* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Hariya Sekiun
針ヶ谷夕雲
Founder of the Mujūshin Ken-ryū, Undefeated in 52 Bouts, Who Taught the Ideal of "Ainuke"
Description
Origins and Discipleship under Ogasawara Genshinsai
Hariya Sekiun is said to have come from Hariya in Kōzuke Province (near present-day Fukaya City, Saitama Prefecture). He became a disciple of the Shinshinkage-ryū founded by Ogasawara Genshinsai (Chōji), who had returned from martial training in China, and studied its swordsmanship.
Undefeated in 52 Bouts
Over the course of his life, Sekiun fought 52 matches, and is said never to have suffered a defeat.
A Zen-Inspired Transformation of Swordsmanship
From around the age of forty, Sekiun began studying Zen under the monk Kōhaku. He rejected the swordsmanship he had mastered until then as "nothing more than an illusion," and arrived at a new understanding in which the essence of contest lay not in technical skill itself but in humanity's natural, original functioning.
Founding the Mujūshin Ken-ryū
This new principle was named "Mujūshin Ken" (the sword of the mind that abides nowhere) by his teacher, the monk Kōhaku, drawing on the Diamond Sutra, and was established as Sekiun's own school under the names Sekiun-ryū and Mujūshin Ken-ryū. Prizing the "contest of the mind" over victory or defeat through technique, this school occupies a distinctive place within the swordsmanship thought of the Edo period.
Later Reputation
Sekiun's philosophy, which set aside technique in favor of the ideal of ainuke (a state in which neither side strikes and the contest is never decided), is said to have influenced later schools of swordsmanship, and he is counted among the leading swordsmen of the early Edo period. He died in 1669.
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