二天一流 niten ichiryū Two Heavens One Style

Two Heavens One Style^[1] in Japanese is 二天一流 which is read niten ichiryū

二天一流 (niten ichiryū): the Niten school, the two-sword school of Miyamoto Musashi, which the Book of Five Rings teaches.

Two Heavens One Style is a school named for its founder, Miyamoto Musashi. In Japanese it is the Niten school, as one says the Yagyū school. 一流 is one word, a school, and 二天 is Musashi himself.

The English title reads the four characters one at a time. It is a good title once you know that Niten is a name.

niten ichiryū literally means "Two Heavens One Style" and is composed of the kanji 二 (read ni) meaning "two", 天 (read ten) meaning "heaven, sky", 一 (read ichi) meaning "one", and 流 (read ryū) meaning "style".

References:

^[1] Translation by David K. Groff, The Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi's Art of Strategy (Chartwell Books, 2016; first published by Watkins, 2012), p. 44.

Musashi called his school 円明流, Enmei, in his youth and 二刀, two swords, in his last years; 二天, two heavens, was his own Buddhist name, Niten Dōraku. The school's name 二天一流 is first written in the copies of his five scrolls, made after his death, and the dictionaries date the renaming to about 1666.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 二天一流.

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The scrolls are 12 1/4" W × 43" H (31 × 109 cm) with real silk borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by Sankō (株式会社三幸) in Gifu prefecture, which has been making high quality scrolls since 1947, and we have worked with Sankō for over two decades.

Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase