Togakure-Ryū

The School of the Hidden Door

The Togakure-Ryū (戸隠流) began with a lost battle and a flight into the mountains of Iga. Its roots go back further, though: to the mountain ascetics of Buddhism.

The Mountain Ascetics

The founder of shugendōshugendō 修験道, mountain asceticism, is said to be En no Gyōja (役行者), who practiced in the Katsuragi mountains in the late 7th century; according to tradition, he was born in 634. More than a hundred years later, the monk Dengyō Daishi (Saichō, 767–822) founded the Tendai (天台) school of Buddhism and, in 788, the monastery of Enryakuji on Mount Hiei. Its esoteric teachings, mikkyōmikkyō 密教, later flowed into shugendō as well. The mountain ascetics still exist today. They still practice shugendō: purifying the self through trial and suffering.

Nishina Daisuke

In Shinano Province lay a small village called Togakure. According to tradition, Nishina Daisuke was born there into a samurai family around 1161. As a boy he studied at the Tendai monastery on Mount Togakure near his village. The monastery was subordinate to Enryakuji on Mount Hiei and was an important center of the mountain ascetics. These early experiences shaped the system of combat, survival, and infiltration that Daisuke later founded.

His father’s story explains how it came to that. Nishina Yukihiro was a high-ranking samurai in the service of Lord Minamoto Yoshinaka, a cousin of Japan’s first shōgun.

When Yoshinaka was a small child, one of his rivals sent a samurai to kill him and his mother. His mother escaped with him and hid in the house of a farmer loyal to her family. Later, Yoshinaka was taken to the village of Kiso in Shinano, not far from Togakure. There Nishina Yukihiro entered his service.

Years later, the Minamoto were gaining the upper hand over their rivals. But now Yoshinaka himself was seen as a threat to the leadership, and many turned against him. As was customary at the time, he had taken the name of the place where he lived and was now called Kiso Yoshinaka. In 1184, the army of his cousin Minamoto Yoritomo, led by Yoritomo’s brothers, attacked him. Sixty thousand samurai met Yoshinaka’s army near Kyōto. In this battle, called Awazu no Kassen, an arrow struck Kiso Yoshinaka in the eye and killed him. Nishina Yukihiro and his son Daisuke had fought at his side. The father fell; the son survived.

Flight to Iga

Daisuke had fought on the losing side and had to flee persecution. He went to distant Iga, to remote places hidden in the mist of high mountains and dense forests. From then on he called himself Togakure Daisuke, after his birthplace.

According to the lineage records, Kain Doshi (Kagakure Doshi) found him in Iga. Kain Doshi was a shinobishinobi 忍び and the third sōkesōke 宗家 of the Hakuun-Ryū. This school was one of the original ninjutsu systems that grew out of the teachings of Ikai. Ikai (Yi Gai) had brought the roots of koshi jutsukoshi jutsu 骨指術 from China. Doshi may well have been Daisuke’s uncle, and Daisuke may have fled to Iga to find him.

Daisuke learned Doshi’s warrior teachings and combined them with his own faith, shugendō. These were the beginnings of the Togakure-Ryū.

Daisuke did not study under Kain Doshi alone. With him was Minamoto no Kanesada Shima Kosanta, a high-ranking samurai retainer. He, too, had fought at Awazu no Kassen and had become a friend of Daisuke and his father. Shima had been wounded in the battle, and Daisuke had brought him to Iga. He became the second sōke of the Togakure-Ryū and took the name Togakure Daisuke II after Daisuke’s death. His son Togakure Goro, the third sōke, shaped the Togakure teachings into the ninjutsu system that is still taught today. The 11th, 12th, and 13th sōke bore the name Ueno, after the capital of Iga.

Hattori, Momochi, and Toda

According to tradition, the members of the Hattori clan also practiced the Togakure-Ryū; Hattori Hanzō is the most famous ninja of all. The Momochi family trained in this system as well. The 22nd sōke, Momochi Kobei, was a descendant of Momochi Sandayū, the most famous ninja after Hanzō and a leading figure of the Iga region.

As in most martial arts, leadership stayed with the family that had created the style and passed from father to son. The Togakure-Ryū kept to this custom until the 16th century. When the direct line died out, leadership went to the system’s best member: Toda Nobutsuna became the 24th sōke.

Around 1625, the Toda took control and added their own ninjutsu system, the Kumogakure-Ryū (雲隠流). They also headed the Gyokko-Ryū (玉虎流) and the Kotō-Ryū (虎倒流). From then on, these schools were passed down together.

The 32nd sōke, Toda Shinryūken Masamitsu, taught swordsmanship to the Tokugawa bakufubakufu 幕府 in the mid-19th century. He resigned when he realized that the men he trained would later kill other Japanese. That went against the law of the Togakure-Ryū. The 33rd sōke, Takamatsu Toshitsugu, was the last member of the Toda family to head the school. Almost a millennium has passed since the founding of the Togakure-Ryū.

Sanpō Hiden

The Three Secret Treasures of Togakure-Ryū

• Senban shuriken – a throwing star with four points. It also served as a tool: carpenters used it to pull out nails.
• Shukō (手鉤) – claws used both for climbing and for fighting.
• Shindake – a bamboo tube a little over a meter long, used for breathing underwater or as a blowpipe.

Sōke of the Togakure-Ryū

1. Togakure (Nishina) Daisuke
2. Minamoto no Kanesada Shima Kosanta
3. Togakure Goro
4. Togakure Kosanta
5. Kōga Kisanta
6. Kaneko Tomoharu
7. Togakure Ryuho
8. Togakure Gakuun
9. Kido Koseki
10. Iga Tenryu
11. Ueno Rihei
12. Ueno Senri
13. Ueno Manjiro
14. Iizuka Saburo
15. Sawada Goro
16. Ozaru Ippei
17. Kimata Hachiro
18. Kataoka Heizaemon
19. Mori Ugenta
20. Toda Gobei
21. Kobe Seiun
22. Momochi Kobei
23. Tobari Tenzen
24. Toda Nobutsuna Seiryu
25. Toda Nobuchika Fudo
26. Toda Kangoro Nobuyasu
27. Toda Eisaburo Nobumasa
28. Toda Shinbei Masachika
29. Toda Shingoro Masayoshi
30. Toda Daigoro Chikahide
31. Toda Daisaburo Chikashige
32. Toda Shinryūken Masamitsu
33. Takamatsu Toshitsugu
34. Hatsumi Masaaki