Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu
天真正伝香取神道流The oldest surviving Japanese combat school with an unbroken line, assembled around 1447. It knows neither sporting contest nor sparring — only paired kata are practised.
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About Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu
Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu is the oldest surviving Japanese combat school with an unbroken line of teaching. Its founder is held to be Iizasa Choisai Ienao, a swordsman and smith who by tradition withdrew after years of war to the Katori shrine in Shimosa province and assembled the curriculum around 1447. The school is therefore older than most arts that trade on antiquity, and it holds that claim on the record: the Iizasa family still heads it. The syllabus is broad and matches the needs of a soldier in the field rather than a student in a hall — kenjutsu with long and short sword, iaijutsu, bojutsu, naginatajutsu, sojutsu, shurikenjutsu and armoured combat. The traditional curriculum also included subjects we no longer associate with fighting: fortification, reconnaissance and divination. Everything is trained in pairs as prescribed kata; the school recognises neither sporting contest nor protected sparring and holds no competitions, so anyone looking for measurable performance will not find it here. In 1960 the school was designated an intangible cultural property of Chiba prefecture. Entry is traditionally bound to a written oath, the keppan, which is one reason the school remains comparatively small after six centuries.
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