Ono Ha Itto-ryu
小野派一刀流The principal line of Itto-ryu and one of the two official sword schools of the Tokugawa shogunate. Its core is kiriotoshi — one's own cut along the very line of the opponent's.
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About Ono Ha Itto-ryu
Ono-ha Itto-ryu is the principal and oldest line of Itto-ryu, the sword tradition descending from Ito Ittosai Kagehisa. It was founded by his successor Ono Jiroemon Tadaaki at the start of the seventeenth century, and the school became one of the two official sword teachings of the Tokugawa shogunate; the other was Yagyu Shinkage-ryu. That standing is no footnote — it meant the shoguns and their guard trained in it and that the school had assured position and funding for two centuries. The technical core is kiriotoshi, literally cutting down. The principle is bold and counter-intuitive: instead of deflecting the opponent's cut or evading it, the swordsman drives his own cut along the same line from above and goes through. The winner is the one with better timing, structure and resolve, not the one who parries better. Most of the rest of the school follows from this principle. To allow full-power practice it uses the onigote, a massive padded gauntlet that can be struck at real force without injury — one of the forerunners of later kendo armour. Ono-ha Itto-ryu is alive today and is among the best documented Japanese sword schools. The school is still transmitted in several lines, and its kata are also practised within fencing federations as a complement to modern kendo.
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