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二天一流 niten ichiryū Two Heavens One Style

Japanese Scroll of Two Heavens One Style (niten ichiryū) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
二天一流 Original Scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Abstract

二天一流, niten ichiryū, the Niten school, is the name the school of two swords that Miyamoto Musashi's five scrolls teach has carried since at least 1666, when his pupil Terao Kumanosuke Nobuyuki closed a copy of Musashi's articles on strategy by naming it 實相圓滿之兵法、逝去不絕二天一流, joining words the stele of 1654 says Musashi wrote at his death to 二天, two heavens, his own Buddhist sobriquet. A licence under his name, the 兵道鏡, known in texts dated 1605 and 1607 that differ and whose attribution is disputed, gives the school as 円明流, the Enmei school, where it names it; his memorandum of 1641, Hayashi Razan's inscription and his son's stele of 1654 call the school, or its strategy, 二刀, two swords. The five scrolls use both names but survive only in copies, the oldest dated one in the sources read, of 1667, so whether Musashi renamed the school in his last years, as Tokitsu, Wilson, Groff and Bennett read it, or his pupils did after him, as the Japanese dictionaries say, the copies cannot settle. Two Heavens One Style reads the school's name one character at a time; it is in English print by 2004, and word for word in a translation of 2012.

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Overview

The sense. The name of the school of two swords that Musashi's five scrolls teach, which took his own name 二天 at the end of his life or after it; before that the school was 円明流 and 二刀一流. The five scrolls themselves, 五輪の書, have their own history; the two names meet in the same witnesses.

The words. 二天一流 is two words, not four. 一流 is one word, a school, this school: the text says this school, my school, the way of this school throughout, and every school of the sword is a 流. 二天, two heavens, is otherwise a Buddhist or a literary compound (the sun and moon devas; two of the four heavenly kings; a benefactor set beside heaven) [1], but here it is not a compound at all: it is Musashi's own name, the sobriquet on his paintings and his calligraphy and the name on the stele his son raised, as the record below shows. So niten ichiryū is the Niten school, the way one says the Yagyū school; it does not describe a technique. The English Two Heavens One Style reads the four characters one at a time, as English has done since at least 2004; the 二天 in it is a name.

The text in English. The school's name has gone two ways: one character at a time, Two Heavens One Style, since at least 2004; and Two Heavens as One or United, which reads the 一 of 一流 as joining the two heavens. Its other name, 二刀一流, has gone the same two ways, Two Swords One Style and Two Swords as One.

The historical record

1605 and 1607. Miyamoto Musashi 宮本武蔵, attributed, 兵道鏡, the Mirror of the Way of Combat. A set of articles given to a pupil as a licence, the earliest text in the sources read that carries Musashi's name. A copy in the Yamauchi library at Kōchi, titled 兵道鏡, closes on the words these articles … the inner teachings … discern their reason, is signed 天下一 宮本武蔵守 藤原義, the last character of the name in cursive, and carries the date 慶長十二年十一月吉日, an auspicious day of the eleventh month of 1607; that is the licence's date, and the copy itself is not dated [2]. A close with the same words, as far as the Kōchi copy's can be read, was printed in 1915 under the title 圓明流劒法書, the Enmei school's book of the sword, undated, signed 圓明流天下一 宮本武藏守, its articles set in three groups [3]. Two modern translators give the colophon of another copy, addressed to Ochiai Chūemon and dated 1605: Miyamoto Musashi no kami, Fujiwara Yoshitsune, the Enmei Ryu, the Best Adept in Japan [4]; and, with the body of the licence, I hereby confer this scroll authenticating attainment of the highest level of technical mastery in the Enmei-ryū, signed Enmei-ryū "Champion of the Realm" Miyamoto Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara Yoshitsune, a text whose close counts its articles in four groups, six, seven, seven and eight, twenty-eight in all, which Bennett says Musashi later rewrote as thirty-six [5]. The copies are not one text. Tokitsu knows two, One of them is composed of twenty-one articles and the other of twenty-eight articles [4]; Wilson gives the first edition only eighteen articles, later amended to thirty-five [6]. Nor was the attribution settled. The 1915 editor thought the 圓明流劒法書 might be drawn from the five scrolls, and the name Enmei one given later, 後世に至りて名づけられたるもの [3]; Tokitsu, who calls the 兵道鏡 Musashi's first work, does not accept the 圓明流劒法書 as Musashi's, judging it probably composed on the basis of excerpts from the Gorin no sho by adepts of the School of Musashi [4]; Wilson writes that many consider it to be a forgery [6]; and Uozumi Takashi, verifying six extant copies of the work and four related texts, holds that Musashi wrote it in his twenty-fourth year [5]. A survey of the sword schools written in 1843, below, asks whether in one house the school was called 圓明流, 此家にては流名を圓明流と稱するにや, and that the licences one 宮本角平 issued in 1607 all read 圓明流; its note on him cannot say whether he was Musashi's son or a pupil who took the surname, 未詳 [7]. Tokitsu's English of that sentence passes over the note and gives the licences to Musashi: The authorizations to teach that Musashi conferred in 1607 all bear the name Enmei ryu [4]. Where these texts name the school, in the 1605 copy as the translators give it, in the 1915 print and in that survey, the name is Enmei; the Kōchi copy's close names no school.

1641. Miyamoto Musashi 宮本武蔵, 兵法三十五箇条, the memorandum for Lord Hosokawa Tadatoshi. The thirty-five articles Musashi presented to his patron open by naming the school: the two-sword school of strategy, which I have trained in for years and now for the first time set down on paper [8]. This is the oldest dated text in the sources read in which Musashi calls his school two swords.

Before 1657. Hayashi Razan 林羅山, the inscription on Musashi's portrait. The Confucian scholar of the shogun's court wrote a Chinese eulogy on a portrait of Musashi, quoted in prints of 1909 and 1910 as: the swordsman Shinmen Genshin holds a sword in each hand and calls it the two-sword school, 稱曰二刀一流 [9]. The 二天記, below, says the pupil Ishikawa Sakyō 石川左京 had the portrait made when Musashi left Edo, kept it as an object of devotion, and asked Razan for the words [10]; Bennett dates the inscription to about 1638–39 [5]. Again, two swords.

1643 to 1645. Miyamoto Musashi 宮本武蔵, the five scrolls. The preface, as the copies give it: the way of strategy I call the Niten school, and I mean now for the first time to set down in a book what I have trained at for years; in the first ten days of the tenth month of 1643 I climbed Mount Iwato in Higo, bowed to heaven, paid reverence to Kannon, faced the Buddha, I, Shinmen Musashi Fujiwara no Genshin, a warrior born in Harima, sixty years old [11]. The Water scroll opens the same way, naming the Niten school. But when the Earth scroll comes to explain the name, the name it explains is the other one: to make known the use of these two swords it is called the two-sword school (the wording varies slightly witness to witness), and the Fire and Void scrolls open on the two-sword school, while the Wind scroll, which opens on the other schools, comes to the name at the end of that opening passage. The book also never calls itself 五輪書; what it says is why this book of strategy is made in five scrolls: I divide the way in five and write it scroll by scroll so its reasons can be known … as earth, water, fire, wind and void, in five scrolls (the 1909 print; the 1915 print has 其別, its distinctions, for 其利, and the 1939 print 其理, its principles, and 五色, five colors, for 五卷, five scrolls). The colophons are dated the twelfth or thirteenth day of the fifth month of 1645, a week before the received date of his death, and address the scrolls to different pupils across the surviving copies. None in Musashi's own hand survives, the encyclopedias say [1]. The 1909 biography called the copy it printed, then held by a Maeda family of Tamana in Higo, the original, 原書, but that copy's scrolls close with a colophon, 寛文七年二月五日 寺尾夢世勝延 to 山本源助殿 (寛 at the leaf, both prints), the fifth day of the second month of 1667, and the 1915 print notes the same colophon as the reading of the copy it abbreviates 顯本 [11]. One encyclopedia, the 日本大百科全書, calls the best copy, 善本, the scroll that Terao Magonojō 寺尾孫之丞 addressed to his pupil Yamamoto Gensuke in the fifth month of 1667, now in the Hosokawa family's Eisei Bunko [1]; whether the 1909 copy is that scroll, neither says. The copies show where each name stands in the text, not who first wrote it there.

1654. Miyamoto Iori 宮本伊織, the stele at Kokura. Nine years after the death, Musashi's adopted son raised a stone whose title names him Niten, styled thus, and whose text says: Musashi Genshin, styled Niten … was the founder of two-sword strategy, and that when he died in Higo he wrote with his own hand the characters 天仰實相圓滿之兵法逝去不絕, which were taken as his likeness, 以言爲遺像 [12]. On the stone, 二天 is the man, and the art is still called two swords.

1666. Terao Kumanosuke Nobuyuki 寺尾求馬助信行, a postscript. The 1909 『二刀一流剣道秘要』 prints a forty-two-article version of Musashi's articles on strategy, closing 右四十二ケ條, dated 寛永十八年二月朔日, the first day of the second month of 1641, and signed 新免武藏守藤原玄信, and after it a postscript signed 寺尾求馬信行. It tells how Lord Hosokawa asked Musashi about strategy and Musashi first wrote this book for him, and how the writer came to the way, and it ends on the school's name: 名號ニ實相圓滿之兵法、逝去不絕二天一流矣, its name: the strategy of true form, perfect and complete, unbroken by death: the Niten school. It is dated 寛文六丙午歲中秋中旬之日, the middle of the eighth month of 1666, twenty-one years after Musashi's death [13]. The manuscript was not seen; the print was read at the page. Outside the copies of the five scrolls, it is the earliest dated text in the sources read that gives the school the name 二天一流. Its writer is the pupil the dictionaries name as the one who renamed the school, and its year is the one about which the 日本大百科全書 puts the renaming, below; it does not itself say the name is new, and it joins 二天一流 to the words the stele says Musashi wrote at his death.

1721. 細井知慎 (Hosoi Kōtaku), the epitaph of Kawamura Michiaki 河村通顕. The epitaph of a man born in Edo in 1665, who served the Hosokawa lord of Higo from his twenty-seventh year, says that he loved learning, calligraphy and the sword, and received the true line of Shinmen Musashi's Niten school, and the secret of the five scrolls of his strategy, 又受新免武藏二天一流之正脈、傳其兵法五巻之秘. It is dated the twenty-second day of the eleventh month of the sixth year of Kyōhō, 1721, and is known from an undated manuscript collection of epitaphs, which the National Diet Library's item record dates only to the twentieth century [14]. Seventy-six years after Musashi's death, it is the earliest dated text in the sources read from outside the school's own papers that gives the school the name 二天一流, and it pairs the name with the five scrolls.

1755 to 1776. Toyota Kagehide 豊田景英, 二天記, the Kumamoto biography. Compiled over three generations of the Toyota family from what Musashi's surviving pupils told the grandfather, and the source of most of what is told about him. Its note on sources is dated 1755 and belongs to the book's first form, 武公伝, which Kagehide renamed 二天記 and had prefaced in 1776; the note says a little was added from the book of the five … and the like, which the 1910 print writes 五倫の書 and the 1909 print 五輪ノ書. Its account of the death says he passed the five-ring scrolls to Terao Katsunobu and the thirty-five articles to Terao Kumanosuke Nobuyuki 寺尾求馬助信行; and of the school it says that it is called 實相圓滿の兵法、逝去不絕、二天一流, the name of the postscript of 1666. It also records where the name came from: Musashi took the Buddhist name Niten Dōraku through the monk Shunzan of Taishōji [10].

1682 to 1843. The other names. A manuscript of 1682 is titled inside 兵法三十五ケ條, the 1641 memorandum's title, and on its title leaf and outside 圓明流兵法三十五ケ條, the Enmei school's thirty-five articles; its text was not read [15]. A memorial stone of 1744 at Kasadera in Nagoya, raised by the descendants and pupils of 左右田邦俊, a master of the line's third generation, in the year of his 百年忌, the hundredth-year memorial, calls it the Enmei school of two-sword strategy [16]; a stone of 1793 at Shinpōji that followed the first forty-nine years later writes the true Enmei school [17]; and a survey of the sword schools by an Okayama retainer from a family of sword instructors, its preface dated the first winter month of 1843, calls Musashi's school also the Enmei school, says he thought it out afresh and founded a two-sword school, and names the 兵道鏡 as the school's book [7]. Enmei is the name of the licences of Musashi's youth and of the 兵道鏡 above, and it lived on, in the manuscript of 1682 and on the stones, in the lines his early pupils carried away.

1890 or 1892. The Kumamoto domain school's roster. When the Ministry of Education printed its survey of the former domains' schools, Kumamoto's listed its sixteen instructors of the sword, 劒術師拾六名, by school, and two of the schools are Musashi's: two instructors of the 二天流 and three of the 二天一流 [18]. Under the domain, in the town where the five scrolls were written, the school was taught under two forms of the name.

1909. The five scrolls in print. The 顕彰会's biography of Musashi printed the five scrolls whole as its ninth chapter [19], and the same year 三橋鑑一郎 published them with other writings of the school and the 二天記 as 『剣道秘要』, catalogued also under the title 二刀一流剣道秘要, the two-sword school's essentials of the way of the sword [20].

The dictionary today. 二天一流, a school of swordsmanship founded by Miyamoto Musashi, at first called the Enmei school, and after Musashi's death renamed by his pupil Terao Kumanosuke Nobuyuki; the same entry's earliest cited example, its 初出, is the five scrolls' preface, 兵法の道、二天一流と号し [1]. One encyclopedia, the 日本大百科全書, adds that the renaming was about 1666, from the master's Buddhist name [1], the year of Terao's postscript above.

What is not a source. Musashi's twenty-one articles of 1645, the 独行道, have their own history and are not a witness to the name. The English explanation of 二天 as two swords raised to the sky is carried by no Japanese source read: Harris reports it as said by some, and Tokitsu offers it, in two forms, as what the name evokes, below.

The name in English

1974. Victor Harris, A Book of Five Rings. Harris writes the school Ni Ten Ichi Ryu and explains, Niten means "Two Heavens", said by some to allude to his fighting attitude with a sword in each hand held above his head, and says that his paintings are sometimes impressed with his seal, Musashi, or his nom de plume, Niten; he heads the naming section The Name Ichi Ryu Ni To (One school—two swords) [21]. His pupil's name is wrong throughout: Teruo Nobuyuki in the introduction and Teruo Magonojo at the colophons, for Terao 寺尾, and Nobuyuki 信行 is the brother, not the man the scrolls are addressed to.

1982. Nihon Services Corporation, The Book of Five Rings. A second translation, by Bradford J. Brown, Yuko Kashiwagi, William H. Barrett and Eisuke Sasagawa, glosses Musashi's name for the school in its own square brackets as Two Heavens-as-One School, and the other name as the Two Swords-as-One School [22].

1993. Thomas Cleary, The Book of Five Rings. Cleary renders the school the Individual School of Two Skies, reading 一流 as individual and 天 as sky, and the naming section On Naming This Individual School "Two Swords", with Two Swords in One in the text [23].

2004. William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai. Wilson's biography of Musashi quotes the opening of the 1641 memorandum as Having trained myself daily in the Two Heavens, One Style, I now take brush to paper, and lists the memorandum's first heading as Calling this the Way of Two Heavens, One Style [6]. The Japanese of both says two swords, 兵法二刀の一流 and 此道二刀と名付事 [8], so the English gives Musashi's own memorandum the school's later name. That follows Wilson's own dating: in his narrative Musashi was now calling his style the Niten Ichi-ryu when Hosokawa invited him to Kumamoto in 1640 [6]. His plates caption Musashi's paintings signed Niten [6].

2004. Kenji Tokitsu, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings. Tokitsu calls the school School of the Two Heavens United, or School of Two Swords Raised to the Heavens Becoming One; his note gives the senses of 二天 (two heavens; the two heavenly bodies, or the moon god and the sun god; a benefactor as another heaven) and then, as what the name evokes, in two forms, two swords raised toward the sky. He gives the change to Musashi himself, after Hosokawa Tadatoshi's death in 1641: Up to this point, Musashi had called his school Enmei ryu (School of the Shining Circle), but at this time he changed the name to Niten ichi ryu. His note on the name says what the Japanese shows: In the Gorin no sho, Musashi designates his school by this name only twice. He usually uses Nito ichi ryu [4].

2012. David K. Groff, The Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi's Art of Strategy. Groff keeps both names where the text has them, each followed by its English in the book's own square brackets: the preface reads My way of military strategy I call the Ni Ten Ichi Ryū, Two Heavens One Style, and so does the opening of the Water scroll, while the Earth scroll's naming section reads I call this the Ni Tō Ichi Ryū, Two Swords One Style [24]. His note to the preface says what the Japanese shows: Musashi uses this name for his style only twice; otherwise, he uses the term "Two Sword Style" or "Two Swords One Style", and 二天 was also the pen-name he used to sign and seal his calligraphy later in life; he too gives the change to Musashi: Presumably Musashi changed the name after his enlightenment to the Way [24].

2018. Alexander Bennett, The Complete Musashi. A translation built on Uozumi Takashi's collated text reads the two names in the five scrolls as a change Musashi was making himself: In Gorin-no-sho he uses both appellations, Nitō Ichi-ryū and Niten Ichi-ryū, and it seems he was still in the process of rewriting the manuscript to reflect his school's name change in favor of the latter. Thus, it was at the very end of his life in Kumamoto that the school became "School of Two Heavens as One" instead of "Two Swords as One." In a note he adds that in the Fire, Wind and Ether scrolls he refers to it mostly as Nitō Ichi-ryū (School of Two Swords as One). The dictionaries give the renaming to a pupil after the death. Bennett, with his it seems, gives it to Musashi at the very end of his life; Tokitsu gives it to Musashi after 1641, Wilson by 1640, and Groff after his enlightenment. Bennett also translates the 兵道鏡 [5].

Today. JMdict: 二天一流, style of classical Japanese swordsmanship involving use of two swords [25].

A reading

二天一流 is the school's name in the dictionaries, and it was the school's name by 1666, when the pupil Terao Nobuyuki closed his copy of Musashi's articles by naming it the strategy of true form, perfect and complete, unbroken by death: the Niten school; in 1721 an epitaph says the man it honors received the true line of Shinmen Musashi's Niten school with the secret of the five scrolls. In the sources read, the texts under Musashi's own name other than the five scrolls do not use that name: the licences under his name say Enmei where they name the school, the memorandum of 1641 says two swords, and 二天 was the man. The five scrolls say both of the later names, and they survive only in copies, the oldest dated one in the sources read, of 1667, so whether Musashi renamed the school himself, as Tokitsu, Wilson, Groff and Bennett read it, each at a different point in his life, or his pupils did after him, as the dictionaries say, the copies cannot settle. The postscript of 1666 does not settle it either: it is the pupil the dictionaries name, about the year one encyclopedia gives, but it does not call the name new, and it joins 二天一流 to words the stele says Musashi wrote at his death. This reading takes 二刀一流 as Musashi's own word for the school he taught at the end, and 二天一流 as the school's; a rendering of the name keeps 一流 as one word, school, and Two Heavens only as a name.

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Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of Two Heavens One Style (niten ichiryū) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
二天一流VB3CBlock
Japanese Scroll of Two Heavens One Style (niten ichiryū) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
二天一流VC3BCursive
Japanese Scroll of Two Heavens One Style (niten ichiryū) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (Eri's Choice)
二天一流VD3BEri's Choice
Japanese Scroll of Two Heavens One Style (niten ichiryū) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
二天一流VS3CSemi-Cursive

References

  1. 「二天一流」・「二天」・「五輪書」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・日本大百科全書・世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/二天一流 · https://kotobank.jp/word/二天 · https://kotobank.jp/word/五輪書
  2. 宮本武蔵, attributed, 『兵道鏡』, manuscript copy of a licence dated 慶長十二年 (1607), 高知県立高知城歴史博物館 山内文庫, at the 国書データベース, images 4 and 22. https://doi.org/10.20730/100211168
  3. 宮本武蔵, attributed, 『圓明流劒法書』, in 『武術叢書』, 1915, scans 143 to 146, with the editor's 解題, scan 5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/143 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/146 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/5
  4. Kenji Tokitsu, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, translated by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Shambhala, 2004, pp. xiii, 126–27, 198–99, 241, 363 and 390.
  5. Alexander Bennett, translator, The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works, Tuttle, 2018, read in the unpaginated EPUB: Uozumi Takashi's foreword; the introduction; the Earth Scroll, note 2; Heidōkyō, its main points and close.
  6. William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi, Kodansha International, 2004, pp. 104, 110, 258 and 259, and the plates' captions, figures 2 to 5.
  7. 源徳修, 『撃剣叢談』, preface dated 天保十四年 (1843), in 『武術叢書』, 1915, scans 90 and 107, with the editor's 解題, scan 4. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/4 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/90 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/107
  8. 宮本武蔵, 『兵法三十五箇条』, 1641, in 『武術叢書』, 1915, scan 123, and 『宮本武蔵』, 1909, scan 63. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/123 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/63
  9. 林羅山, 武蔵像賛, before 1657, quoted in 『肥後文献叢書』, 第二巻, 1910, scan 102, and 『宮本武蔵』, 1909, scan 85. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/766733/1/102 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/85
  10. 豊田景英, 『二天記』, 安永五年 (1776), in 『肥後文献叢書』, 第二巻, 1910, scans 94, 95, 96 and 101. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/766733/1/94 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/766733/1/96 · the note as printed in 『二刀一流剣道秘要』, 武徳誌発行所, 1909 (NDL full-text excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860425
  11. 宮本武蔵, 五輪書, 1643–45, in three typesets: 『宮本武蔵』, 1909; 『武術叢書』, 1915; 『原本五輪書』, 教材社, 1939, the Earth scroll's naming of the school at scan 8 and the Water scroll's opening at scan 12; the 1909 editors' note on the copy, scan 97, and its 1667 colophon, scan 120; the 1915 print's note of that colophon, scan 130. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/97 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/120 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/127 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/130 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1071527/1/8 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1071527/1/12
  12. 宮本伊織, the Kokura stele, 1654, printed in 『本朝武芸小伝』, 1716, in 『武術叢書』, 1915, scans 42 and 43; a manuscript copy in 『扶桑名画伝』, scan 77; and 『宮本武蔵』, 1909, scans 80 and 81. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/42 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/43 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2551785/1/77 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/80 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/81
  13. 寺尾求馬信行, postscript dated 寛文六年 (1666) to a forty-two-article text dated 寛永十八年 (1641), in 宮本武蔵, 三橋鑑一郎 ed., 『二刀一流剣道秘要』, 武徳誌発行所, 1909, pp. 16 to 18, scans 79 and 80, read at the page in the NDL viewer. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860425/1/79 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860425/1/80
  14. 細井知慎 (広沢), 河村君墓碣銘并序, 享保六年 (1721), in 『墓碣銘 地方之部』, manuscript, undated (the twentieth century, no year, in the NDL's item record; 1900 in the NDL Lab's book record), scans 36 and 37. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2536559/1/36 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2536559/1/37
  15. 『円明流兵法三十五ケ条』, manuscript copy dated 天和2 (1682), 日体大民和, at the 国書データベース. https://doi.org/10.20730/100338139
  16. A memorial stele, 延享元年 (1744), Kasadera, Nagoya, quoted in 『宮本武蔵』, 1909, scan 57. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/57
  17. A memorial stele, 寛政五年 (1793), Shinpōji, quoted in 『宮本武蔵』, 1909, scan 58. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/58
  18. 文部省 編, 『日本教育史資料』, 〔3〕 諸藩の部 西海道, 1890 in the NDL's item record (明23), 1892 in the NDL Lab's book record, scan 115. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/809556/1/115
  19. 宮本武蔵遺蹟顕彰会, 『宮本武蔵』, 金港堂, 1909, scans 97 to 120. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/97
  20. 宮本武蔵, 三橋鑑一郎 ed., 『剣道秘要』, 武徳誌発行所, September 1909, NDL record (contents 五輪之書, 兵法五法之巻 and others, with 武蔵実伝二天記). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860425
  21. Victor Harris, translator, A Book of Five Rings, Overlook Press, 1974; read in the fifth paperback printing (first in paperback 1982), pp. 18, 22, 34, 45 and 50.
  22. Nihon Services Corporation (Bradford J. Brown, Yuko Kashiwagi, William H. Barrett and Eisuke Sasagawa), translators, The Book of Five Rings, Bantam, 1982, at Internet Archive (bookoffiveringsg00miya), a lending copy read in its text layer, which gives no page.
  23. Thomas Cleary, translator, The Book of Five Rings, Shambhala, 1993; read in the 2005 printing, pp. 3, 14 and 15.
  24. David K. Groff, translator, The Five Rings: Miyamoto Musashi's Art of Strategy, Watkins, 2012; read in the Chartwell Books edition, 2016, pp. 22, 44, 61, 80 and 247.
  25. JMdict (EDRDG), 「五輪書」and「二天一流」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/五輪書 · https://jisho.org/word/二天一流

Books Cited

Books this article cites that can be ordered today.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Sonnet 5 and Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · two fresh-context readers per round (Claude), 2026-10-27, every claim in the page's summary block traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 FAIL, both (the 1721 epitaph called the earliest dated text to give the name, when a copy of the five scrolls carries a colophon of 1667); round 2 FAIL on a reader (Tokitsu said to doubt the 兵道鏡); round 3 FAIL, both, on one heading that only narrowed (“two swords in the earliest texts”), applied · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every address-bearing claim tested across the NDL books; most resolve; several resolve but differ — the Earth scroll's phrase is read differently across its own witnesses, the Wind scroll does not open with the line claimed for it, and a stele quote is misdated; a couple do not resolve — the 'five scrolls' phrase sits at a different leaf than cited, and the portrait anecdote belongs to Musashi's pupil Ishikawa Sakyō, not to Musashi himself, now corrected in the body; the English renderings not openable, no copy held here; every differing row re-opened by hand at the machine-read text and corrected in the body

Research depth: step 3 of our 10-step ladder, foundation complete · October 2026

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 二天一流 (niten ichiryū)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/niten-ichiryu.