Nakayama Tatsusaburō [中山辰三郎]

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Identity & authority

Attestation

corroboration: —

Names

type	kanji	romaji	reading
myoji		Nakayama
tsusho		Tatsusaburō

Nakayama Tatsusaburō (中山辰三郎) was an important Shindō Yōshin-ryū (神道楊心流) figure¹ and the teacher of Ōtsuka Hironori (大塚博紀).² He entered the Shindōkan (神道館) on 10 April 1886. He learned Jikishinkage-ryū (直心影流)³ there and Shindō Yōshin-ryū, receiving betsuden from Matsuoka Katsunosuke (松岡克之助). At age eighteen, his talent recognized, Nakayama entered — on Matsuoka’s recommendation — the school of a Jikishinkage-ryū kenjutsu teacher named Hakomori Yosaburō (箱守与三郎祐郷), and five years later received a Jikishinkage-ryū license and became Hakomori’s shihan-dai — in time succeeding him at the Genbukan.⁴

In the autumn of 1898 Nakayama took up Ono-ha Ittō-ryū (小野派一刀流), receiving a kendō license from Takano Sasaburō (高野佐三郎) in September 1906⁵ and, on Takano’s recommendation, becoming kendō teacher at the old Shimotsuma Middle School. It was much later, in May 1919, that he re-entered the Shindōkan under Inose Motokichi (猪瀬元吉) to study Shindō Yōshin-ryū jūjutsu, in order to qualify for a bonesetting licence. Sources are not consistent on what license he received from that study.⁶

Independent Wadō-lineage sources corroborate the jūjutsu side specifically. The Wadō-ryū Renmei history and the Web Hiden profile of Ōtsuka name Nakayama third-generation head of Shindō Yōshin-ryū jūjutsu (第三世), under whom Ōtsuka trained from April 1905, receiving menkyo kaiden on 1 June 1920 and succeeding as fourth-generation head (第四世). They add that Nakayama transmitted kenjutsu and Iga-ryū (為我流) jūjutsu alongside Shindō Yōshin-ryū, with full transmission — zenden (全伝; complete transmission) — in each. The sword side is corroborated only in part. Hakomori himself is independently documented in the 1915 Ibaraki prefectural dictionary, but Nakayama’s training under him, the licence, and Matsuoka’s referral rest on the Wadō-side account alone.

Two discrepancies across sources. The nanori is written 行義 by the Wadō-ryū Renmei but 行儀 in the Wikipedia entry (same reading, Yukiyoshi; different second character). The generation counts also fail to reconcile: the Wadō line numbers Nakayama third and Ōtsuka fourth in the jūjutsu succession, whereas the Wikipedia entry has Matsuoka Tatsuo (松岡龍雄) succeeding to the third generation in 1918. The two even use different counters — 第三世 on the Wadō side, 三代目 in the article — consistent with two parallel reckonings (a Matsuoka-family / Shindōkan headship versus the Ōtsuka–Wadō transmission line) that the available sources do not harmonize. Matsuoka Tatsuo (松岡龍雄) is said to have taken the third generation in 1918.

Hakomori Yosaburō and the Ibaraki Jikishinkage world

Hakomori Yosaburō (箱守与三郎祐郷; the imina read here as Suokuni, though Suketo and Sukekuni are equally admissible until a furigana source surfaces) is the Jikishinkage-ryū teacher Matsuoka sent Nakayama to, and he is independently documented — which makes him the one externally attested point on the sword side of this biography. The 1915 (Taishō 4) Ibaraki prefectural biographical dictionary (茨城人名辞書), compiled and published by the Ibaraki Shimbun-sha, is a kana-ordered who’s-who of the province giving each man’s native place, birth, career and tax standing.⁷

Hakomori was a man of Sekidate, Kawachi-mura, Makabe-gun — Matsuoka had settled in Ueno-mura, the same Makabe-gun. His imina is given as 祐 followed by an OCR-lost character, consistent with 祐郷. His birth falls around 1837–38 (sixty-seven in 1904, twenty-five or six in the early 1860s). From boyhood he loved gekken; at fourteen or fifteen he entered the school of a Kimura (木村) at Sakuya (作谷), four ri from Sekidate, and trained there daily for seven or eight years, through hard cold and fierce heat, until he mastered the innermost secrets of swordsmanship.

In the Bunkyū years (c. 1863), aged twenty-five or six, he opened a gekken dōjō at Sekidate and drew many followers. In Meiji 37 (1904), at sixty-seven, he founded a new gekken hall at Shimotsuma, named it the Genbukan (元武舘), served as its head, brought in noted swordsmen, and taught the youth of the three districts of Makabe, Tsukuba and Yūki for eight years. He then handed the Genbukan, building and equipment, to Nakayama — his shihan-dai — and retired to a quiet life.⁴

Hakomori trained under the Kimura family of sword teachers of Sakuya, who are themselves well attested in the same 1915 dictionary (p. 396). Kimura Yatayū (木村彌太夫), of Sakuya, Sakuoka-mura, Tsukuba-gun, was born Kaei 2 (1849). His family, it says, served for generations as hereditary kenjutsu teachers (家世々劒道[教]師を勤め) and as village heads; they descend from Taira Shigemoto, an ancestor having changed the surname to Kimura, and — the key line — by the generation of his father, Kimura Takanobu (高信), the family’s swordsmanship greatly flourished. Yatayū himself carried the martial teaching on after the Restoration, when the arts were in decline. On the dates of the two men’s lives, Hakomori’s teacher was the father, Kimura Takanobu, in whose generation the family sword “greatly flourished” — with Yatayū (imina Takatoshi, sharing the 高 character) the next-generation continuator.

This is a local Ibaraki line of Jikishinkage-ryū, and the 1915 work confirms a Jikishinkage-family sword world in the province: it records 眞影流 — the standard regional name for the Kashima-shinden line — held at Kashima and licensed at the Tsuchiura Seikensha under Inō Naoyoshi.

The Kinsei Tsuchiura Shōshi (1906) gives the Tsuchiura teaching succession explicitly, and it is a Jikishinkage-ryū succession: it recounts changing the jōdan sword to a seigan guard — a hallmark of the Odani-ha reform of Jikishinkage-ryū — then names the transmitters in order:

1. Yokogawa Shichirō Hiroharu
2. He was followed by one Mori Yōzō
3. Shimada Toranosuke
4. Sasa Hayata, a domain samurai who was an Odani disciple
5. Tōyama Kunizō, who trained at Kasama and returned
6. Inō Naoyoshi

Yokogawa Shichirō (横川七郎) Hiroharu was among the distinguished products of the Jikishinkage line, in the specific company of Tokuno Sekishirō and — the operative pairing — as one of the 高弟 (senior disciples) of Odani Seiichirō.⁸ He was a retainer (家来) of the Odani house under Odani Hikoshirō (男谷彦四郎).

So the Tsuchiura line the Ibaraki Jinmei Jisho labelled 眞影流 is, in a source dedicated to Tsuchiura’s own history, the Odani-ha of Jikishinkage-ryū — carried in by a named Odani-gate man and running down to Inō Naoyoshi. The Niihari-gun Annai (1911) fixes the institution around him: the Seikensha, founded 1882 by Sasa Masaō, Shin Isao, Torii Masatake, Kihara Sasuke and Inō Naoyoshi, with Inō as its head. The 1915 dictionary shows it issuing licences:

1. Shibasaki Tokuzō (柴崎德藏) of Ishikawa, Sekikawa-mura, Niihari-gun, entered the Seikensha (靖献社) — the gekken society founded by former Tsuchiura-domain samurai — learned there, and received a 眞影流 licence from its head, Inō Naoyoshi (稻生尙義).
2. The head of the Tomita house of Tokitsue, whose ancestor Tomita Uneme-no-shō settled there fifty generations back, born Kaei 5 (1852), “mastered the inner secrets of 眞影流 in the sword” (劍は眞影流奥祕を極め), transmitted Hasegawa-ryū in gunnery, and took a licence in archery under the Itō line.

That is a documented Odani-ha Jikishinkage-ryū house with a named Edo-line transmitter behind it, in the district where Matsuoka lived — which is what makes the referral intelligible: there was a substantial local Jikishinkage presence to send a promising student into. Jikishinkage-ryū is written with different kanji at times (opens in a new tab) according to region, and some Ibaraki groups appear to have used 眞.

End Notes