Yagyu Shinkage-ryu
柳生新陰流The most famous Japanese school of swordsmanship. It arose by adding a family name to Shinkage-ryū, and its Edo branch served the Tokugawa shogunate.
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Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
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About Yagyu Shinkage-ryu
Yagyū Shinkage-ryū is a Japanese school of swordsmanship and one of the most famous lines of koryū bujutsu. It did not arise from nothing: it builds on Shinkage-ryū, which Kamiizumi Nobutsuna created in the sixteenth century. According to sources, in 1565 Kamiizumi passed the school to his best student, Yagyū Munetoshi, who added his family name to it; this is how Yagyū Shinkage-ryū came into being. The catalogue previously stated the year 1568, but that date belongs to the parent Shinkage-ryū, not to this school. Sources disagree on the dating of the parent school, so the year 1565 is marked as approximate. Kamiizumi also bequeathed the school a training tool: the fukuro shinai, a bamboo sword wrapped in leather that allowed a strike to be delivered at full force without holding back before impact. Munetoshi developed mutō dori, techniques by which an unarmed person defends against a sword; his son Munenori, who led the Edo branch and served the Tokugawa shogunate, carried them further. Munenori's son, Yagyū Jūbei Mitsuyoshi, developed the school still further. Linked to this line is the concept of katsujinken, the sword that gives life: the idea that an opponent can be defeated by the swordsman adapting to his rhythm and finding the weakness in his intention, rather than simply killing him. It is still practised today in paired forms, not in free sparring.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.