While I was in Kyoto for work at the end of July, I ended up swinging by a historical site that is associated with Miyamoto Musashi: Ichijoji.
Four years after Sekigahara the young Musashi came to the capital. Here he is said to have challenged the Yoshioka school to a duel. Musashi defeated the head of the school, then his successor. The Yoshioka – being one of the most famous schools in the city – could not stand the shame of defeat and asked for a rematch. This time his opponent would be the new head of the school – and the 3rd of three brothers (Musashi having defeated his two elder brothers). Leaving nothing to chance, the supporters of the school selected an isolated area on the outskirts of the town and prepared an ambush. The ambush of-course did not go as the Yoshioka group expected and Musashi not only survived unhurt, but defeated the last of the Yoshioka brothers as well. The shame of this defeat damaged the schools reputation so much that the school was effectively destroyed.
The place that this last ambush took place was – of course – Ichijoji.
As with almost everything associated with the life and times of Musashi, its often difficult to separate fact from fiction. At any rate, its a good romantic swordsmanship story!!
Nowadays Ichijoji temple doesn’t exist. There is a small area, however, dedicated to the dual and a pine tree grows under which it is said that the last battle fought. Of-course its not the exact same tree (its the 4th!), but a branch of the original tree is stored in Hachidai jinja, a short walk to the east.
Although the area is small and a little bit hard to get to, its a nice relaxing trip out of the always-tourist-swamped temples of Kyoto.
Getting there
Address: Kyoto Saikyoku Ichijojisagarimachi-cho
Bus: Its a 3 minute walk by City Bus from “Ichijojisagarimachi-cho.”
Train: Take the small Eizan train from Demachiyanagi station (its connected with the Keihan line) and get off at “Ichijoji” station. From there its about 6 minutes walk east.
Cost: free
It’s hard to picture what the area must have been like back in the day. It’s a great story I wonder how truth there is to it. I also wonder what happened to the Yoshiokas. If it was such famous school how come there aren’t any branches from one of their many students?
Leiv, I did a little (tiny!) bit of checking. According to my source (will let you have a peak next time you are at mine), despite the people who wrote Musashi’s biographies saying that their loss to him caused the family to lose face and for their influence to be extinguished completely, there may be evidence that shows that at least the 4th Tokugawa to run the Owari-han (Yoshimichi, died 1713… over a hundred years since the tale above) was trained in Yoshioka-ryu by a Yoshioka living in Kyoto, and even got as far as getting some densho/makimono from him. This is only a couple of paragraphs in a book, some more research would have to be done if you wanted to find out if there was any truth in this.
Its interesting to note that Yoshioka-ryu was very old…. they served the Ashigaka bakufu as bugei teachers, and the ryu itself is meant to have come from Kyohachi-ryu…. one of the legendary ryu-ha’s that nobody knows anything about. Seemingly shinkage-ryu has (some?) Yoshioka-ryu waza counter techniques in it somewhere.
As far as your question…. at that time individual people learned loads of different arts, getting menkyo in no time (if there was actually any given) and making their own styles up…. so its feasible that what was once Yoshioka-ryu could be – at least in part – alive today…. who knows.
Anyway, none of the arts that were practised 400 years ago are alive in the same shape today… its simply impossible.
Interesting. Cheers. I wondered because it seemed bizarre that the school would just vanish altogether like they say if it was so influential and had so many students. Take Tendo-ryu for example, who’s founder was killed in an ambush at a very young age, but it is still practiced today.