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
Description
Life
Born in 1621 as the son of a warrior serving the Hosokawa house of Higo Kumamoto domain, and the younger brother of Terao Magonojō. In 1633, at age thirteen, he was taken into the service of the domain lord Hosokawa Tadatoshi as a close attendant until age sixteen. He came of age in 1636, receiving a stipend of 200 koku, and was later granted a further increase for his service in the Shimabara Rebellion.
Nursing Miyamoto Musashi and Receiving the Thirty-Five Articles on Strategy
In 1645, when Miyamoto Musashi, ill, returned to his residence at Chiba Castle in Kumamoto, Kyūmanosuke was assigned by order of the domain lord Hosokawa Mitsunao to attend to him as a nurse. In his final days, five days before Musashi's death, on the twelfth day of the fifth month of that year, Kyūmanosuke 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 brother Magonojō died in 1671, Kyūmanosuke's line greatly developed the Niten Ichi-ryū in Higo, and it became the mainstream through which the school's transmission continued from the Meiji period into the present day.
Later Reputation
As a direct disciple who attended Musashi at his deathbed, and as the successor who caused the Niten Ichi-ryū to 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.
Related Warriors
松平信綱
Early Edo periodMatsudaira Nobutsuna
The shogunal elder known as "Chie Izu" — suppressor of the Shimabara Rebellion and founder of Kawagoe domain's prosperity
吉良義央
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"Kira Kōzuke-no-suke" — master of shogunal ceremony and the central counterpart of the Akō incident
沢庵宗彭
Early Edo PeriodTakuan Sōhō
The Rinzai Master Who Fused Zen and the Sword — Author of the Fudōchi Shinmyōroku
柳生宗冬
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Heir to Yagyū Shinkage-ryū — Swordsmanship Instructor to Shoguns Ietsuna and Tsunayoshi