Henmi Sōsuke
逸見宗助
Son of the Tatsumi-ryū Head Who Built Metropolitan Police Swordsmanship, Praised by Yamaoka Tesshū as a Master of "True Swordsmanship"
Description
Life
Born in 1843 (by another account, 1834) as the son of Henmi Nobutaka, the 17th head of the Tatsumi-ryū school and a retainer of Sakura domain in Shimōsa Province, Henmi studied his family's hereditary Tatsumi-ryū swordsmanship and iaijutsu from childhood, and was raised as a promising talent.
Swordsmanship
Through the 1850s he fought numerous inter-school matches, also studying the Kyōshin Meichi-ryū and Hokushin Ittō-ryū schools, and in 1861 he went to Edo to train at Momoi Shunzō's Shigakukan dojo. Moving among different schools, he honed practical fighting skill and came to be counted among the foremost swordsmen of the late Edo period.
Establishing Metropolitan Police Swordsmanship
When the Metropolitan Police Department created the position of gekken sewagakari in 1879, Henmi was one of its very first appointees, and together with Ueda Umanosuke and Kajikawa Yoshimasa he worked to establish the "Keishi-ryū" system of swordsmanship, iaijutsu, and jujutsu. As chief instructor of the martial arts section at headquarters, he became a central figure in Metropolitan Police martial arts.
Anecdote
In December 1884, when the Metropolitan Police team fell into a losing position in a match against swordsmen from another domain, Henmi is said to have won with a kote strike from his favored jōdan stance, preserving the department's honor. Yamaoka Tesshū reportedly said of him, "There are many swordsmen, but Henmi alone wields a true sword," and he was also known as a master swimmer.
Later Reputation
Henmi is valued as a figure who inherited the techniques of the old Tatsumi-ryū school while also putting swordsmanship to practical use within the new framework of police martial arts after the Meiji Restoration. He died in 1894.
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