Shindo Muso-ryu Jojutsu
神道夢想流杖術Old Japanese school of fighting with the jo staff, founded by Muso Gonnosuke. Today's jodo of the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei draws on its kata.
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About Shindo Muso-ryu Jojutsu
Shindo Muso-ryu, also written Shinto Muso-ryu, is an old Japanese school of jojutsu, fighting with the short staff jo. The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, the Nipponica encyclopedia and the koryu.com guide all regard Muso Gonnosuke Katsuyoshi as its founder. The Jinmei daijiten dictionary gives no dates for his life, and koryu.com places the founding of the school at the start of the Edo period, around 1610.
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According to tradition, after losing to Miyamoto Musashi, Gonnosuke prayed at a shrine on Mount Homan in Chikuzen province and received an oracle in a dream, from which he created the staff and its technique. Wayne Muromoto notes on koryu.com that the founder has more legends than verifiable facts. According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, the school then served the Kuroda clan in Fukuoka and was not to be spread outside its domain. According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, the staff is of oak, four shaku, two sun and one bu long, which Nipponica converts to about 128 centimeters. The techniques consist of thrusts, sweeps and strikes, with equal use of the left and right sides. Nipponica gives 64 kata in total. The school also includes twelve kata with the sword, which English Wikipedia calls Shinto-ryu kenjutsu and, in Kaminoda Tsunemori's organization, also Kasumi Shinto-ryu, and affiliated schools, among them kusarigama Isshin-ryu. In the 20th century, according to Muromoto, Shimizu Takaji taught the school in Tokyo, among others the police there. According to the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei, the Shinto Muso-ryu staff is the origin of jodo, which joined the federation in 1956. The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai lists the school as member number 055, and the Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai lists it four times separately.
History
The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai states that the founder Muso Gonnosuke Katsuyoshi entered the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu school, where he obtained a license, and also received the highest teaching of the Kashima school. Wayne Muromoto states that according to documents he was a distant descendant of Kiso Kanja no Taiyu Kakumei, a vassal of Kiso Yoshinaka, and Nipponica calls him a native of Kiso. The Jinmei daijiten dictionary gives no years of birth and death.
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The core of the founding tradition is the clash with Miyamoto Musashi. According to Muromoto, the first clash took place by tradition in 1605 in Akashi, and Dave Lowry on koryu.com places it, from another source, around 1610 at Edo. Meik Skoss writes that it was not a duel to the death but a bout with wooden weapons. According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, after wandering Gonnosuke prayed at the Kamado shrine on Mount Homan near Dazaifu, and a child appeared to him with an oracle about round wood and the suigetsu point. The Jinmei daijiten dictionary and Muromoto place the prayer after the defeat by Musashi, and Nipponica says he got the oracle in a dream. Muromoto gives the prayer's length as 37 days, the Kokushikan university yearbook, from old scrolls, as three weeks. According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, that Gonnosuke defeated Musashi in the second clash is the school's oral tradition. Gonnosuke then, according to Nipponica, entered the service of the Kuroda clan, and the school was handed down there until the end of the Edo period as a secret art of the domain. According to Muromoto, the third representative, Matsuzaki Kinueumon Tsunekatsu, added the art of rope tying and jitte to the curriculum, and later the Shinto-ryu sword and Isshin-ryu kusarigama followed. According to Muromoto, Shimizu Takaji became an instructor of a special unit of the Tokyo police in 1931 and opened his own dojo in Tokyo. Nipponica states that jojutsu was renamed jodo in 1940. According to Muromoto, Shimizu Takaji died on 22 June 1978.
How it differs
The jodo of the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei derives from the school. The federation itself names the early 17th-century Shinto Muso-ryu staff as the origin of jodo. According to the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei and the Nipponica encyclopedia, jodo joined the federation in 1956, and in 1968 it set twelve basics and twelve kata. English Wikipedia states that ten of them come from Shinto Muso-ryu kata. According to Muromoto, Nishioka Tsuneo says the federation's jodo is strongly influenced by kendo, whereas jodo practiced in Kyushu preserves more of the old character. Meik Skoss remarks that the school today is described as a jo style but was originally called bojutsu. Nipponica gives the staff length in Shinto Muso-ryu as fixed, whereas in other schools it followed body height or sword length.
Technique
According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, the staff is a round oak log four shaku, two sun and one bu long and eight bu in diameter. The Nipponica encyclopedia and the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei both convert this to 128 and 2.4 centimeters, and the Kokushikan university yearbook gives a diameter of 2.6 centimeters. According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai, the length derives from the sword, and the staff combines elements of the spear, naginata and sword.
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The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai gives the techniques as thrusts, sweeps and strikes, with equal use of both left and right sides as the main feature. Muromoto writes that the staff strikes like a sword, sweeps like a naginata and thrusts like a spear, both ends can be used, and the distance changes with the grip. The suigetsu technique, with which Gonnosuke allegedly defeated Musashi, is according to Meik Skoss still among the advanced okuden techniques. The school includes twelve kata with the sword, eight with the long and four with the short sword, which according to Skoss form part of the okuden. English Wikipedia gives the older name as Shinto-ryu kenjutsu, and the name Kasumi Shinto-ryu comes from Kaminoda Tsunemori's research and is used only in his organization. The affiliated school Isshin-ryu teaches kusarigama. The koryu.com guide says Isshin-ryu is taught within Shinto Muso-ryu and usually not practiced separately. The Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai lists it as an affiliated school of one line, with Ikkaku-ryu, the art of jitte.
Training
Training rests on kata in pairs. According to Wayne Muromoto, students begin with solo practice of the twelve kihon basics and then train in pairs, one playing the swordsman. Nishioka Tsuneo writes in the book Sword and Spirit that both roles are practiced, and does not see defeating a sword with a staff as the school's aim. Meik Skoss states that no free sparring with protective gear is practiced with the staff, only kata. Muromoto lays out the curriculum as twelve kihon and the series omote, chudan, ran-ai, kage, samidare, gohon no midare and okuden, and Nipponica gives 64 kata in total. The Kokushikan university yearbook, based on old scrolls, arranges teaching into levels omote, chudan, kage, samidare, okuden and finally the five secret kata with the staff. According to English Wikipedia, the kusarigama of Isshin-ryu is learned only by advanced practitioners, with a rope instead of a chain.
Ranks and progression
The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai lists the surviving scrolls as oku-iri, sho-mokuroku, go-mokuroku and menkyo. According to Meik Skoss, the highest teaching is shown only to someone who obtains menkyo kaiden. English and Japanese Wikipedia describe the order the same way and state that menkyo is granted after mastering one of the five secret kata and full transmission after mastering all five. The genealogy at the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai names the founder, the second and third representatives and then four representatives from the 23rd generation. Among them are Shiraishi Hanjiro Shigeaki, who according to Muromoto died in 1927, Shimizu Takaji and Otofuji Ichizo.
Today
The Nihon Kobudo Kyokai lists the school as member number 055 with two representatives and states more than ten licensed teachers who teach from Kyushu to Hokkaido and abroad. The main dojo is in Fukuoka, with branches in Tokyo, Osaka, on Hokkaido and in Nagoya, and abroad in Australia and Britain. According to the association, the school has no cultural property status. The Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai has four separate listings of the school, with different representatives. The koryu.com guide states that no single representative is recognized and that several teachers with menkyo kaiden lead separate groups. Meik Skoss states that the Japanese police took its police staff techniques from Shinto Muso-ryu.
Did you know
The reading of the school's name differs even within one list. The Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai reads the same characters as Shinto in three of the listings and as Shindo in the fourth. Japanese Wikipedia states that in the Edo period the school also bore names with the word bojutsu. According to Muromoto, Nishioka Tsuneo judges that the founder's only verifiable facts are that he lived, meditated on Mount Homan, fought Musashi and died, and that the rest is probably conjecture. Muromoto states that in the late sixties Shimizu Takaji helped build the shrine dedicated to Gonnosuke on Mount Homan.
Styles & Branches
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Shinto Muso-ryu and jodo?
Shinto Muso-ryu is an old school with approximately 64 kata. The jodo of the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei is a modern form that the federation established in 1968 as twelve basics and twelve kata. According to English Wikipedia, ten of these kata are taken from Shinto Muso-ryu.
How long is the jo staff?
According to the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai it measures four shaku, two sun and one bu, which the Nipponica encyclopedia and the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei both convert to 128 centimeters. The diameter is eight bu, according to Nipponica about 2.4 centimeters, according to the Kokushikan university yearbook 2.6 centimeters.
Did Muso Gonnosuke defeat Miyamoto Musashi?
According to the oral tradition of the school, which the Nihon Kobudo Kyokai states, yes, in the second clash. Wayne Muromoto notes on koryu.com that there are more legends than verifiable facts about the founder.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.