* Image is for illustrative purposes only.Terao Kyūmanosuke
寺尾求馬助
Disciple Who Attended Miyamoto Musashi's Deathbed and Received the Thirty-Five Articles on Strategy, the Successor Who Made the Niten Ichi-ryū Flourish
- Era
- Early Edo period
- Lifespan
- 1621-1688
- Associated Sword Tradition
- Niten Ichi-ryū
Description
Life
Born in 1621 as the younger brother of Terao Magonojō and the son of a samurai serving the Hosokawa house of the Higo Kumamoto domain. In 1633, at the age of thirteen, he was summoned to the side of the domain lord Hosokawa Tadatoshi and served as a close attendant until the age of sixteen. He came of age in 1636, receiving a stipend of 200 koku, and later distinguished himself in the Shimabara Rebellion, receiving gold and jifuku (seasonal garments).
Nursing Miyamoto Musashi and Receiving the Heihō Sanjūgo Kajō
In 1644, when Miyamoto Musashi, who had fallen ill, returned to his residence in Chiba Castle in Kumamoto, Kyūmanosuke attended him as a caregiver by order of the domain lord Hosokawa Mitsunao. In Musashi's final days, on the twelfth day of the fifth month of 1645, seven days before his death, Kyūmanosuke is said to have received from him the treatise Heihō Sanjūgo Kajō (Thirty-Five Articles on Strategy). Alongside his elder brother Magonojō, who received the Go Rin no Sho on the same day, he became one of the last senior disciples to directly inherit Musashi's teachings.
The Flourishing of the Niten Ichi-ryū
After his elder brother Magonojō died in 1672, Kyūmanosuke's line greatly developed the Niten Ichi-ryū in Higo and became the mainstream through which its lineage was transmitted from the Meiji period to the present day.
Later Reputation
As a direct disciple who attended Musashi at his deathbed, and as a successor who made the Niten Ichi-ryū flourish for later generations, Kyūmanosuke occupies an important place in the history of Japanese swordsmanship. He died in 1688 at the age of sixty-eight.
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