“When one dedicates his life to a practice, he becomes one with nature.”

Kato Isao,
13^th Generation Successor to the Owari Kanryu-style, 12^th Generation Successor to the Owari Yagyu Shinkage-style.

Interview

At the Shunpu Center we use a swinging ball to practice spear thrusts.  We teach our students proper technique, but what is important is that they do the physical work.  Practice, practice and more practice, and failing again and again – that, not simply doing as you are taught, is the way to learn.   In the process of practicing and acquiring technique you will ultimately arrive at the solution that best suits you, naturally discovering what is effective, and making it your own.   It is also important to believe what you are taught.   The foundations and rules of the school must be trusted, even as you pursue your own practice.   Only with that can you determine how to deepen your knowledge.  With the repetition of this process, nature and form will be realized.
People tend to pursue a particular form.  They try to learn it from books or DVDs, but without success.   Some feel that learning a given style is the ultimate goal, but it is not.  There are much greater things in this world.  One must dedicate his/her life to the endeavor.  One’s discipline should be a lifelong pursuit, one without end.
Japanese martial arts are not about physical strength.  In fact, strength is an obstacle to growth.  Think of the sword.  If you wield it with strength alone, you will only bend it.  But it is only with the weakening effects of aging that we finally come to realize this truth.   No matter how many times we are told that strength is an obstacle, we simply don’t understand.  We can’t submit to this law of nature.

The Owari Tokugawa Tradition of Spear and Sword Arts

• Owari Kanryu-style Spear Fighting.

The fourth generation successor to leadership of the Owari Tokugawa clan, Tokugawa Yoshimichi, was a fervent practitioner of Owari Kanryu spear fighting.   He prohibited its teaching to other clans, leading to it being known as the “Prohibited Style” (Otome-ryu).  Tokugawa Yoshimichi was a student of the founder of Owari Kanryu Spear Fighting, Tsuda Nobuyuki.

• Owari Yagyu Shinkageryu School

The Sword Art of the Owari Tokugawa House.   Tokugawa Yoshinao, the ninth son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the founder and first lord of the Owari Tokugawa clan, became the fourth successor to the Owari Shinkage-style of Sword Fighting, which he carried on after studying  under the founder of the school, Yagyu Toshitoshi.

Shunpukan Martial Arts Dojo

Origins of Shunpukan, Teachings of the Founder

The founder of the Owari Shinkageryu was Yagyu Toshitoshi.  The Shunpukan was named after the Shunko-in Temple, which is located in Kyoto in the Myoshin-ji Temple complex of the Rinzai Sect.  At Shunpukan the teaching emphasizes the melding of the arts of Owari-style spear and Shinkage-style sword fighting, based on the belief that “to teach the art of the sword without knowledge of the spear is to weep, as it is to teach the art of the spear without knowledge of the sword.”  Today the school still emphasizes that practice begins with competition, and ends with the study of form, with much of the practice centering on exercises performed in armor on bare ground.  The belief is that it is not the repetition of forms, but the repeated experience of sparring, that develops in each student the movements most suited to his/her nature.