Kamiizumi Nobutsuna
The Sengoku swordsman who founded Shinkage-ryū.
Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, born Kamiizumi Ise-no-Kami Fujiwara-no-Hidetsuna around 1508, was a samurai of Japan's Sengoku period remembered for creating the Shinkage-ryū school of combat. He was also known as Kamiizumi Isenokami, his name as a samurai official. He was born in his family's castle in Kōzuke Province, in what is now Maebashi, into a minor landed family serving the Yamanouchi branch of the Uesugi clan.
Quick Facts
- Born
- c. 1508, Kōzuke Province
- School founded
- Shinkage-ryū
- Served
- Hōjō
- Uesugi
- Nagano
- Takeda
- Successor
- Yagyū Munetoshi
Facts from the source article.
Background
From about thirteen he was taught Zen and Eastern philosophy by the rōshi Tenmyō, then studied Nen-ryū and Shintō-ryū in Shimōsa and Kage-ryū in Hitachi; in the scrolls he gave Yagyū Munetoshi and Marume Nagayoshi he wrote that he had built an innovation on Kage-ryū and so called his school Shinkage-ryū, the new Kage-ryū. As a general he surrendered Ōgo Castle to Hōjō Ujiyasu in 1555, switched to Uesugi Kenshin, and served Nagano Narimasa as one of the "Sixteen Spears of Nagano House", earning the name of the best spearsman of Kōzuke.
After Takeda Shingen took Minowa Castle he fought his way out, and later became a minor official of the Takeda; a common story holds that Shingen let him use the character read "nobu" in his name, though he still signed as Hidetsuna in the licence given to Munetoshi in 1565. The Yagyū Shinkage-ryū article adds that he kept his head shaved, had no children and left his property to Munetoshi.
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