A good system is twice blessed—it blesses him that trains and him that's trained.
Herbert Spencer
On the whole, the first half of the seventeenth century was well suited for the initial development of the classical budo systems. Under the Tokugawa administration Japan was enjoying a time of high culture, but a culture that was on the verge of decay. It culminated in the Genroku era (1688-1704), during which citizens developed high standards of taste in literature and the arts. In the highly compartmentalized social structure of Tokugawa society, social prestige was all-important; therefore it was only natural that the members of the four social classes—shi (warriors), no (farmers), loo (artisans), and sho (merchants)—should have sought every means to attain social influence.
By the mid-seventeenth century, martial heroes were being replaced in popular favor by devotees of etiquette, of the arts, and of letters. Martial strategy and tactics became academic issues, and the systems of the classical bujutsu were regarded for the most part as historical curiosities. Instead of surpassing the level of combative autogeneity achieved by the classical warriors prior to the Edo period in their development of weapons and fighting arts, the Edo-period warriors began to classify and overorganize what remained of the martial profession.
These warriors, having neither to fight nor to toil, became combatively ineffective and socially nonproductive. Some of them became actors, connoisseurs, artists, or poets. In general, the elements of a stern and frugal life, so essential to the professional warrior's vitality, were absent.
Most of the Edo warriors were a thriftless lot, and it was inevitable that the rapid expansion of the nation's economy would diminish the importance of their social class; for the very economic process that served to enrich the lives of the commoners raised the cost of living, to the disadvantage of the warriors. This was but one sign of the growing importance of the commoners.
Though Tokugawa Japan lolled in a state of comparative peace there were forces at work that made the bakufu uneasy. How to keep the martial efficiency and morale of its warriors at an optimum level in an age of peace was recognized as the major problem for the bakufu leaders; at the same time, an excess of martial ardor might easily upset the delicate
balance of society as tared by the docility of the warrior class. Also vexing to the bakufu was the problem of control over the ambitious daimyo in the provinces. These influential men controlled highly autonomous feudal domains called han, and in spite of legislation by the bakufu to curb martial buildups in the han, the spirit of the classical warrior and efficiency in bujutsu flourished there. Apparently the bakufu also believed, with Cicero, that "farmers make the bravest heroes," for in 1661 it issued orders prohibiting farmers from having firearms. In 1668 it forbade merchants and traders to wear swords.
The changeover from the use of the sword as a primary weapon of combat to its use as an instrument solely for training mind and body in the pursuit of the perfection of individual character was conditioned by the circumstances of Tokugawa society. But there was another strong though less immediate influence that also aided the changeover. The disaster that had befallen the classical warriors of Takeda Katsuyori in 1575 in the battle of Nagashino at the hands of Oda Nobunaga was still fresh in the minds of the early Edo-period warriors. The complete slaughter of the gallant classical warriors at the hands of commoner conscript soldiers bearing firearms signaled to many alert minds the diminishing value of the sword as a weapon of war. Yet the sword was specifically chosen over other weapons to be the leading instrument in a new role in the classical budo. This was not solely because the sword had been the central weapon of the classical warrior—his "living soul" but because the sword was also one of the divine objects of the imperial family (the Sanshu no Shinki, or "Three Sacred Regalia," comprising sword, mirror, and jewel) and, as such, was inseparable from the Japanese national ethos.
This Kunisada print of a Kabuki scene depicts two warriors fighting in kenjutsu fashion. It is fairly true to life except that the right-hand figure should not have a finger on the swordguard.
Classical budo ryu, perse, first appeared at the time of the transformation of kenjutsu (sword art) into kendo (sword way) in the first half of the seventeenth century. The essence of kendo was stated at that time to be more a spiritual discipline for the improvement of personal character than an activity directly concerned with combat. The stress on non-martial aspects was not entirely new, as will be seen, but this was the first time that swordsmanship in any form had been openly offered as available to all classes of people. Thus the conversion of kenjutsu to kendo, in a social sense, stood as a heretical development within the strictly segregated Tokugawa society.
Other classical bujutsu ryu, as well as still others founded in the Edo period, followed the lead of the change-over from swordsmanship considered solely in its practical battlefield aspects to swordsmanship as a spiritual discipline. All of them idealized the reflected past glories of the martial profession, but in so doing bypassed the significant martial implications of the previous periods. The bakufu did nothing to interfere with the development of kendo, seeing it as being no more than quasi martial in character, and a discipline that might well be useful in channeling the energy of its citizens into desirable endeavors.
In surveying the development and nature of the component systems of the classical budo it is useful to divide those systems into two major categories: systems based on weapons and
"weaponless" systems. We shall consider these categories in some detail in the next two chapters.
A woodblock print by Hokusai shows two men practicing swordsmanship with bokken, or hardwood swords. Each man is trying to force the other off balance.