A Short History of Batto-jutsu in America (Part 1)
By Anthony Deen
As part of my ethnographic work on a PhD in Anthropology, I began interviewing American iaido and battodo sensei. In 2022, after the premature passing of Bob Elder and Carl McClafferty sensei, I decided to make a documentary about these sensei. Realizing I needed a deeper understanding of the history of these arts to inform the interview portions of the documentary, I started work on this research. This essay is the result of research on the migration and dissemination of iaido and battodo into the US during a period of time that’s only been anecdotally documented.
I dedicate this series to those sensei who helped establish battōdō in the United States through their study and teaching but left us before their time: Mori Torao, Donn Draeger, Paul Sylvain, Mitsunari Kanai, Kensho Furuya, Shimabukuro Masayuki, John Prough, William Trevino, Keisuke Juge, Robert Steele, Bob Elder, and Carl McClafferty.
This essay was researched through personal interviews, blog posts, online chat forums, and numerous dojo websites. I am deeply indebted to conversations and interviews with Carl E. Long, Guy H. Power, Tom Smyth, Dave Drawdy, Nyle Monday, Pam Parker, Deborah Klens-Bigman, Douglas Firestone, as well as written histories and online posts by Kim Taylor, and Philip Ortiz.
The 2019 Tri-state Open Battōdō Taikai featuring sensei from Toyama-ryū Battōdō, Nakamura-ryū Happōgiri Battōdō, Musō Shinden- ryū Iaidō, Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū Iaijutsu, Mugai-ryū Iai Hyōdō, Ryushin Shindō Ryū Iaidō and Edo Yagyū Shinkage-ryū Heihō.
Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth
Since age has worn its thread by use
Abe no Sadato (1019-1062) Battle of the Koromo River
Preface
This essay is divided into three parts: part one covering 1945 to 1969, part two covering the 1970s and 80s, and part three covering 1990 to 2001. In as much as gendai budo generally don’t have soke lineages; rarely have central registries of who was or wasn’t given a menkyo or mokuroku, and as the fragmentation of koryu lineages has increased, I hope this essay will assist students of the Nakamura Ha of Toyama-ryu Battodo, Nakamura-ryu Happogiri Battodo, Eishin-ryu Batto Ho and related battodo to learn about the people who earnestly studied these budo and passed them down to us.
Due to the shared history, this essay may also be of interest to students of Ryu Sei Ken, Shinkendo, the Mitsuzuka Den of Muso Shinden-ryu Iaido and the Masaoka Den of Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu Iaijutsu Heiho.
In recounting this history, it’s important to appreciate that while iaijutsu styles differ, the battō we study wouldn’t have taken root in America if specific iai ryuha hadn’t preceded them. Finally, I note that while substantial transmission of iaidō has taken place in the kendo community, I’ve avoided the history of kendo in the US as that’s been well documented elsewhere as noted in the appendix.
In lieu of a style sheet, Japanese family names are placed before personal names.
Lt. Takesaburo Funaya, (seated with sword) as Officer of the Day. A nidan in Kendo, he went to graduate school after college to delay military service but was nevertheless drafted and attended the Rikugun Toyama Gakko where he learned Toyama Guntō Sōhō. His older brother was a lieutenant colonel at war's end. (Funaya/ Power)
Introduction
The pun of a short history is intended as our gendai battōdō are among the youngest of the Japanese sword arts and the most recent martial arts to make the trans-Pacific journey from Japan to the United States. Given that Rikugun Toyama Gakko Gunto Soho was created in 1925 (Taisho 大正 14) and Dai Nihon Batto Ho only in 1939 (Showa 昭和 14), there was little opportunity for these arts to be transmitted to the US before the war.
Although popular media might have us believe otherwise, Japan in the Showa era (1926-1989) was not and is not a country full of sword wielding kenjutsu enthusiasts. For several reasons, capable exponents of Japanese sword arts were few, constraining the transmission of these arts even within Japan. Notable reasons include:
During the Tokugawa era, budo training was primarily taught to samurai families who represented at most 10% of Japan’s total population. (Lowry, 1997)
Given two centuries of the Tokugawa Bakufu’s Great Peace, by the end of the Edo period (1603-1867) the number of truly effective schools had been diminished. (Ashin, 2012)
During the Meiji era (1868-1912) training in swordsmanship was considered anachronistic in the light of more modern and effective weaponry. (Draeger, 1973; Power, 1998; Anshin, 2012)
Due to the Haitōrei (廃刀令) or Sword Abolishment Edict of March 28, 1876, the majority of kenshi in the late Taishō and early Showa eras were police or military officers. (George, 2012; Ashin, 2012).
Before the Great Pacific War while it was common for male children to study shinai kendo (竹刀剣道) instruction using a shinken (真剣) was limited to highly ranked kendoka; members of specific family or domain ryūha. (Svinth, 2003)
Many of the most dedicated kendo and iaido students died in the war, and few of the survivors returned to train after the war. (Karyina, 2011)
“Until the end of the war, sword techniques and forms were prohibited from being shown even to the parents and brothers of a practitioner... This way the styles could only be transmitted to the direct students of those styles.”
In light of these factors it’s understandable that after the war even most Japanese believed that koryu sword arts were long dead and that the only existent Japanese sword studies were kendo and what was taught to the military.
The Nakamura-ryu Happogiri Battodo and the Nakamura Ha of Toyama-ryu Battodo as we practice them today didn’t evolve in a vacuum. Their foundation is Gunto Soho but it’s also the other functional and expedient waza of koryu sword arts. Nakamura sensei had criticisms of aspects of other iaido waza, but he studied and was ranked in iaido; was a member of the larger Japanese martial arts community, and his sword arts were developed in dialogue with the others. Nakamura-ryū is not simply advanced Gunto Soho as Nakamura sensei used his personal experience and insight to develop his budo beyond the forms taught at the Toyama Gakko and in different directions from his former Gakko instructors. Nakamura sensei’s Toyama-ryu was not the same as that of Morinaga sensei’s and is very different from that of Yamaguchi Yuuki’s. Likewise, the transformation of Dai Nihon Batto Ho into today’s Eishin-ryu Batto Ho was more than a mere name change. It’s differentiated through insights and kihon added after the war by both Miura Hidefusa and Shimabukuro Masayuki.
Before and during the Great Pacific War, senior kendoka often practiced the Dai Nippon Teikoku Kendo kata and tachi-uchi, created for the Japanese police forces in 1911 by a committee made up of Takano Sasaburo, Mono Tadashi, Naito Takaharu, Tsuji Shinpei and Negishi Shingoro. The influence of DNTK on the Gunto Soho is understandable in that it was at the request of the fencing committee at the Toyama Gakko, through Lt. Morinaga Kiyoshi, that the Guntojutsū waza were developed in collaboration with Nakayama Hakudo and Takano Sasaburo. Many of the higher level waza of current Toyama-ryu and of the ZNBDR Seitei kata are based in Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu and in Oe Masaji’s Bangai no Bu waza. The eleven waza of Kono Hyakuren’s Dai Nihon Batto Ho are all based on MJER waza. Accounting for their pre-war and war-time progenitors, the battō we study today are post-WW2 phenomena, and in this regard, they are living arts — although set in a mythological present in which sword arts are still relevant.
Part 1: The Rebirth of Iai (1945-1969)
American General Douglas MacArthur and Showa Emperor Hirohito jointly avoided a prolonged post war insurgency.
The Occupation
Post-war iaido and battodo began anew during the Allied Forces’ Occupation of the Empire of Japan. Most of the countries in the “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” would win independence over the next 15 years but this was the first time in its history that Japan itself has been occupied by foreign powers. On September 24, 1945, the office of the Supreme Commander of Allied Powers (SCAP) communicated SCAP ZAX 5981, initially meant to confiscate all swords, after a meeting between General MacArthur and Dr. Homma Junji the ban was amended to apply specifically to gunto while allowing personal ownership of swords of artistic value. On October 22, 1945, the SCAP initiated Operation Blacklist, and communicated SCAPIN 178 to Japan’s Ministry of Education stating that the “dissemination of militaristic and ultra-nationalistic ideology will be prohibited and all military education and drill will be discontinued.” Two months later on January 4, 1946, the SCAP issued SCAPIN Directive 548, and a companion, Directive 550, which required “the removal and exclusion from public life of militaristic and ultra-nationalistic persons.” (SCAPIN DB, NARA 1946a). The SCAP did not specify martial arts organizations, and the purpose of these directives was not to prohibit the study of budo altogether but rather to prevent the threat of an insurgency by removing ultranationalist, militaristic and fascist individuals from government and education institutions (Power, 1998). Nevertheless, the response to the directives were that the Ministry of Education eliminated martial arts from all school curricula; public practice of martial arts were curtailed, and the Dai Nippon Butoku-kai and similar organizations were closed. The SCAP’s mandate to close organizations such as the DNBK was as much related to their problematic leadership as it was to their missions as educational institutions.
The SCAP’s Operation Downfall was a program to manage the Japanese based on a report submitted in 1944 for the US Office of War Information by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict. A version of the report was published in book format in 1946 as The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, and is Benedict’s best-selling work, still referenced today for its insight into Japanese culture. The book has been influential not only in the US but also in China, Taiwan, and Japan itself, having sold over 1.4 million copies there alone. Not able to travel to Japan, her report was based heavily on interviews with nisei Americans held in internment camps, and on Nitobe Izano’s 1899 book Bushido: The Soul of Japan. Benedict’s approach was to bypass Meiji and Showa era history and instead to focus on the Japan of lore, Edo and prior periods. One can imagine the misunderstandings inherent in this approach and although still popular, in the intervening years both Benedict and Nitobe have received substantial criticism. (Deen, 2022)
Junzo Sasamori, soke of Ono Ha Itto-ryu, led negotiations with the SCAP to revamp kendo as shinai kyogi (竹刀競技) with substantial changes to its equipment and curriculum (Nalbant, 2018). As early as 1948, thanks partially to the intervention of Major Donn Draeger, the SCAP allowed kendo to be practiced publicly, and kenjutsu groups to again coalesce. Shortly after the Occupation ended in April 1952 (sans Okinawa and Kyushu), all SCAP bans were rescinded, and new budo organizations were recognized by the Japanese government as sporting organizations. This change in status from budo to sport was substantially because — while acknowledging the absolute horrors and atrocities inflicted on other peoples by the Japanese — the Japanese people themselves had also suffered greatly during the war and they knew exactly who to blame: the military leaders and the militaristic mindset of the Imperial government and related budo organizations. We should understand that the SCAP bans had been as much to ameliorate the enmity felt by the Japanese people toward their former leaders as they were to preempt any attempted guerilla warfare on the part of those former leaders.
After the war’s end over 45 organizations were formed to research and record civilian suffering on the part of the military and Imperial government. Contrite budo organizations had two paths if they wanted to survive and attract members — they had to rebrand themselves as sports organizations and / or emphasize the transcendental aspects of budo through kokoro no shugyo (心の修行). Nakayama sensei had championed a similar approach in rationalizing the usefulness of kenjutsu.
“The ethics of swordsmanship, Mr. Nakayama wishes to clarify, is not in aggressive manslaughter. It lies primarily in psychic training. In the same manner in which the Yogis developed their physical inhibition to attain meditative states for higher psychical conditions, kendo trains the nervous system to respond, making awkward conscious efforts into reflex. The instrument, the sword, is necessary to give that serious frame of mind. ”
In light of this, several ryuha made alterations to their waza to remove more gruesome techniques, Nakayama’s Muso Shinden-ryu Batto-jutsu and various Ha of MJER included. Toyama Ryu Gunto Soho (戸山流軍刀操法) was likewise truncated as it had previously included kenjutsu, kumitachi, shageki (射撃) or marksmanship, tameshigiri (試し切り), and had always been taught in conjunction with sojutsu/ jukenjutsu and shinai kendo.
Post-war iaidoka migrated to Nakayama sensei’s MSR which as noted above, was considered a more enlightened and introspective form of shugyo keiko (修行稽古). At this time, Nakayama sensei also dropped batto-jutsu from MSR replacing it with the term iaido (Boyet/Draeger 1982). The word "iaido" consists of i 居, ai 合, and do 道, a contraction of Tsune ni ite, kyu ni awasu (常に居て、急に合わす), which suggests "being constantly prepared, to meet the enemy immediately.” The underlaying idea in 'iai' is to be mentally present (居). Nevertheless, qhen Nakamura sensei opened the Shiseikan in 1949 — his first post-war dojo — Nakayama sensei was one of the honored guests. (Power, 2023)
These new sports organizations were the Kokusai Budoin Renmei and the Zen Nihon Shinai Kyogi Renmei, both formed in 1950; the Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei in 1952; a new iteration of the Nihon Kobudo Shinkokai in 1951 and the Dai Nihon Butoku Kai in 1953, and the Zen Nihon Iaido Renmei, a coalition of ten koryu ryuha led by Ikeda Hiyato in 1948 but not recognized by the government until 1954. Kono sensei - who was at this time the SoShihan of the Seito branch of MJER, was instrumental in convincing the other iai schools to come together and was made the first Kaiso of the ZNIR.
In 1952 the ZNIR requested a merger with the ZNKR but were rebuffed. The rejection may have been because as noted above, as post-war kendo dojos reemerged, they needed to distance themselves from their pre-war and war-time histories. Koryu sword arts, Shin Ken Kendo and the DNTK kata were frowned upon as militaristic remnants of the military gakko and the militaristic orientation of the Imperial government. Today the ZNKR and ZNIR are still separate.
In 1953 Nakamura sensei passed the Kyoshi teaching license exam for the ZNKR. This was a difficult time for Toyama-ryu, not the least because of Nakamura sensei’s public demonstrations of tameshigiri and his emphasis on its necessity for the development of effective swordsmanship (Kiyomizu ,1994; Power, 1998). Nakamura sensei was also an unapologetic promoter of Yamato damashii (大和魂), translated as Japanese Spirit, a nihonjinron view of the Japanese as unique and special that has gone in and out of vogue in Japan. Nakamura’s rank in the ZNKR no doubt gave credibility to both him and his art. Nakamura sensei was also highly ranked in judo, kendo, jukendo, tankendo and iaido and was publicly recognized as one of three progenitors of Toyama-ryu.
Nakamura sensei also made several NHK television appearances in the 1950s demonstrating his arts, including his own shinken-juken kumitachi which he developed in 1954 and performed publicly with his eldest daughter, Kyoko. In 1957, Nakamura sensei and Tokutomi Tasaburo, a fellow officer from the Imperial Japanese Army and instructor at the Rikugun Toyama Gakko, created the Toyama Ryu Shinto Kai to promote Toyama-ryu Batto Jutsu. As Tokutomi sensei was of the Morinaga-ha, the Shinto Kai was the first attempt at a dream that was ultimately left unfulfilled, the unification of the three ryuha of Toyama-ryu. For those interested in this transitional period I recommend Guy Power’s insightful on-line essay Tameshigiri, and the work of Oleg Benesh of the University of York.
The ZNKR held its first post-war kendo taikai in 1952, and the ZNIR held the first post-war All Japan Iaido Taikai in 1955. In 1956 the ZNSKR and ZNKR merged and created their own iaido division with Masaoka Kazumi as director. Masaoka sensei was a kendoka and iaidoka who studied MJER and other budo under master swordsman, Oe Masaji, and received both Kongen no Maki (Menkyo Kaiden) and Kongen no Kan in MJER from Oe sensei. Upon Oe sensei’s passing Masaoka sensei was awarded Kyoshi (教士) and the So Shihan (師範) title by the DNBK and ZNKR. One wonders about the relationship of Masaoka Sensei and Kono Sensei as they directed competing organizations, but nevertheless Masaoka sensei included Kono’s Dai Nihon Batto Ho waza in his MJER curriculum.
Of note for American iaido, in early 1955 a policeman, Mitsuzuka Takeshi, saw an iaidō demonstration by Nakayama sensei and immediately requested to become Nakayama sensei’s student and to study Muso Shinden-ryu iaido with him. While Mitsuzuka sensei didn’t receive Menkyo from Nakayama sensei, nor was he an adept at Nakayama’s Hayashizaki Hon-ryu, after Nakayama’s passing in 1958, Mitsuzuka sensei continued his study at the ZNIR and later the ZNKR. Mitsuzuka sensei earned a Kyoshi teaching certificate and became a judge for the ZNKR. Mitsuzuka sensei went on to study judo, kendo and jodo. Nakayama sensei was perhaps more so than any other practitioner of that time, the last link between pre-war and post-war kenjutsu.
Seven Samurai, Akira Kurasawa, 1954 (Toho)
With these sports organizations established and with the study of kenjutsu resumed in a newly reopened Japan, the groundwork was laid for these arts to again be studied abroad. Nevertheless, post-war kenjutsu and iaido didn’t come to America through one specific individual, organization or ryuha, but rather through several, simultaneous and diverse sources including returning Japanese Americans returning from Internment camps, American servicemen, Japanese ex- pats, the American press, and most assuredly, the Japanese film industry.
The Samurai Come to America
Based on Takashi Kojima ‘s short story, Yabu no naka (In A Grove, 1922), Kurosawa Akira’s first jidaigeki or period film, Rashomon, won the Gold Lion at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival. The award launched Kurosawa to worldwide fame and secured an international distribution deal for this and subsequent films. Rashomon also featured rising star Toshiro Mifune, who of course became the first on-screen embodiment of everything we think as Samurai.
The end of the Allied Occupation allowed feudal and martial themes to again be explored in cinema and popular culture, and building on the success of Rashomon, Kurosawa made a series of Sengoku and Edo-period based samurai films beginning a genre called chanbara. Kurosawa’s chanbara period includes The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961) and its sequel, Sanjuro (1962). These films introduced a generation of Americans to the samurai, the katana, kenjutsu and ideals of bushido. All these films with the exception of Throne of Blood were highly successful at the box office as international audiences flocked to learn about their former enemy and the romance of feudal samurai.
Sugino Yoshio practicing kumitachi with one of his children (Aikido Journal)
Kurasawa’s films were joined by Inagi Hiroshi’s Samurai Trilogy of 1954-56, a highly fictionalized retelling of Musashi Miyamato’s early life and major duels, starring Mifune as Musashi, and Zatoichi (1961) the blind, but honorable swordsman. Samurai Trilogy focused on an aspect of samurai behavior that intrigued American audiences — not simply the samurai’s killing acumen (and Musashi’s murderous nature) — but also their outward stoicism while doing so. Seven Samurai likewise began with a duel involving the stoic sword master Kyuzo played expertly by Miyaguchi Seiji, that left his opponent dead while he appeared completely nonplused. The scene gave a firm impression both of what mastery with a sword looked like as well as a distancing from emotion in the face of conflict and stress. In his 1956 review The New York Times critic, Bosley Crowther, noted the cool and collected demeanor of the samurai.
These concepts of kokoro no shugyo (心の修行), “tempering oneself through austere practices,” and hinkaku (品格), grace or character, are also known to us to as the “Zen Mind” that conditioned the samurai to calmly and even gracefully face conflict, battle, and potentially death.
Kurosawa hired Sugino Yoshio, a master of Katori Shinto-ryu (and several other martial arts), as the fight choreographer for The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo giving both films a dynamic and gritty realism. Sugino Sensei was a mainstay in the Japanese martial arts community and a good friend of Nakamura sensei. Having developed a comfort with the sword under Sugino sensei’s tutelage, Mifune showed a smoothness and elegance in his swordsmanship in multiple films that is impressive to the viewer. In interviews Sugino sensei would later comment on Mifune’s competency with the sword noting that Mifune could have become a martial artist rather than an actor.
A 1962 advertisement for Yojimbo. (New York Times)
Zen Comes to America
While chanbara films were in American theaters, Zen was introduced into the US through the rather romantic writings and lectures of a Buddhist practitioner, Suzuki Daisetsu Teitaro, and a Buddhist monk, Yasutani Hakuun. Beginning in 1951 D.T. Suzuki toured the US lecturing at American universities and was a professor of religion at Columbia University from 1952 to 1957. In the contentious world of the 1950’s and 1960’s Zen promised two novel concepts: kensho (見性) and satori (悟り), the attainment of insight or self-knowledge, and of greater understanding.
“What makes swordsmanship come closer to Zen than any other art that has developed in Japan is that it involves the problem of death in the most immediately threatening manner.”
D.T. Suzuki’s work was explored in two books by Eugen Herrigel, Zen and the Art of Archery (originally published in shorter form in 1948) and posthumously in The Method of Zen (1960), edited by Alan Watts. Other relevant works include Alan Watt’s own Way of Zen (Vintage, 1957), as well as Catholic monk Thomas Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Philip Kapleau (1912-2004) wrote Three Pillars of Zen (Weatherhill, 1966) and Yasutani Roshi also traveled to the US in the 1960’s and taught a generation of American Zen priests. Zen was further explored and promoted by Watts in his radio show on KPFA in Berkeley. Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha (1922) was published in English in 1951; Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums (Signet, 1958); Janwillem van de Wetering’s The Empty Mirror (1972), Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) and The Blue Cliff Record (1977) translated by Thomas Cleary should also be noted as they frame the zeitgeist.
While these authors were not budoka themselves, kenzen ichinyo (拳禪一如), the connection between Zen and kenjutsu, has existed in Japan for hundreds of years, even before Takuan Soho’s 17th century treatise, Fudochi Shinmyoroku. As kenshi we explore these concepts as zanshin (残心), ichinen sanzen (一念三千), fudoshin (不動心) and mushin no shin ( 無心の心) – concentration creating a stillness of mind.
Please note that recent scholars have revisited Suzuki, Herrigel and Yosatani (Shoji, 2001; Victoria, 1999, 2010; Ober, 2009; Ives, 2009). Although there’s no doubt about the sincerity of statements made after the war by budoka such as Nakayama sensei, keeping in mind recent insights regarding essays on Zen before and during the war, the Nihonjinron project itself, and other attempts to rewrite the script as it were, writers and literature on Zen Buddhism should be reexamined and reconsidered. D.T. Suzuki in particular popularized Zen by filtering it through Western modernity, nationalism, colonialism, and Orientalist discourses.
“More troubling, scholars argue that Suzuki’s characterization of Japanese culture as a marriage of Zen and the martial spirit of the samurai is congruent with the ideology of Japanese imperialism and chauvinistic nationalism. In this view, the conflation of Zen, violence, and Japan indirectly facilitated the state’s wartime mobilization.”
For those interested, Brian Victoria’s Zen at War is recommended reading. Also of note is that Donn Draeger was skeptical about the actual relationship between Zen and koryu budo, calling it “Zen Zenzen".
Whether the foundation for the transcendental aspects of kokoro no shugyo was Mikkyo, or Zen Buddhism, or Shinto, or a combination of all of them, one can appreciate that practiced as muteki no kyokusho — with no enemy — the solo practice of Muso Shinden-ryu may have been the ideal budo to engender this more philosophical or spiritual approach.
Iai Comes to America
Judo class at the Rower Arkansas Internment Center, 1942 (Uncredited)
Judo and kendo were practiced in the United States prior to the war, especially in major West Coast cities. During the war most if not all dojos were shut down. President Roosevelt’s executive order 9066 effectively imprisoned 127,000 Americans simply because of their heritage and national origin. Forced into internment camps, Japanese Americans were allowed to practice judo and kendo although issei Japanese who were kendo or other martial art instructors were often segregated and held detention on Angel Island in San Francisco.
By way of example, Akio “Bob” Hara started kendo in 1930, under the instruction of Nakamura Tokichi. Nakamura T. sensei had come to America in 1929 and founded the Hokubei Butokukai Nanka Renmei to promote kendo and iaido (for men AND women!) in North America. At the start of the war, Nakamura T. sensei returned to Japan and Hara sensei burned all his equipment, clothing, and papers to avoid being arrested as a potentially dangerous enemy alien. He was sent to the Poston Relocation Center for the duration of the war. It wasn't until 1955 that Hara sensei taught kendo again when he moved his family from Central California down to Los Angeles. Hara sensei taught at several dojos and in the 1960s helped found several others and was an important fixture at all the Southern California Kendo Federation events (Schmidt, 1999). Other teachers who helped relaunch kendo and iaido in the US included Torataro Nakabara, Morihei Henmi, and Walter Takeshi Yamaguchi.
In 1946 as American soldiers, who had been taught “Combat Judo,” returned from the war en masse and Japanese American families were allowed to return to their homes, judo and kendo dojos reopened in Hawaii and West Coast cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The transmission of iaido in the US was generally through these gendai martial arts dojos — either kendo, judo, or newly arrived karate dojos opened by former GIs.
Mori “Tiger” Torao
Already highly ranked and considered a “top 5” kendoka in Japan, Mori “Tiger” Torao had originally come to America in 1937 to study European fencing. Mori sensei took second in the 1938 West Coast Fencing championships after only six months of study. During the war Mori sensei returned to Japan and was stationed in Manchuria. Having befriended many Americans during his visit, he returned to US in 1951 and began work to regrow kendo here and to continue his studies in European fencing. Mori sensei is known as the father of modern kendo in the US. He earned Hachidan in kendo the late 1950s and coached the Japanese Olympic team. Mori sensei was instrumental in the creation of the AUSKF, helped found numerous kendo dojo in the US, and also in making connections for Americans and Japanese in both countries. Less well known is that Mori sensei was also a direct student of Nakayama Hakudo sensei, and highly adept in Muso Shinden-ryu iaido and Shindo Muso-ryu jojutsu.
In the 1950s Japan received a substantial economic boost as a staging ground for US military operations during the US proxy wars with communist China, starting with the Korean War (1950-53), during which the United States invested heavily in the reconstruction of Japanese manufacturing and infrastructure. The Second Indochina War (1954-1963) and the Vietnam War (1964-75) also boosted Japan’s economy, and even the 1973 oil crisis ultimately benefited Japan because its smaller, fuel-efficient cars and focus on customer service were extremely attractive in the US market. By the 1970s Japan had grown to the third largest GDP worldwide behind the US and the Soviet Union. From the 1950s through to the 1980s Japanese corporate offices and trade delegations were established and expanded throughout the US (Sugimoto and Mouer, 1980).
“All Japanese soldiers trained in kendo and judo in those days, and he was a very strong kendo player. He had been a priest in Hiroshima, in the village of Takehara, where his family was from Imperial blood. His family maintained an imperial tradition in which, if a boy was a second or third son, he would become a priest. He resided in a temple with huge yanegawara (roof tiles) which is the indication of high class. He was a highly sophisticated and educated person, and I learned from him extremely sophisticated mannerisms.”
As the economic center of the US, New York City and the surrounding communities became home to an international community of Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans from the 1950s on. The first post-war teaching of iaido in the northeast may be attributed to kendoka Kan Shunshin and Daniel T. Ebihara, and a judoka, Otani Yoshiteru, and all native Japanese who relocated to New York City in the mid-1950s.
Rev. Kan was a 15th generation Buddhist priest and a nihonto aficionado who co-founded the Ken-Zen Institute with his student Daniel Ebihara in 1959, offering instruction in judo, kendo and Muso Shinden-ryu iaido, Ken Zen may be the oldest iaido dojo in the northeast. Reverend Kan also helped found the New York Token Kai and eventually became pastor of the Buddhist Church of New York.
Otani sensei came to New York in 1954 as a student, was also involved in Buddhist Church of NY, and taught judo at the McBurney YMCA. In the early 1960’s Otani sensei started teaching Musō Shinden-ryū Iaidō as “moving Zen” (a term borrowed from C.W. Nichol’s 1962 book on karate). Otani Sensei founded the New York Iai Kai from the McBurney YMCA although in the intervening years the Iai Kai had numerous names and homes. Otani sensei was a vigorous promoter of iaido, and from 1966 on demonstrated annually at Aaron Banks’ “Oriental World of Martial Arts” exhibitions at Madison Square Garden, also traveling throughout the country to lecture on Zen and Japanese history. Deborah Klens-Bigman sensei noted that Otani sensei knew everyone who was involved in any aspect of Japanese culture in New York.
Otani Yoshiteru Sensei, (New York Budo Association)
Although several other Japanese sensei came to the US to teach, in maintaining focus on iai rather than kendo, I’ll note only two others at this time period, Takamura Yukiyoshi, the hereditary heir to Shindo Yoshin-ryu, and Kanai Mitsunari, a student of Ueshiba Morihei and Takeshi sensei, who came to the US to help teach and proselytize Aikikai aikido. During the war Takamura sensei’s father had been killed, and his family home and dojo destroyed. In the 1960s Takamura sensei immigrated to the US and developed a following in Northern California. In 1968, he founded an organization to oversee the promotion of his family art, the Takamura-ha Shindo Yoshin Kai.
Upon founding the New England Aikikai in 1966, Kanai sensei taught aikido and Takeshi sensei’s Muso Shinden-ryu iaido. Kanai helped grow the US Aikido Federation, the Canadian Aikido Federation and was also respected for his metalworking skills and knowledge of nihonto and served as an advisor to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
American Kenshi
It’s challenging to determine exactly who the first non-Japanese Americans to teach Japanese swords arts in United States after the war were, but there are several good candidates. One of the first to teach iaido in the US is John Slocum, who opened the Samurai Dojo in Queens, NY in 1961. Slocum sensei started in Shotokan karate and learned Omori-ryū iaijutsu from Tomasaburo Okano while stationed in Okinawa. Slocum’s students included the famous karateka Aaron Banks and Art McConnell who later studied with Otani and Mitsuzuka senseis.
Another early American iaido sensei is Joseph Cummins. A career soldier, Cummins sensei had studied saber while stationed in Italy after the war and relocated to Camp Zama in 1960 where he studied Muso-ryu Jojutsu under Matsuo Kempu of the Shinken Kai in Yokohama. Matsuo sensei also had Cummins sensei study both Hasegawa Eishin-ryu and Muso Shinden-ryu, making Cummins sensei among the first Americans to study Eishin-ryu. Cummins sensei also appeared in a 1964 article for Black Belt magazine that discussed his training, Matsuo sensei, and provenance of the nihontō they used in practice. Cummins sensei earned high dan ranking in 1964 before returning to the US and is currently a kyoshi in iaido with the ZNIR. Cummins sensei eventually returned to Japan where he continues to study and teach kobudo and iaido. We should also note that Matsuo sensei was a direct student of Nakayama sensei, and while he may be a forgotten name today, he was a founding member of the ZNIR, and along with Takaji Shimizu of Shintō Musō- ryū one of the first Japanese sensei to teach sword arts and kobudo to non-Japanese.
Donn Draeger training in Japan (uncredited source)
The two Americans who did the most to promote Japanese sword arts in the US after the war were the famous budoka and hoplologist, Donn Draeger, and the lifelong kendoka and writer, Dr. Gordon Warner. Draeger sensei was a US Marine major who was stationed in Japan after the war and returned in 1957 after ending his military service. Draeger had studied Japanese martial arts since childhood and was ranked in judo when the war began. He continued his judo study throughout the war and among his later accolades became one of the founders of the United States Judo Association and the liaison between the USJA and the Kodokan. In the early ‘60’s Draeger became disenchanted with judo as his study and his knowledge in other martial arts grew. Draeger sensei was already studying kendo and iaido under Ichitaro Kuroda, as well as the feudal history of koryu budo, and had joined the Kobudo Shinko Kai, the Classical Martial Arts Preservation Society as its first (and at that time only) international liaison and non-Japanese member. He was also the first non-Japanese permitted to compete in jukendo tournaments, winning so many that he was barred from competition. Draeger sensei was the embodiment of bu and bun.
1966 was a banner year for Draeger as he moved from Tokyo to Narita; founded the International Hoplology Society; served as the fight trainer and stunt double for Sean Connery in the James Bond film, You Only Live Twice, and became the first non-Japanese student of Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto-ryu soke, Risuke Otake. Known to practice as much as 15 hours a day, this was only one of many “first non-Japanese to” accomplishments for Draeger who ultimately attained high ranking in in TSKS; kendo; jukendo, aikido and dan rank in several other budo. It’s also notable that You Only Live Twice (1967) included scenes of kenjutsu training and was the first western theatrical film to feature kumitachi and tameshigiri. Draeger was also a prodigious writer of some thirty books and dozens of journal and magazine articles.
Capturing the breadth and depth of Draeger sensei’s study and writing in martial arts is beyond the scope of this essay. I include a few notes and recommend those interested to both read his books (listed in the bibliography) and watch the interviews with his students from the March 24, 2019, Donn F. Draeger symposium on YouTube.
This description of Draeger’s work comes from the IHS archives:
“Taking up permanent residence in Japan in the mid-1950's, Draeger became thoroughly occupied with the study and practice of Japanese martial and related disciplines. During that period, his attention was drawn to the existence and activities of Japan's oldest cultural organization for the study and preservation of classical martial arts and ways, the NKS, into which he gained membership. Draeger founded the International Research Section of the NKS, where interested non-Japanese persons might study and conduct research in the Japanese martial ethos. By the early 1960's, this section had already conducted an ongoing series of investigations in Japan and had produced a sizable amount of hoplological data which was mainly, but not entirely, relevant to Japan. Draeger soon changed the title and modified the activities of the original International Research Section to that of a wider-based organization, which, after several name changes, became the International Hoplological Research Center, and now, the International Hoplology Society.”
Summing up Dr. Warner’s life in a paragraph is equally challenging to that of Draeger’s. Dr. Warner studied judo, kendo and iaido in high school and college with “Tiger” Mori sensei; joined the Marines, and with letters of introduction from Mori sensei moved to Japan to earn his shodan and nidan in kendo and iaido before WWII. Warner fought in the Pacific theater and was so fluent in Japanese he was able to taunt Japanese soldiers into committing suicide attacks in the battlefield. In August 1944 he lost his left leg in battle and earned the Navy Cross. In 1953 while working on his PhD, Mori sensei — soon to be the first president of the new AUSKF — convinced Warner to resume his budo studies. Dr. Warner and Dr. Benjamin Hazard formed a kendo club at U.C. Berkeley, the second to open in the country after the war that still operates today. Dr. Warner returned to Japan annually; served as one of the founding editors for Black Belt magazine; collaborated with Donn Draeger; wrote and published several books, all while earning a 7th dan in kendo and 6th dan in iaido — directly from the ZNKF. As noted earlier, Black Belt magazine periodically carried articles on Japanese sword arts, including a 1962 article on “The One-Legged Swordsman.” For some time, Dr. Warner was the highest ranked non-Japanese kendoka. Dr. Warner and his wife later relocated to Okinawa where he lived and worked until his passing.
After Draeger established “Camp Bushido” in Tokyo, other Americans came to Japan to study both gendai and koryu arts. I’ve parsed them into two groups. The IHS group (International Hoplology Society) were the first generation of non-Japanese sensei and included Phil Relnick, Quintin Chambers, Jon Bluming, Patrick Lineberger, Hunter Armstrong, Robert W. Smith, David A. Hall and Nyle Monday. The second group, I’ll call the JMAS group (Japanese Martial Arts Society) included Dr. Karl Friday, Brian Stokes, Don Trent, Dave Dimmick, Ellis Amdur and Meik Skoss. We’ cover the second group in part 2 of this essay. All of them are highly ranked in multiple arts, many with menkyo kaiden in at least one art. Without delving into too much detail, Relnick sensei started training in judo in 1956, spent over 40 years living and working in Japan after serving in the US Air Force before returning to the US where he continues to teach; Quintin Chambers, an Englishman, started his study with judo and aikido in 1954, , moved to Japan in 1961 and has over 65 years of study and practice; David A. Hall began his study in 1965 in karate and aikido, met Draeger in 1974, lived in Japan for 15 years and is still teaching today; and in the second group Meik Skoss began his martial arts study in the 1960s and moved to Japan in 1973, living and studying there for over 20 years before returning to the US where he still teaches.
Iaido Resources in America
Zen Combat (Ballantine Books)
Before proceeding to the next generation of American kenshi it’s worthwhile to review iaido resources available for the early American iaidoka. The wealth of video and published materials available today simply didn’t exist as there was a very limited market for them. Dr. Nyle Monday noted that in the early 1960s there were only two books available for the novice interested in Japanese sword arts. Jay Gluck’s Zen Combat (Ballantine) and a 1955 reprint of Ernest John Harrison’s 1912 book The Fighting Spirit of Japan (W.Foulsham & Co Ltd., London).
In 1962 having just returned from several years living in Japan, Jay Gluck, a scholar and self-described Japanophile, wrote Zen Combat. Within the small format of a pocket-size, paperback book, it is surprisingly dense with a history of Zen and martial arts as they migrated from India to China and then to Korea, Okinawa, and Japan. True to the title, chapter 2 is “Why the Zen of Zen Combat” flowing directly onto Chapter 3, “the Way of the Sword,” on kendo, iai and chanbara.
Ernest John Harrison’s 1912 book The Fighting Spirit of Japan was updated and reprinted in 1955. An Englishman, Harrison had lived in Japan between the World Wars and his book is the first English language survey of Japanese martial arts. Although primarily a judoka writing about the origins of Kodokan judo (Harrison was the first Westerner to earn a shodan from the Kodokan), with this book he introduced British and American audiences to many Japanese martial arts including several ryuha of kenjutsū.
Kono sensei’s second book an illustrated manual on MJER, Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Heiho, (Tokyo) was published in 1955 in Japan. In 1958, Kono sensei followed it with Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Tani Roku (Japan); in 1962 his Iaido Shintei (Japan) and in 1967 his first book, also a MJER manual, Dai Nippon Iaido Zufu (Japan), originally published during the war, was republished, and included the Dai Nihon Batto Ho waza. Although not available in the US they were available to Americans studying in Japan.
In 1958 the Charles E. Tuttle Company published John Masayuki Yumoto’s The Samurai Sword: A Handbook. Yumoto sensei was born in Fresno, California, spent his early years in Japan and returned to California for middle school. During the war Yumoto was head instructor at the Navy’s Japanese language school. He had developed a keen interest in nihonto and became not only a technical source on nihonto but an expert polisher and appraiser as well. This was soon followed by Basil Robinson’s The Arts of the Japanese Sword (Rutland, 1961) and Sasano Masayuki’s Early Japanese Sword Guards: Sukashi Tsuba (Japan Publications, 1972). Amazingly enough both Mr. Yumoto’s and Mr. Robinson’s books are still in print and still “go to” introductory texts for the subject.
In 1961 Dr. Gordon Warner and his close friend, Sasamori Junzo, the highly ranked kendoka and 16th soke of the Ono-ha Itto-ryu kenjutsu, began work on a book for international audiences, This is Kendo (Tuttle), was published in 1964. While it contains a limited amount of information on iai, it does have an informed analysis of a beautifully choreographed fight scene from Kurasawa’s Sanjuro (below). The English edition of the book was not as well reviewed by Dr. Warner’s friend, Dr. Hazard, as Hazard felt the Japanese edition was better due to a number of omissions in the translation. Dr. Hazard was also infamous for writing a poor review of Donn Draeger’s trilogy on bujutsu and budo. It should also be noted that Sasamori sensei had previously written his own book on the subject, Kendo / 剣道. (Japan, 1945)
We should note how the Tuttle company became the preeminent source for Japanese subject books — including martial arts books. Charles E. Tuttle, a second-generation book seller from Vermont, worked in the SCAP as part of MacArthur’s general staff during the war. After his tour of duty in 1948, Tuttle left the military began several book-related business ventures. Initially settling in postwar Tokyo, he supplied rare Japanese editions to American libraries and imported American books to sell to GIs stationed in Japan. By 1949, Tuttle's business was thriving, and he opened Tokyo's first English-language bookstore. Two years later, he began publishing “books to span the East and West”. In 1983 Tuttle was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure by Emperor Hirohito.
The aesthetic appreciation of nihonto and koshirae craftsmanship goes back hundreds of years in Asia. Even in the US this study predated WW2 by several decades. In 1948, the Nihon Bijutsu Token Hozon Kyokai (NBTHK) was one of the first organizations related to martial practices to be reinstituted under the SCAP ban. The NBTHK’s mission is to study and record the history, making and preservation of nihonto.
The Japanese Sword Society of the United States was founded 1955 in Berkeley, California by collectors Bryce Brooks, Jack Paras, Paul Allman, and Reginald Bretnor with technical support from Yumoto sensei and Albert Yamanaka. In 1959 they published their first newsletter and continued to do so regularly for 54 years. In 1964 Northern and Southern California clubs were established to allow for local in-person meetings.
US G.I.s in Japan with confiscated katana, 1945 (uncredited)
In 1966 an exhibit was held at the Cooper Union in NYC entitled The Japanese Sword and Its Fittings. The exhibition included nihonto and koshirae owned by the 21 members of the Japanese Sword Society of New York and contained 390 pieces. We assume these works were of legitimate provenance. I point this out because immediately upon the arrival of American and other non-Japanese servicemen in Japan at the beginning of the Occupation, hundreds if not thousands of nihonto were expatriated. It is estimated that at one point there were more katana in the United States than in Japan. While the bulk of these were gunto, many were genuine treasures (the story of the recently discovered 700-year-old nihonto forged by Etchu Norishige (1290-1366) and found in New York is a prime example). In response to this phenomenon in 1950 the Japanese Diet passed the Bunzazai-hogo-ho or Cultural Properties Protection Law and in 1958 the Act for Controlling the Possession of Firearms and Swords and Other Such Weapons. These legislative acts concern the manufacture and possession of nihontō both as cultural artifacts and as weapons. The multiple statutes within the acts forbid the importation of edged weapons larger than knives; require all shinken to be of Japanese origin; forbid the export of nihonto without a license or written approval and limit the number of uchigatana a smith can produce in a year.
These laws were and are important to Americans because they greatly limited the availability of nihonto for American iaidoka. Katana often had to be assembled from parts imported by middlemen or were provided by or purchased through one’s Japanese sensei (Mitsuzuka sensei was a well-known source for nihonto). Dr. Monday notes that large cities had martial arts supply stores that could order shinsakuto, Nozawa Trading Company in Los Angeles and Honda Associates in New York City, although the high cost of nihonto was a disincentive to the study of iai. Phil Ortiz sensei has noted that all iaido study used shinken well into the 1980s as mogito were simply not available. All of this impacted the popularity of the art and had a commensurate effect on the downstream production of related gear, tools, and study aids.
Nakamura Kyoko and Nakamura Taizaburo embu on NHK-TV (IBF)
In 1969 the ZNKR established a standardized iaido curriculum for their members, the Zen Nippon Kendo Renmei Iai or Zen Ken Ren Iai, a seitei gata similar in function to that of the ZNIR’s. It would be another twelve years before the ZKRI seitei gata was fully adopted, but this curriculum would make iaido accessible to all kendoka, greatly expanding the population of iaido practitioners. It would at the same time create a rift in the iaido community over practice techniques of koryu and battlefield arts. This rift opened a door that expanded the study of other iai ryuha.
Also in 1969, Tuttle republished Nitobe Inazo’s 1899 Bushido: The Soul of Japan, injecting further debate into budo study. While Nitobe is a revered figure in Japan for his work in education, his ideas about Bushido were initially rejected in Japan as noted in Oleg Benesh’s 2014, Bushido: Inventing the Way of the Samurai (Oxford University Press). Benesh’s book should be read as part of any serious study of the subject.
As the decade ended, Nakamura sensei faced several challenges. His eldest daughter and closest training partner, Kyoko, had died, and Toyama-ryu was floundering.
