Register record
Identity & authority
- Reliability
- Studentship under Yamada is primary-attested: the 1931 memorial biography records him as shidachi to Yamada's uchidachi in public embu and as the 一橋会剣道部 representative at the funeral, and the 1928 Tokyo Commercial College directory corroborates the Hitotsubashi tie independently of that commemorative volume. He became 17th dōtō in 1963, with Kawashima as 16th. The death is fixed here at 17 September 1966; an earlier reading of 1963 at age sixty is not followed.
- Attestation
- corroboration: external · contested
Names
| type | kanji | romaji | reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| myoji | 大西 | Ōnishi | おおにし |
| imina | 英隆 | Hidetaka | ひでたか |
| kaimyo | Hyakuren-in Shaku Eiryū Koji |
Dates
- Born
- (1906)
- Died
- (1966)
Origin & status
- Offices
- captain of the Kendō Club (剣道部) of Tokyo Commercial College, Hitotsubashi
- 17th-generation head of the line, from 1963
Lineage & parentage
- Teacher
- Yamada Jirōkichi (山田次朗吉)
- Rank
- Final license after a seven-day ordeal of Hōjō, one hundred repetitions a day, at a mountain temple in Yamanashi.
- Generation
- 17th, from 1963
- Attestation
- external
Relations
Students
- Namiki Yasushi (並木靖)
- Itō Masayuki (伊藤雅之)
Output & material record
- Grave
- Jōrin-ji, 6-17-10 Higashiueno, Taitō-ku (family temple)
Ōnishi Hidetaka [
Ōnishi Hidetaka was captain of the Kendō Club of Hitotsubashi University and underwent a seven-day ordeal practicing Hōjō 100 times a day for seven days at a mountain temple in Yamanashi prefecture before receiving his final license from Yamada Jirōkichi. Intense mountain training of Hōjō was also undertaken at Mt. Kurotaki Fudo-ji Temple in Gunma inspired by a retreat conducted by Amano Hachiro of the Shogitai (opens in a new tab), a famous Jikishinkage-ryū practitioner.
Yamada Jirōkichi died on 9 January 1930, the date carved on his memorial stele at Kashima Jingū. Ōnishi recalls, in an essay published by the Hyakurenkai:
On November 23, 1929, just 40 days before Yamada Sensei passed away, Yamada Sensei and I performed the habiki kata at the Hitotsubashi Dōjō. That day was the Hitotsubashi Kendō Club’s Kendō Tournament and many instructors, as well as kendō players from universities throughout Tokyo, attended. The packed hall was intoxicated for a moment by the spirit and flash of light and we all forgot ourselves as we watched. Sensei demonstrated to the fullest the quintessence of Japanese martial arts, a masterful technique that unites stillness and movement. His tremendous spirit overwhelmed the packed hall and his majesty was so great that words are lacking to describe it. This sensitivity and courage are great mental strengths that can be applied to all kinds of everyday situations.
Ōnishi trained under Yamada Jirōkichi in Jikishinkage-ryū kata for an intense period of four years, from 1925, when he first sought Yamada out at his home in Shitaya Okachimachi, to 1929, which had a profound effect on him then and later in life. Kawashima also trained under Yamada Jirōkichi for what was likely a similarly brief but intense period. An important difference between training in the 1920s and today is that these masters were already extremely proficient at the kendō of that period before training in Jikishinkage-ryū. Jikishinkage-ryū was viewed as a finishing school of sorts, where people would learn Hōjō and other parts of its curriculum to improve their already high-level swordsmanship.
The 1931 Yamada biography (一徳斎山田次朗吉伝, issued by the memorial committee) documents Ōnishi as Yamada’s 仕太刀 (shidachi) opposite Yamada’s 打太刀 in public embu — the receiving role in paired kata, a mark of trusted senior studentship — and as the 一橋会剣道部 members’ representative at Yamada’s funeral, reading among the eulogies. That is contemporaneous, external evidence that Ōnishi was a close senior student of the 15th dōtō. It’s commemorative in genre, so the eulogistic framing is to be weighed, but the facts of role and relationship are firm. (Ko-Yamada Shihan Kinen Jigyōkai 1931)
The same book records two further moments. In July 1928, after the club’s summer kata offering at Kashima Jingū, Ōnishi stayed on with Yamada to search for the grave of the school’s founder; it was Ōnishi who found the name Matsumoto among a family’s memorial tablets in Daidō village, and then the death register naming Matsumoto Bizen-no-kami. And on 8 January 1930, after the closing session of the Hōjō practice at Hitotsubashi, Yamada came to pay his New Year call at Ōnishi’s home in Ginza, was taken ill there, and died the following evening, with Ōnishi, his mother and his brothers among those at his bedside. (Ko-Yamada Shihan Kinen Jigyōkai 1931)
The 1928 Tokyo Commercial College directory corroborates the Hitotsubashi tie independently — 大西英隆 listed in the kendō-club context — so the 一橋会剣道部 connection doesn’t rest on the memorial volume alone. (Tōkyō Shōka Daigaku 1928)
Together these sources document Ōnishi’s direct studentship under Yamada and his leadership of Hitotsubashi kendō.
In 1963, thirty-three years after Yamada’s death, Ōnishi Hidetaka became the 17th-generation head of the art, after Kawashima as the 16th, and revived the school. That no further head was named for many years may reflect the regard in which Kawashima was held by his contemporaries. Or the idea of a headmaster was not necessary, as each person was already an advanced kendōka who viewed their Jikishinkage-ryū practice as the culmination of their training – training in Sakakibara’s art with similar privations such as intense hojo practice famous samurai conducted being a modern-day version of musha shugyō.
So, there is a period from the death of Yamada Jirōkichi in January 1930 and Ōnishi’s succession after August 1957 where Kawashima is in Taiwan and focusing his efforts on kyudō practice and Ōnishi is first in Hong Kong and then returns to Japan, during which time both men were isolated from other contemporary students of Yamada Jirōkichi.
This is not a small break in training during the post-WWII ban on the practice of Japanese martial arts, but rather a long period where Jikishinkage-ryū was fragmented, with its senior adherents attending to more pressing matters than dōjō practice of kenjutsu.
It was known that during the postwar period Kawashima would open ceremonies at the Kashima Jingu hono enbu (martial arts offering), performing aspects of ritual blessing called harai with bow and arrow. Pictures of him without his keikogi show an extremely powerful man – some of the kyudō commentary cited includes descriptions of his pulling a very large bow with only two fingers. While not much is found in English language sources about Kawashima, he is clearly regarded as a senior member of the martial arts community of his time.
Today many people train in koryū without having learned jūdō or kendō. For Jikishinkage-ryū in the early twentieth century, this was very much not the case.
Ōnishi Hidetaka died on 17 September 1966. His posthumous Buddhist name was Hyakuren-in Shaku Eiryu Koji. Family temple is the Jorinji Temple (6-17-10 Higashiueno, Taito-ku)
