From Kashima to Everywhere: How Bokuden Created the Itinerant-Training Tradition

Tsukahara Bokuden's life cannot be told without his relation to Kashima Shrine. Born into the shrine's hereditary priestly families, the tradition of the Kashima sword within the shrine was the starting point of his sword training and the spiritual anchor of his entire life. Equally, the itinerant training of his late years became the standard career path for swordsmen of the generations that followed.

The Sword Tradition of Kashima Shrine

Kashima Shrine, dedicated to the war god Takemikazuchi from antiquity, hosted a long tradition in which sword training and religious rite were combined. The 'Kashima sword' — the shrine's ritual sword art — had been transmitted from ancient times, and Bokuden inherited that tradition and from it shaped the Kashima Shintō-ryū. The sword training conducted in the precincts of the shrine was a distinctive form in which religious rite and combat training were intertwined. This is one of the origins of what was later called the 'religious character' of Japanese sword arts.

Founding the Itinerant Tradition

In his later years — probably from around fifty onward — Bokuden left Kashima and began traveling the provinces. He visited the shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru in Kyoto, Kitabatake Tomonori in Ise, and various warrior houses across the country, teaching the sword and raising students. While the typical martial artist of the period kept students at a fixed school, Bokuden's itinerant training was a new form. In a period in which the center of warrior culture was not a single fixed capital but was dispersed across the provinces, itinerant training was the optimal device for spreading sword tradition geographically.

The Swordsmen Who Came After Bokuden

The itinerant-training tradition Bokuden established became the common career path of the swordsmen of the following generations. Kamiizumi Nobutsuna traveled from Kōzuke down to Kyūshū raising students. Miyamoto Musashi walked the provinces from his teens through his thirties, accumulating more than sixty serious duels en route to completing the Niten Ichi-ryū. Yagyū Munetoshi, Sasaki Kojirō, Matsuoka Hyōgo, Shinmen Munisai, Morooka Ippa — almost the entire core of late-Sengoku and early-Edo swordsmanship went through itinerant training. What Bokuden began as an individual practice had become, within a generation, the standard form of the sword culture.

Kashima Shrine Today

A Bokuden mound and commemorative monument remain at Kashima Shrine, and an annual memorial service and offering match are held by the Tsukahara Bokuden Honorary Association. The shrine itself retains its character as the ancient center of war-god worship and is one of the contemporary sacred sites of Japanese sword practitioners and martial artists. The relation of Bokuden's life to Kashima Shrine is studied as the most classical case of the overlapping of sword, martial arts, and religion in Japan.

"The sword is a sacred rite; training is the way."