Duel in the Snow - The Sword of Doom

The snow yesterday (not so common these days, and comparatively light compared to much of the rest of the country) reminded me of this classic scene from the film, The Sword of Doom, one of the several versions of the multi-volume novel by Nakazato Kaizan, Daibosatsu Toge – Great Buddha Pass, but arguably the best. (The others do have their good points, though). 

 

The sword master, Shimada Toranosuke, played here by Toshiro Mifune, (I have written his name the English way, but all the other names here are written surname first) is attacked mistakenly on his way back from a friend’s house. The attackers realise they have the wrong man, but make the mistake of pressing on with the attack regardless. This may be one of Mifune’s best appearances as a swordmaster (admittedly, the role is quite minor) but he plays it to perfection. 

You can watch the clip here:  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ev4e0

Mifune was a great actor, and he knew how to look the part, but if you want to see someone who actually knew how to use a sword, the same role was taken in two earlier versions of the same story (Sword in the Moonlight was the English title, I believe) by the veteran actor Tsukigata Ryunosuke (see the photos below), who had trained in a branch of the Shinkage Ryu, – the Jikishinkage Ryu was Shimada’s own school.

 

Although the main character of this story, Tsukue Ryunosuke, was fictional, Shimada Toranosuke was not. He was one of the strongest swordsmen of his day, and his lines about the connection between the sword and the mind are famous today in kendo dojo: 

The sword is the mind; 

If the mind is correct, the sword will be correct. 

If the mind is not correct, the sword will not be correct. 

He who would study the sword must first study the mind. 

Mind – kokoro – while basically meaning ‘way of thinking’ also has connotations of attitude and an almost moral dimension, as indeed, is made clear by his final comment in this film clip: “a sword which is not correct is an evil sword.” This, of course, refers to the swordsman.

As well as his skills with the sword Shimada was known for his upright character. It is perhaps worth noting that the original target of the assassination in this scene was Kiyokawa Hachiro, who often gets short shrift from Shinsengumi fans but was known as a Confucian scholar as well as a swordsman and is considered by some to have suffered from bad press), and his companion for part of the journey (in a different palanquin) is the famous spearman Takahashi Deishu – also known for his extremely virtuous character and his skill with the spear – the two were, in fact, friends, and Kiyokawa was later assassinated after leaving Deishu’s house. 

The leader of the assassins in this scene is Hijikata Toshizo, one of the more well-known and popular members of the Shinsengumi, and it is interesting how easily he is handled by Shimada, despite his reputation as ‘Demon Hijikata’. 

 

Nakazato Kaizan was himself a man of some principle, refusing to join the pro-military writers’ group, Nihon Bungaku Hokoku-kai, during the war, and casting the Shinsengumi in an unflattering light is telling. Mind you, with a ‘hero’ like Tsukue Ryunosuke, you can tell there are going to be more than a few moral grey areas.

For interests sake, here is a (very) short excerpt from the novel just before Shimada is attacked in his palanquin. I hope it gives something of the flavour of Nakazato’s writing:

A swordmaster of the highest level naturally has powers far beyond the ordinary. On the way, Shimada Toranosuke felt a sudden suspicious presence, and though he had not expected that the Shinchogumi would send such elite troops, he readied for an attack, leaning against the back of the palanquin in preparation for a sword thrust to the space in front of him (where a passenger would normally sit). 

By the time Hijikata called out to wait, he had already tied back his sleeves and dampened the mekugi of his beloved sword, forged by Saburo Shizu. When the attack came, he drew and cut with a single slash from under the sword that had pierced the empty space he had left, severing the leg of one of the black-clad swordsmen who had been waiting, and shot out.

Unfortunately, there’s not an awful lot of information on Shimada in English, although anyone who has played the fairly recent game Rise of the Ronin will probably be familiar with him (and all the others mentioned above). 

Alas, games are not one of the things I have time for these days, but I must admit I learnt a lot from them way back when – of course, it was all pen and paper in those days.

The Nanten Staff - Take that!

One of the distinctive sights of winter in Japan, and particularly in Kyoto, are the bright red berries of the nanten bush (Nandina). They are often planted just by the front door of houses and are used in the New Year decorations known as kadomatsu that can be seen outside businesses, department stores and some larger residences during the New Year period and sometimes as much as a couple of weeks after that.

My first encounter with nanten gave me a rather different impression - I had come across it years before I came to Japan in the book Zen and the Art of Calligraphy by Omori Sogen and Terayama Tanchu, now out of print but worth getting hold of if you’re interested in that kind of thing, in the form of the staff wielded by the Zen teacher who took his name from it – Nakahara Nantenbo (1839-1925). It's hard to believe, but information about that kind of thing was hard to get hold of in those days. The mental image of a fierce Zen practitioner and his nanten staff stayed with me, but it was only quite recently that I came across a picture of him and what might be his staff. I had imagined it would be something like the one in the picture below, but in fact that might not be the case.

An earlyish picture of the famous priest
with quite a fearsome looking staff.

He was known for his unstinting efforts to preserve and revitalize the Rinzai Zen tradition but is perhaps better known in the west for his calligraphy and Zen paintings. Like Yamaoka Tesshu, the swordsman, calligrapher and statesman, he produced huge numbers of works, although unlike Tesshu, he professed no skill in the art. He was similar to Tesshu, too, in the ferocity which he brought to his practice, regularly engaging in Dharma combat with other priests reportedly chasing the losers out of their temples. He and Tesshu had something of a rivalry, and though Tesshu may have practised under him, they were also reported to have taken part in Dharma battles with each other, with neither giving an inch.

A picture by Tesshu of Nantenbo teaching his
charges. (From Stevens' The Sword of No Sword')

As Tesshu's picture (and Deishu's verse) suggest, Nantenbo was also famous for his liberal use of his staff as a part of his teaching and it was this staff, cut from a 200 year old nanten bush he came across in his travels, that earned him his sobriquet. It was also the subject of his most distinctive paintings. The photograph below may show the staff. 

An older looking Nantenbo, but is that
his staff?

Perhaps, staff is a misnomer. I have seen it described as a shippei, which is a priest's stick that looks something like a riding crop. In any case, the one in the photograph has similarities to this depiction:

In this painting of his staff, the resemblance to the photograph is clear

However, his paintings are often titled ‘shakujo’ (although it is unlikely he gave them titles himself), which is a priest’s walking staff. The photograph near the top of the page looks more like a walking staff, and you would certainly remember if you'd been hit with it. Later in his career, he retired his famous staff, apparently giving it into the keeping of Empuku-ji, where it probably remains to this day…or so I thought, before finding a reference to it in a couple of catalogues from the late eighties from the museum of Zuigan-ji, where Nantenbo was, at one time, abbot. This is also the temple that was founded by the famous warrior Date Masamune, (see here for more information), and from which Nantenbo retired his abbotship after the famous statue of the warlord was damaged by an acolyte. It was also after this incident and a subsequent period of self-reflection that he retired his nanten stick from service, so the connection with Zuigan-ji seems more likely. It does suggest a problem with the photograph – he apparently retired the staff around 1893, when he was in his early fifties, but he looks much older in the lower picture. Perhaps that is not his nanten staff after all.

Another version  – this one uses the more usual vertical format. These paintings were typically accompanied by an
inscription saying something like  "If you speak or if you don't, you get 30 blows of my staff in any case."

Coming from a samurai family and having a strong, somewhat unruly nature, it might not be surprising that he kept company with martial artists and members of the military (including the famous generals Nogi Maresuke and Kodama Gentaro, both of whom were students of his). One of his notable students, Deiryu, was introduced by his brother’s kendo teacher, and in the early 1870s, Nantenbo was actually in command of a local militia (albeit one consisting of clergy, doctors and Confucian scholars), apparently training them in the use of the sword, spear and bow. Although not overly tall, he was powerfully built and also unusually strong. It was reported that he had travelled through the country during the 2nd Choshu Expedition (1865) and had shown he could take care of himself on several occasions.

He also had at least one ardent kendo practitioners amongst his students. A certain Yoshida Masahiro related the story of studying under him to improve his kendo. After a few months during which he made no headway with his study, Nantenbo told him he should give up kendo (meaning that he would get nowhere if he couldn’t figure this out). Nantenbo had apparently set him a kind of koan by striking a small bell and (presumeably, although the account I read was not clear, asking him something like "Does the sound come from the strike or the bell?). Yoshida spent a further 3 years before he had a sudden realisation while getting on a bus, that there was no separation between the strike and the sound, and thus in kendo there was no separation between the striker and his opponent. For Yoshida, those 3 years were very tough, but he makes no mention of the methods that Nantenbo used, except that he struck the bell 6 times. It must be noted that for a kendo student, especially in those days, being struck in training would not have been anything to note. This may have been in Nantenbo's later, 'gentler' days.

So much for Nantenbo's staff. I would like to track down a picture of it – if I'm successful, I will post it here.