Mutō-ryū: The Day Yamaoka Tesshū Integrated the Sword and Zen

On March 30, 1880 (Meiji 13), Yamaoka Tesshū founded the Ittō Shōden Mutō-ryū — the 'School of the Sword Without a Sword.' He was forty-four. After more than twenty years of sword training he had reached the state of 'the unity of sword and Zen,' and established a new system of practice integrating sword, Zen, and calligraphy. It was an attempt to reconstruct for the Meiji period the lineage of 'the sword that transcends the sword' that runs from Tsukahara Bokuden's Mutekatsu-ryū and Kamiizumi Nobutsuna's Shinkage-ryū.

Tesshū's Sword Training

Tesshū studied under the leading Edo swordsmen Chiba Shūsaku and Inoue Hachirō from around twenty, learning the Hokushin Ittō-ryū. In the 1860s he challenged Asari Matashichirō Yoshiaki, the head of the Itō-ryū Nakanishi line, and lost match after match. Asari's sword had 'something beyond form,' and Tesshū came to recognize that he could not reach it through technique alone. From this point onward, in parallel with his sword training, Tesshū began Zen practice with the Rinzai master Tekisui Gimoku at Zenshō-an in Yanaka, Edo, and sought the integration of sword and Zen. After about ten years of cultivation, in the contest with Asari on March 29, 1880, he finally bested Asari's sword. The next day he founded the Mutō-ryū.

What 'Mutō' Means

'Mutō' is the central concept of the name of Tesshū's school. It does not mean physically being without a sword; it means the state of mind that does not attach to the sword. In Tesshū's theory, the final aim of sword training is to reach the state of 'holding a sword while not holding it,' at which point the sword is no longer an instrument for killing but an instrument for polishing the human heart. The thought inherits Tsukahara Bokuden's Mutekatsu-ryū (winning without fighting) and Yagyū Munenori's katsujinken (the life-giving sword), and integrates them with Zen awakening.

Zenshō-an and the Unity of Sword and Zen

In 1883 (Meiji 16), Tesshū founded the Rinzai Zen temple Zenshō-an in Yanaka, Tokyo. It was conceived as a place to integrate the training of the sword and the training of Zen, and became the home base of the Mutō-ryū. Tesshū himself did not let a morning pass without seated meditation and sword practice, and he required of his students the simultaneous training of sword and Zen. The thought of 'the unity of sword and Zen' (kenzen ichinyo) became one of the theoretical sources of the modern Japanese martial arts that followed — Kanō Jigorō's judo, Ueshiba Morihei's aikidō.

Influence on Meiji Martial Thought

Meiji-era Japan saw the traditional martial arts decline amid the rush of Westernization, but Tesshū's Mutō-ryū was an attempt to redefine kendō from a mere combat technique to a way of spiritual cultivation. Tesshū's thought, transmitted through his students including Ogura Tessui, became the theoretical foundation of modern kendō, and is also inherited in the postwar All Japan Kendō Federation's doctrine: 'Kendō is the way of forming the human person through training in the principle of the sword.' A rare case of a school of one person becoming the foundation of a national-scale system of martial thought.

"Sword and Zen are one and two, two and one. To go all the way in the sword is Zen; to go all the way in Zen is the sword."