A school of horsemanship
Ōtsubo-ryū (大坪流) is a Japanese school of classical horsemanship, counted among the old lines of the mounted art alongside the Ogasawara, Hachijō and Naitō traditions. It gathered the older practice of riding and mounted archery into a systematic teaching, and its influence spread far more widely than the closely guarded rival lines.
Ōtsubo Yoshihide
The school is traditionally founded in the Muromachi period by Ōtsubo Yoshihide, also known by his religious name of Dōzen, who first studied the horsemanship of the Ogasawara school before shaping his own. Later heads served as riding masters to the Ashikaga shōguns, and from Ōtsubo-ryū sprang a great number of branch lines, including the horsemanship taught within the Araki-ryū.
Neither man above the saddle nor horse beneath it, but a single moving whole.
A widely branching legacy
Unlike the Ogasawara line, which kept its secrets under shogunal protection, Ōtsubo-ryū was transmitted across the country and gave rise to many offshoots. Ryūpedia records no verified surviving independent Ōtsubo-ryū line today and names no modern steward, remembering it instead as a fountainhead of Japanese horsemanship whose branches carried its methods onward.