Negishi-ryū

The Spike-Throwing Art

Negishi-ryū is a Japanese tradition of shurikenjutsu, the throwing of small steel spikes, that took shape around the nineteenth century. Its early history is thinly recorded, but it is securely attested through its modern transmitters, and it is the parent art from which the twentieth-century Meifu Shinkage-ryū was developed.

Negishi-ryū (根岸流) is a Japanese tradition of shurikenjutsu, the art of throwing small steel spikes. It uses the bō-shuriken, a straight spike thrown so that it strikes point-first into its target. Its early history is only thinly recorded, but it is securely attested through its more recent transmitters.

The straight spike

The bō-shuriken is a plain bar of steel, thrown at distances that demand exact control of grip, release and rotation so that the point, rather than the side, meets the target. Negishi-ryū treats the throw as part of a whole posture and step rather than as an isolated flick of the hand, and the precision it asks for is considerable.

A thrown point rewards patience and exact distance far more than force.

A thinly recorded origin

The school is generally placed in the nineteenth century and linked to the Negishi family, but the founding details are not firmly established. Ryūpedia does not assert a precise founder or date where the surviving record does not support one, and the sources for shurikenjutsu in general are sparse.

In the twentieth century Someya Chikatoshi, who had studied Negishi-ryū, drew on it to create Meifu Shinkage-ryū, a modern school of shurikenjutsu. Negishi-ryū is therefore the older parent of that better-known art, and the two are closely related.

Honesty note

Given how little is documented about its beginnings, strong or precise claims about the origin of Negishi-ryū should be treated with caution.