As part of sorting out my thoughts on kenjutsu after the death of my Japanese swordsmanship instructor, I began collating my notes and diving into historical documents and Japanese books I had access to on Kashima-shinden Jiki Shinkage-ryū kenjutsu. I wanted to write a summary of my understanding of the art — that understanding eventually became a small book:
The Truth of the Calm Spirit: The Practice of Shinkage-ryū Heihō as Taoist Internal Alchemy, M. Raugas, 2025.
In it, you can get a glimpse of my view of what was at one point in time a quite deep martial art that had great influence. Additional information, including links to active training groups, can be found at jikishinkageryu.org.
Notes
- After initial publication and some additional cross-referencing against additional documents, the history section has been expanded based on the notes found in a densho by Ogawa Yashichi form 1800.
- The gokui list in the initial draft of TOCS originally included an entry called "nenshi" (thought/contemplation). This was a large annotation in one densho that summarized a two-link teaching poem (rika). It has been removed from the list in the current version — the poem is now described in the section associated to one of the formal gokui called Seiko-sui.
- Because of the continuing research I am conducting, I expanded this work substantially since it was first available. The additional content can be found as essays being maintained on this site, for those who bought an early version of the book.
