Masaki-ryū is one of those traditions that becomes much more interesting the moment you stop trying to make it neat.
And people do love neatness.
A founder. A weapon. A curriculum. A straight line from the Edo period to the present. Add a photograph of a chain, sprinkle in the word "samurai", perhaps mention honour somewhere near the end, and everyone can go home satisfied.
History, unfortunately, is rarely that polite.
I started looking again at Masaki-ryū because of a correction sent to me by Pascal Masse, who has practised within Masaki-kai in Tokyo since 2006. What began as a fairly simple question about the modern curriculum turned into something rather more interesting, because the deeper I went into the Japanese sources, the less comfortable the simple version became.
And that is usually where the useful history starts.
Masaki-ryū is closely associated today with the manriki-gusari (万力鎖), a short weighted chain traditionally linked to Masaki Tarōdayū Toshimitsu, 正木太郎太夫利充, an Ōgaki retainer of the Edo period.
The name manriki-gusari is usually rendered as something like "ten-thousand-power chain". Manriki, 万力, literally carries the sense of immense or ten-thousand-fold strength, while kusari, 鎖, simply means chain. It is a wonderfully ambitious name for something that can disappear into a sleeve.
Very Japanese, really.
Tiny object. Enormous consequences.
The weapon is compact, concealable, brutally efficient at close range, and capable of striking, entangling, throwing, restraining and controlling. That last word matters to me far more than the usual fascination with how much damage a historical weapon can cause.
Control.
Because when I look at the tradition surrounding Masaki-ryū, I do not see a system obsessed with producing the most spectacular corpse.
I see a problem-solving art.
The best-known foundation story places Toshimitsu in the context of guard duty connected with Edo Castle's Ōtemon (大手門).
Ōtemon means the principal or front gate of a castle, and at Edo Castle this was not simply a convenient entrance with a bored guard standing beside it. It was the great formal entrance used by daimyō and others entering the political centre of the Tokugawa world. Ceremony, hierarchy, security and political theatre all converged there.
In other words, it was not an ideal place to start waving swords about.
Masaki tradition relates that Toshimitsu was concerned with how to deal with a violent or disturbed person (乱心者, ranshinsha, literally someone whose mind had become disordered) without drawing a sword and covering the gate area in blood.
That story appears in Japanese Masaki transmission and is connected in the tradition with 『撃剣叢談』, Gekken Sōdan, a historical collection of martial accounts.
Now, can I prove every colourful detail of the story from a surviving Tokugawa duty roster?
No.
And I am not going to pretend I can because it sounds better on Facebook.
I have not found independent archival confirmation for some of the more specific details sometimes repeated around the tradition, such as Toshimitsu personally commanding one hundred men, or conducting particular night patrols through the area now called Ōtemachi.
Those claims may prove true. They may survive in material I have not yet seen. The Ōgaki domain archives are extensive, and sources such as 『大垣藩城代日記書抜』 (extracts from the Ōgaki domain castle administrator's diary) cover much of the period in question.
But "plausible" and "proven" are not twins.
They merely dress alike from a distance.
What is historically secure is the broader setting. Guarding major Edo Castle gates formed part of the obligations imposed upon daimyō houses, and the Ōtemon was a place where order mattered enormously.
So the underlying logic of the Masaki tradition makes sense.
A sword is superb if the problem is that somebody absolutely needs a sword used on them.
It is rather less elegant when your job is to stop a drunk, violent or politically inconvenient samurai without creating an incident that suddenly involves his lord, his relatives, your lord, the castle administration, several witnesses and possibly a very miserable afternoon of explaining yourself.
This is where the manriki-gusari becomes fascinating.
Not because it is exotic.
Because it is practical.
A compact chain allows distance to appear and disappear very quickly. It can strike, bind, catch, disrupt balance and restrain. It does not demand the same physical space as a long weapon. It does not announce itself in quite the same manner as drawing a sword.
And that brings me to what I think is the philosophical heart of Masaki-ryū.
A modern Masaki-kai teaching phrase shared with me was:
正木流は護身の流派です。
Masaki-ryū wa goshin no ryūha desu.
"Masaki-ryū is a school of self-protection."
Goshin (護身) literally means protecting the body or protecting oneself. Ryūha (流派) means a school, tradition or lineage.
That sentence is wonderfully unromantic.
No enlightenment.
No mystical warrior destiny.
No promise that your chakras will align if you swing a chain correctly under a full moon.
Protect yourself.
Control the situation.
Survive it.
Preferably without making matters worse.
I find that far more interesting than the usual mythology attached to old martial traditions.
It also raises an important distinction between restraint and pacifism.
Masaki-ryū is not "non-violent" in the modern sentimental sense. The manriki-gusari can injure very seriously. Anyone who has ever looked carefully at a weighted chain and thought otherwise is displaying a level of optimism I personally would not recommend.
But there is a difference between possessing the ability to injure and structuring your response around immediate lethal escalation.
That distinction matters.
The traditional Ōtemon story is not "Toshimitsu wanted a kinder weapon".
It is closer to this:
He needed another option.
That is a much harder and more mature martial idea.
The sword is not always wrong.
The sword is simply not always the answer.
This brings the discussion to another small historical trap, because the name "Masaki-ryū" does not behave as neatly as people sometimes assume.
In the present Masaki-kai tradition, naginatajutsu is not part of the transmitted curriculum. Naginatajutsu (薙刀術) is the art of using the naginata, the Japanese polearm with a curved blade.
Toshimitsu himself trained in Sen'i-ryū naginata, 先意流薙刀術, and Japanese practitioner sources distinguish that background from the present manriki-gusari transmission.
So far, simple enough.
Except history then wanders into the room and ruins the furniture.
The 1843 work 『武術流祖録』 (Bujutsu Ryūsoroku) explicitly records "正木流 薙刀" (Masaki-ryū naginata).
That matters.
It does not mean that the current Masaki-kai secretly contains a naginata curriculum everyone has somehow misplaced behind a cupboard.
It means that historically the label "Masaki-ryū" was broader, or at least more complicated, than a simple one-school-one-curriculum model suggests.
The exact relationship between this historical Masaki-ryū naginata tradition, Toshimitsu's Sen'i-ryū background and the present manriki-gusari transmission is not yet clear enough for me to make a grand declaration.
And I rather like that.
There is something healthy about allowing a historical question to remain a question.
Modern martial culture is often terrified of that.
Everything must be "the original", "the authentic", "the unbroken", "the only true lineage".
Preferably in capital letters.
Actual history is messier.
Masaki-ryū becomes even more interesting when looking at kusarigama.
Kusarigama (鎖鎌) means chain-and-sickle, and it is also transmitted under the Masaki name in more than one context. Japanese sources connected with the Nakajima line describe kusarigamajutsu as a parallel transmission to manriki-gusari practice, while the Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai (日本古武道協会), the Japanese Classical Martial Arts Association, currently recognises a Masaki-ryū kusarigamajutsu line transmitted together with Suiō-ryū.
That is not the same thing as saying Masaki-kai itself is currently a member of that organisation.
It is not.
This distinction matters because modern institutional listings are very good at creating accidental historical monsters if nobody bothers reading the full line.
The present association listing is for:
水鷗流居合剣法・正木流鎖鎌術
Suiō-ryū Iai Kenpō and Masaki-ryū Kusarigamajutsu.
That is a particular transmission preserved within the Suiō-ryū context.
It should not be casually treated as evidence that Masaki-kai or Masaki-ryū manriki-gusarijutsu itself is a current independent member.
Another small correction concerns leadership terminology.
Modern martial arts discussions adore the word sōke (宗家).
Sometimes perhaps a little too much.
Sōke refers to the head or hereditary head-house concept used in various traditional arts. Within Masaki-kai, however, Nawa Yumio announced the abolition of the sōke system in 1998 and replaced it with a shihanke system.
Shihanke (師範家) is better understood as an instructor-house or senior teaching authority structure.
That is not a cosmetic change.
It shows something about how the tradition chose to preserve itself.
Instead of placing everything beneath one singular dynastic head, authority could be distributed among recognised teaching representatives.
For a small tradition trying to survive into the modern age, that is not merely administrative trivia.
It is philosophy expressed as organisation.
And survival is the uncomfortable issue sitting beneath all of this.
Masaki-ryū is not one of those traditions surrounded by thousands of practitioners, enormous organisations, competitive circuits and merchandise stalls selling commemorative towels.
Its practitioners are few.
Some are ageing.
Transmission depends on people choosing to spend years learning something the wider world barely knows exists.
That makes accuracy important.
But it also makes curiosity important.
If every koryū (古流, literally "old tradition" or classical school) is turned into a museum specimen sealed behind glass, the name may be preserved while the living practice is quietly lost.
A martial tradition survives by being practised.
Not merely catalogued.
This is perhaps what I find most compelling about Masaki-ryū.
Its weapon may appear unusual, but its underlying idea is painfully modern.
Violence is rarely tidy.
The strongest response is not always the most extreme one.
Control matters.
Judgement matters.
Distance matters.
Restraint matters.
And having another answer available before reaching for the most dangerous one may be a higher martial skill than simply being very good at cutting someone.
There is also a kind of intellectual restraint required when studying traditions like this.
Practitioner knowledge matters.
Written sources matter.
Oral tradition matters.
Archives matter.
But none of them should be bullied into saying more than they actually say.
When a practitioner tells me, "This is how the school understands itself", I take that seriously.
When an Edo-period source contradicts a modern simplification, I take that seriously too.
And when the archive simply shrugs and refuses to confirm whether a man commanded exactly one hundred guards two and a half centuries ago, I leave the sentence alone.
History does not become weaker when uncertainty is admitted.
It becomes more trustworthy.
And perhaps that is a philosophy Masaki-ryū itself would appreciate.
Do not escalate unnecessarily.
Do not use more force than the situation requires.
Do not draw the sword merely because you happen to own one.
Sometimes the smarter weapon is the smaller one.
Sometimes the stronger answer is restraint.
And sometimes the most historically responsible thing a researcher can write is:
I do not know yet.
Sources consulted for this post include 羽鳥耀清・池田豊直・青山敬直編『武術流祖録』, 1843, preserved through the National Institute of Japanese Literature's 国書データベース; 吉田幸平「アメリカにおける万力鎖，大垣戸田藩，正木流，正木団之進の研究」『体育学研究』15巻5号, 1971; 藤本仁文「参勤交代制の変質」『洛北史学』第14号, 2012; the historical materials and transmission information of 正木会; the 正木流中島派鎖術保存会; WEB秘伝's documentation of 正木会 and the shihanke structure; the official 日本古武道協会 material on 水鷗流居合剣法・正木流鎖鎌術; the 日本武道館's current Nihon Kobudō Kyōkai membership listing; the Imperial Palace Outer Garden material on Edo Castle's Ōtemon; 大垣市『大垣市史 資料編 近世1』 and its description of 『大垣藩城代日記書抜』; 鈴木喬『大垣藩戸田家の見聞書: 二百年間集積史料「御家耳袋」』; Ryūpedia's Masaki-ryū entry; and contemporary practitioner information kindly supplied to me by Pascal Masse of Masaki-kai, Tokyo.