Examining Sakakibara Kenkichi (榊原鍵吉, 1830–1894) and his relation to other famous swordsmen in Japan, including those he worked with at the Kōbusho [ more information on can be found at innerdharma.org (opens in a new tab) ].
Tutelage from Odani Nobutomo
Sakakibara’s sword teacher was Odani Nobutomo (男谷精一郎信友). He entered Odani’s Azabu Mamiana dōjō in 1842 at thirteen. Because his family was too poor to pay for the staged licenses, Odani himself prepared and conferred menkyo kaiden on him gratis in 1849. The line he received and carried is the point of interest: sources uniformly call it Jikishinkage-ryū Odani-ha (直心影流男谷派).
Sakakibara’s formal training was Jikishinkage-ryū (直心影流) alone, and the biographies actually go out of their way to stress that he declined to train anywhere else. He entered Odani Nobutomo’s (男谷信友) dōjō at Mamiana in 1842 at thirteen, and when Odani urged him to transfer to a nearer well-known school — the Genbukan, Shigakukan or Renpeikan — Sakakibara refused, saying that having once entered he would not move elsewhere, and kept attending. Odani granted him menkyo kaiden in 1849. However, the Odani dōjō brought in Numazu-han jūjutsu instructors Kashiwazaki Matashirō (柏崎又四郎) and Aizawa Katsuyuki (藍澤勝之) to teach Totsuka-ha Yōshin-ryū (戸塚派楊心流), and Sakakibara learned it alongside the other students. This seems to indicate by 1850, any yawara associated to Jikishinkage-ryū itself was no longer a major portion of its curriculum (if it ever existed).
Fellow Disciples
Under Odani, his notable fellow disciples were Shimada Toranosuke (島田虎之助), who was Katsu Kaishū’s sword teacher, along with Mitsuhashi Torazō (三橋虎蔵) and Yokokawa Shichirō (横川七郎), and Amano Hachirō (天野八郎), the Shōgitai leader. These are the “great names” he sits beside laterally, through Odani rather than his own dōjō.
Professional Career
Odani recommended him in 1856 as one of the founding kenjutsu instructors of the Kōbusho. Sakakibara went on to serve as Kōbusho kenjutsu shihan-yaku and later was the head of the Yūgekitai. He was Tokugawa Iemochi’s personal fencing instructor and traveled with him during Iemochi’s Kyoto/Osaka period.
From 1856 to 1866 Sakakibara taught at the Kōbusho. The academy opened in Ansei 3 (1856) with Odani Nobutomo as tōdori, and was abolished in the eleventh month of Keiō 2 (1866), absorbed into the Rikugunsho; Sakakibara served there as kenjutsu shihan-yaku, having inherited the Jikishinkage-ryū Odani-ha from Odani Nobutomo.
In 1863 he accompanied the shogun’s procession to Kyoto, fighting at Nijō Castle and reportedly cutting down Tosa rōnin at Shijō-gawara. There was a second travel south by sea over the New Year of 1864, returning to Edo in the fifth month of 1864. In 1865 Sakakibara was in the Kansai for the Chōshū campaign, and when Iemochi died at Osaka Castle in the seventh month of Keiō 2 (1866), he returned to Edo.
In Keiō 2 (1866), under the bakufu’s military reform, Sakakibara was transferred to Yūgekitai tōdori (head of the Yūgekitai), but soon resigned and set up a dojo at his Shitaya Kurumazaka residence, and devoted himself to teaching swordsmanship. This is around the time the Kōbusho was reorganized into the Rikugunsho. After Iemochi died at Osaka Castle, he had no inclination to serve his successor, Yoshinobu.
In 1868 at the battle of Ueno, Sakakibara did not join the Shōgitai despite repeated invitations, but guarded the Rinnōji-no-miya prince (the later Kitashirakawa-no-miya Yoshihisa), cut down several Tosa samurai, and with a Yamashita bathhouse keeper carried the prince in turns to Mikawajima before returning to his Kurumazaka dojo.
He then followed Tokugawa Iesato as the Tokugawa relocated to Sunpu. The domain itself was created in the fifth month of 1868. On the 24th of the fifth month, Tokugawa Iesato was granted some 700,000 koku in Suruga, Tōtōmi and Mutsu, and the domain was established — the Suruga-Fuchū domain (駿河府中藩; Suruga-Fuchū domain), formed in the fifth month of Keiō 4 (1868), later renamed Shizuoka-han. The grant followed Yoshinobu’s confinement after Toba-Fushimi and the Edo Castle surrender, and it came essentially alongside the Battle of Ueno (fifth month, 1868) — so Sakakibara’s rescue of the Rinnōji-no-miya prince at Ueno sits just days before the domain was settled.
The physical move came over the following months. Iesato entered the domain about two months before the Sunpu/Shizuoka Gakumonjo opened — i.e. around mid-1868, the academy opening that autumn. Following Iesato, large numbers of former bakufu retainers migrated from Edo to Sunpu, boarding steamships at Yokohama, landing at Shimizu and heading for the castle town — most of them as muroku ijū, relocating without any guarantee of stipend.
In 1869 Sakakibara was in Shizuoka with the Tokugawa relocation; he returned to Tokyo in Meiji 3 (1870), and declined a Meiji-government post as Gyōbushō daikeibu, recommending his brother Ōsawa Tetsusaburō in his place. He returned to Tokyo in 1870.
Later Life
The gekiken-kōgyō (官許撃剣興行; “officially-licensed fencing performances”) Sakakibara organized at Asakusa Saemon-gashi, backed by the Tokyo governor Ōkubo Ichiō, was modeled on sumo staging — a board ring, east/west sides, three-bout matches, a referee — and was hugely popular before a glut of imitators led to a Tokyo ban that July.
In the 1887 imperial-viewing kabuto-wari, three men attempted to cut a metal helmet before Emperor Meiji at the Fushimi-no-miya residence — Hemmi Sōsuke and Ueda Umanosuke, both Momoi/Shigakukan men, who failed — and Sakakibara, who cut about three sun five bu into the helmet with a Dōtanuki blade.
The documented inner circle of Sakakibara as a teacher of Jikishinkage-ryū is very small, even though his Kuruma-zaka (車坂) dōjō was large and the gekiken-kōgyō pulled in impoverished swordsmen at scale. Yamada Jirōkichi (山田次朗吉, 1863–1930), however, is viewed as his successor. On New Year’s Day 1894 Sakakibara conferred menkyo kaiden on him as 15th-generation head and handed over the dōjō; Sakakibara died that September. He wrote the Nihon Kendō Shi (1925) and Kashima-shinden Jikishinkage-ryū (1929).
In addition to Sakakibara, Yamada Jirōkichi studied kata under the Fujikawa-ha. Shimada Hiroshi’s (島田宏) Ittokusai Yamada Jirōkichi Den (一徳斎山田次朗吉伝), published by the Hitotsubashi Kenyūkai in 1931 — the year after Yamada’s death mentions practice under a man named Yamada Hachirō. Ishigaki Anzō later claims in Gekken-kai Shimatsu (撃劔会始末, 2000) that Yamada Jirōkichi studied under Saitō Akinobu instead.
The lineage of what is considered today the main line of Jikishinkage-ryū was very likely almost broken with the death of its 14th headmaster, Sakakibara Kenkichi. Sakakibara had issued several upper-level licenses in the art over time, but the most likely successor would have been Shimada Toranosuke (1810–1864) who predeceased him.
Sakakibara’s later life dōjō was famous for sparring and would only do traditional kata practice periodically, or at the very least emphasized it much less than they did jigeiko and shiai.
References
The sources cited on this page are collected in the site source register.
