Okumura Sakonta [奥村左近太]

Okumura Sakonta (奥村左近太, 1842–1903) was an Okayama Jikishinkage-ryū swordsman who worked out his own two-sword method and founded Okumura Nitō-ryū (奥村二刀流), and one of the provincial masters who made their name challenging the Metropolitan Police across the great tournaments of the 1880s. He is ranked in the standard lists among the notable Meiji kenshi, alongside Sakakibara Kenkichi, Takayama Minesaburō, Tokunō Sekishirō and Yamada Jirōkichi.¹

Born the son of the Okayama-han samurai Okumura Anshin, with the childhood name Torakichi, he entered the Jikishinkage-ryū dōjō of Abe Ugenji at thirteen in 1855, and also trained in Kitō-ryū jūjutsu, Heki-ryū archery, spear, gunnery and horsemanship. From 1859 he made repeated musha-shugyō journeys; after watching Takahashi Senjirō of Tamiya Shinken-ryū wield two swords, he spent some two years working out his own two-sword method, the large sword in the left hand. In 1863 he took menkyo kaiden in Jikishinkage-ryū and founded Okumura Nitō-ryū, and is recorded as having taught both his Bizen Okayama (Kamogata-han) line of Jikishinkage-ryū and his own two-sword style (Watatani Kiyoshi (綿谷雪) and Yamada Tadashi (山田忠史) 1978; Majima Isao (間島勲) 1996).

His name was made nationally at the Metropolitan Police’s national-scale gekken tournament of 8 November 1884, at the Mukōgaoka Yayoi-sha in Hongō, where he lost only to Kuchihara Yoshiji of Ryūgō-ryū while defeating Shinkai Tadaatsu, Matsuzaki Namishirō and Ueda Umanosuke and drawing with Henmi Sōsuke. The next year he won the Kusunoki-kō 550th-anniversary tournament at Minatogawa Shrine in Kobe, beating Takayama Minesaburō, and was given a blade forged by Gassan Sadakazu; at the first Dai Nippon Butokukai Butoku-sai in 1895 he lost to Tokunō Sekishirō but was judged especially excellent and awarded the Seirenshō (精錬証). He died on 11 January 1903. His line carried on through his son Okumura Torakichi (1878–1971), who inherited both Jikishinkage-ryū and Okumura Nitō-ryū, became a kendō hanshi, and served as kendō instructor to the Imperial Palace Police and at Butokukai headquarters (Hori Shōhei (堀正平) 1934; Majima Isao (間島勲) 1996).

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