Yagyū Sekishūsai

Yagyū Sekishūsai (1527–1606) was the lord of Yagyū village in Yamato Province (present-day Nara Prefecture) and a sword saint who left an enduring mark on the history of Japanese swordsmanship as the de facto founder of Yagyū Shinkage-ryū. After receiving the secret teachings of Shinkage-ryū from Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, he added his own innovations, perfected Yagyū Shinkage-ryū, and completed the mutō-dori (a technique of seizing an opponent's sword with bare hands).

As head of the Yagyū family, Sekishūsai held the position of a provincial lord, but he had studied the swordsmanship of various schools since his youth, and by meeting Kamiizumi Nobutsuna he came to master the way of the sword. In Eiroku 6 (1563), when Kamiizumi Nobutsuna visited Nara, he challenged him to a match and was thoroughly defeated by one of Nobutsuna's disciples. He then became Nobutsuna's disciple and studied Shinkage-ryū. Nobutsuna is said to have entrusted Sekishūsai with devising the mutō-dori, and after Sekishūsai demonstrated the mutō-dori he had devised himself, he is said to have received the ikkoku ichinin inka (a licence granted to only one person per province) from Nobutsuna.

Sekishūsai's greatest achievement was the completion of the mutō-dori. This is a technique in which, when an opponent draws a sword and attacks, one subdues the opponent's blade with bare hands or with a fan and seizes it. It embodies the principle of swordsmanship that the essence of the sword transcends the presence or absence of a blade. In Bunroku 3 (1594), Sekishūsai demonstrated the mutō-dori before Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu was so impressed by the technique that he presented a written oath of discipleship and granted Sekishūsai a stipend of 200 koku.

In his later years, Sekishūsai passed the headship of the family to his fifth son, Yagyū Munenori, while all the licences and catalogues of transmission he had received from Kamiizumi Nobutsuna were given to Yagyū Toshiyoshi, the son of his eldest son, Yoshikatsu. Munenori, who received Sekishūsai's tutelage, served Tokugawa Ieyasu and later, as instructor to the shogun, laid the foundation for making Yagyū Shinkage-ryū the official swordsmanship of the shogunate. Sekishūsai's swordsmanship philosophy has been passed down to later generations as the concept of katsujinken (the sword that gives life to people), and it is still spoken of today as a phrase expressing the spiritual state of the martial arts.