age 27.

Kyūdō

In Taiwan he began a lifelong study of Kyūdō. He became a kyūdō disciple of Sakai Hikotarō (opens in a new tab) (酒井彦太郎; 1867-1951) Heki-ryū Sekka-ha kyūdō/kyūjutsu, reaching the Butokukai level of hanshi.

Kawashima Takashi at kyūdō.

Heki-ryū (日置流) is the foundational tradition of Japanese foot-archery (歩射), traced to Heki Danjō Masatsugu (日置弾正正次), a late-fifteenth-century figure whose practical shooting is credited with reviving Japanese archery; he transmitted the art in 1494 (Meiō 3) to Yoshida Kōzuke-no-suke Shigekata (吉田上野介重賢) of Ōmi, and from the Yoshida house the Sekka-ha, Dōsetsu-ha and other branches split off, supplying archery instructors to daimyō and shōgun through the Sengoku and Edo periods. (Inazu Yūko (稲津裕子) 2014) The Sekka-ha (雪荷派) — Kawashima’s own line — arose in the mid-sixteenth century out of a succession crisis: when Yoshida Shigemasa (重政, gō Ichiō) fell into conflict with his lord Rokkaku Yoshikata over surrendering the family transmission, he gave it, fearing it would be lost, to his fourth son Shigekatsu (重勝, gō Sekka) and had him move to Kyoto; Shigekatsu’s line became the Sekka-ha, said to have preserved much of the Yoshida-ryū’s technical substance — with adherents such as Gamō Ujisato and Hosokawa Yūsai — and to have put down particularly deep roots in western Japan and Kyushu.

Further details of his life are drawn from kyūdō researchers (opens in a new tab):

• In 1927, he took employment as an educator in Tainan Commercial High School.
• In 1930, he worked with the Police Affairs Department and opened a kyūdō dōjō, the Kakushinkan (覚眞館).²
• In 1934, he was declared a kyūdō hanshi, following his Heki-ryū Sekka-ha teacher.³
• In 1952 he published, “Kyūdō Retrospective,” in Kamisakai Village, Chiba Prefecture.

Kawashima is listed on koma 128, 弓道 (kyūdō) 範士 subsection, with Kaminaga (神永) adjacent exactly as in the 1939 Asahi list: kyūdō hanshi, Shōwa 9.5 (May 1934), born Meiji 16.4 (April 1883), Tainan Hakkin-chō 1-56. Three independent sources now agree.

The Japanese Academy of Budo conference abstract (48th Annual Conference, 2015; abstract IA-2, p.16) by Matsuo Makinori (International Budo University) and Goga Tomotsugu (Tsukuba), two kyūdō historians whose research program is specifically colonial-Taiwan kyūdō. (Matsuo Makinori and Goga Tomotsugu 2015)

Working from Sakai Hikotarō’s disciple register (門人名簿) — which records 515 disciples in Taiwan, 104 in the mainland prefectures, and 5 in Korea/Manchuria, 619 in all — the authors find Kawashima was one of those granted a shinan menkyo (指南免許; teaching license) by Sakai and was the first person to enroll in Tainan. He crossed to Taiwan as a kendō teacher (剣道教師として渡台), taught kendō and jūdō, then shifted toward kyūdō; in 1931 (Shōwa 6), the year his dōjō opened, he resigned his kendō teaching post at the police normal school (警察師範学校) to devote himself to kyūdō. The dōjō, at his residence 台南市白金町一丁目五六, is identified as the 覚眞館.

The documentary name of the dōjō is 覚眞館 (likely Kakushinkan), with its opening dated to 1931 rather than 1930; the “Mishinkan” form is preserved in Taiwan eyewitness recollection with different kanji (see the note below).

Kawashima died on August 17, 1957. He was buried in Yamamu City, Chiba Prefecture with the posthumous name “Butokuin Kyuu no Yoshisei.”

Kendō

Kawashima is regarded as being a skilled kendō exponent. The Butokukai had a Taiwan honbu (台湾本部) from 1906, and its fundraising and structure ran through the police, of whom he was a senior kendō instructor.

His first Jikishinkage-ryū teacher was Shida Utanosuke, also recorded as Aoyagi Kumakichi (信太歌之助／青柳熊吉), under whom he studied in Taiwan in Shida’s last years.⁴ Kawashima went to Hualien Port to receive him in 1916, and a Taiwanese account, not yet traced to its source, has Shida die in Taiwan in 1917. This record takes it, from these dates, that Kawashima looked for a new teacher after Shida died; no source says so directly. Ōnishi Hidetaka tells how he found one:

Mr. Kawashima Takashi, a kendō master in Tainan, had a great reputation as the best swordsman in Taiwan and had mastered both kendō and Kyūdō. However, he was burning with a desire to further master the mysteries of kendō. By chance, he heard rumors about Mr. Yamada Jirōkichi, a kendō master at Tokyo University of Commerce who was also from Chiba Prefecture, from Mr. Kojima Masashi, a kendō instructor at the Hualien Port Authority at the Taipei branch of the Dai Nippon Butokukai. He decided that this was the great teacher he should be taught by.

This indicates Kawashima returned to Japan to train with Yamada Jirōkichi. His memorial stele names him as having been the most skilled kenshi in Taiwan, and held a training session where he faced 70 opponents without losing control of his breathing.

Jikishinkage-ryū practice in Taiwan is documented by the academic study of Kawashima. The furibō group photo — held by a Kawashima family member, placed at the first Tainan Butokuden — is the first concrete evidence of Kawashima’s actual Jikishinkage-ryū kenjutsu activity in the colony.

An interior photograph of the first-generation Tainan Butokuden was matched (by ceiling and window forms) to a group photo — held by Kawashima Katsuko (川島勝子) — of kenjutsu practice with a furibō (振り棒), the swinging bar the abstract explicitly identifies as used in Jikishinkage-ryū, placing that photo at the first Tainan Butokuden.

There are on the order of 330 Taiwan-address occurrences across the Butokukai HQ register, island-wide (Tainan, Taihoku, Taichū, Kīrun, Takao, Karenkō, Penghu, Taitō), and the striking pattern is that the entries are overwhelmingly police-attached — 警察署, 州警務部, 警務課, and the Governor-General’s own 臺灣總督府警察官練習所 (police training institute, koma 119).

That is documentary confirmation, external to secondary sites, that Butokukai title-holders in the colony sat inside the police apparatus — the “kendō diffused through the police-and-school structure”.

16th Dōtō of Jikishinkage-ryū Seitō-ha

Kawashima is the 16th dōtō of the line, after Yamada Jirōkichi. Lines that record him so include:

• The Hōjōkai / Seitō-ha (正統派) and the Yokohama Hōjōkai records itself as founded in 1997 by the 20th-generation Yoshida-shihan, now under the 21st-generation Tanaka-shihan.
• The Ichiken-kai (一劔会) at Kawaguchi in Saitama asserts that it is directly descended from the orthodox (seitō) Jikishinkage-ryū, using the same 正統 vocabulary.
• Issei-kai (一誠会) also count Kawashima as the 16th-generation dōtō holder — with Ōnishi as 17th generation dōtō.

Time in Taiwan

Kawashima is listed in the Butokukai’s national shōgō register — the 1937 名鑑 places him among the kyūdō (弓道) hanshi (see above).

On February 7, 1929, the Taiwan Daily News published news about a group of archery instructors arriving in Taiwan:

In the early Shōwa era, a group of six, including Sasaki Morisui, an instructor of the Dai-Nippon Butoku-kai (Great Japan Martial Virtue Association), arrived in Taiwan from Keelung Port aboard the Mizuho Maru, and traveled and lectured throughout northern and southern Taiwan.Sasaki Morisui, also known as Sasaki Kikutaro Hanji, was from Fukuoka Prefecture. He studied under Yamaji Michishige of the Hioki-ryū Seika school and was active in Kyushu and Korea.The famous quote from his archery manual, “The arrow moves like flowing water, the body blooms like a flower,” is attributed to Sasaki Hanji.

Memorial Stele

The Kawashima Takashi memorial stele (opens in a new tab) records him as the 16th generation of the school.

Kawashima often opened enbu with formal purification rituals associated to Heki-ryū. Kenshi like Namiki and others also practiced Heki-ryū Sekka-ha kyūdō alongside their Jikishinkage-ryū, due to Kawashima’s influence. After Itō Masayuki died, Namiki Kazuya (並木和也) still demonstrated Heki-ryū annually at Kashima shrine enbu as an official representative of that art, while maintaining a practice of Jikishinkage-ryū.

Kawashima is remembered for saving the school’s transmission texts from Occupation confiscation in Taiwan.

Associated Figures

Kojima Masashi

Kojima Masashi is attested in Ōnishi’s essay, as the Hualien-area (花蓮港) kendō instructor under the Butokukai’s Taipei branch who told Kawashima about Yamada Jirōkichi and set the succession in motion.

Shida Utanosuke (Aoyagi Kumakichi)

Shida Utanosuke, born Aoyagi Kumakichi (青柳熊吉) in 1837, a pupil of Odani Seiichirō and a Kōbusho instructor under the shogunate, was Kawashima’s first Jikishinkage-ryū teacher; the dates suggest that Kawashima sought out Yamada Jirōkichi after Shida’s death. Like Kojima, he is linked to Hualien: the kyūdō timeline has Kawashima travelling to Hualien Port to receive him in 1916.

The newspaper Taiwan Nichinichi Shinpō (7 February 1929) reports a six-man Butokukai kyūdō teaching party led by Sasaki Kosui (佐々木鼓水) — hanshi, of Fukuoka, also known as Sasaki Kikutarō (佐々木菊太郎) — arriving at Kīrun (Keelung) on the Mizuho Maru and touring north and south with an itinerary that includes a Tainan stop. The detail that ties it to Kawashima is the school: Sasaki was a Heki-ryū Sekka-ha (日置流雪荷派) archer under 〔Yamaji Michishige 山地道重〕, the same kyūdō line in which Kawashima trained under Sakai Hikotarō (酒井彦太郎).

Disciples

The memorial stele was inaugurated by 13 initiators plus 10 supporters (23 total). Ōnishi Hidetaka (大西英隆) is the first initiator, Namiki Yasushi (並木靖) the 7th and Itō Masayuki (伊藤雅之) the 12th.

End Notes