Yamada Jirokichi (1863-1930) was an important figure both in the rise and development of kendō and the preservation of aspects of Jikishinkage-ryū as Sakakibara’s successor. It is said by Ishigaki and Iwasa that Yamada Jirokichi had to go to another line, the Fujikawa-ha, to learn the upper-level kata after Sakakibara’s passing – Sakakibara died when Yamada was only 31 years of age. So, some of what is done in what is called the mainline or standard line of Kashima-shinden Jikishinkage-ryū practice today might be drawn from that Fujikawa-ha kata practice and possibly not Sakakibara’s complete transmission of the Odani-ha.
Sakakibara, who was bodyguard of the last Tokugawa shogun and keeper of Edo castle, was a famous kenshi and deserving of much praise for his efforts to maintain a practice of swordsmanship relevant to Japanese society as it modernized. A peculiarity of the historical record is while there are stories maintained of Sakakibara providing Yamada an upper-level license in the form of a densho his teacher had provided him, Yamada’s menkyo-kaiden in Jikishinkage-ryū according to Iwasa Minoru was stamped by Sakakibara’s widow after Sakakibara died.
According to Ishigaki, Yamada’s document has siddham characters towards its end reading kanman – a reference to intuition and fudoshin – used in the Fujiwara line instead of the siddham characters for A-Un used in the Odani-ha Sakakibara was part of. So, Yamada potentially copied from a Fujikawa example he found or paid quiet homage to where he completed his training under Saito Akinobu between 1909 and 1911, after Sakakibara’s passing.
It is unclear why both Iwasa and Ishigaki would focus on those irregularities in their writing. Yamada Jirokichi was a great teacher, practitioner and scholar of kendō. His books on the history of Japanese swordsmanship, both older styles and kendō, seem monumental in their scope. He wanted to increase the martial vigor of kendō instruction as it spread and associated to his efforts and those of others, practice of the foundational kata of Jikishinkage-ryū was introduced to several kendō clubs.
