A Big Problem for Japanese Martial Arts

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]There is one massive problem with the Japanese martial arts, a really big one.

[00:00:07]And it's found in Thomas Clear's book, Secrets of the Japanese Art of Warfare.

[00:00:13]Okay? And it's on page 159, and it's that word there, Yamamoto Kansuke. So, Yamamoto Kansuke is a famous Sangoku period warrior. So, what's the problem with having his name in a book? So, this is a book about a translation of a sword school and how to fight. And the if you're unaware, nobody knows how the samurai fought in the Sangoku period. We have a basic idea, but we don't have any documentation whatsoever uh from this time period. So, and not only that, we have no descriptive texts. So, what I mean is we have no descriptive text of swordsmanship from the Sangoku period, the 1500s. The earliest ones start to come in the early 1600s. So the idea of Yamamoto Kansuke who dies early on or you know before the Edeto period who is a very famous warrior who appears he he's very famous in Japanese history and he has written handwritten a manual on swordsmanship is like gold dust. It's like finding gold. Uh you know you're out panning for gold and you find gold and diamonds and all sorts. It's just non impossible. The same as you have Yoshimore's 100 ninja poems. He [snorts] would he's alive in the 11 1200s and they're not his ninja podium. Somebody just attributed his name to them. So for years, myself included, this has been an attributed text. We don't know the date for it. But recently some new findings came about. So of the past as well, I've spoke to Nate the Aussie about this and uh so I am not wrong, but I am now starting to edge a bit backwards. And I'll explain that in a minute. So the second problem with this book is the fact that it says Coyo Gungan. Now the Coyo Gunkkan is a medieval document which is about the the adventures if you like the fighting of um Taed Shingen and [snorts] Yamamoto Kanske is in there and all this. Now generally the coyo gunkan is believed to have been in an ex to be written or formulated in uh 1616. So long after this would have been written and etc etc. So the fact that it says in here coyo gunkan means that this is an original text that has been adapted or it was written after 1616 well after Yamamoto Kansuke died. So the general thesis is it can't be him. He didn't write it because he can't write about the uh the coyo gunkan but some things have happened. So relatively recently they have been finding older documents on the coyo gunkan. So they've now found pre616 documents of the coyo gunkan which and simplified versions it's obviously changed but that doesn't matter in this case. All that matters is it was available or a version of it was available in the later Sangoku period.

[00:03:16]So now the death date of Yamamoto Kansuke and the Coyo Gunkan are getting closer together. So if we can make them match, it means it's possible that he wrote this document.

[00:03:29]Improbable, but possible, if you know what I mean. So, um, now I'm going to turn us over to some research from our friend Lyn Hart. And you can follow him on, uh, YouTube. If you don't, please subscribe to him. He's got some excellent content. So, what I'm going to do now is show you the other side of things. So, the other thing we should look at is the actual text in these in his book. He has copied some Chinese text. Now, look at these dates. That seems very great. But what we need to clarify here is that actually the dates there are the dates they were written not the dates that he copied them. So what we can gather from that is that's the earliest date possible. So he copied here in 15 something from 1557. So meaning it was available in 1557.

[00:04:23]Now, this is great news for pushing the text back uh because it means that if all of these dates were say 1616, then it means nope, it couldn't have been made. The the Yamamoto Kansuke document couldn't have been written till 1616.

[00:04:39]But there are some here at 1557.

[00:04:44]But as you've as I've just said and you've just seen, there's some at 1616.

[00:04:48]So that means that actually either all of this was made after 1616, which is coincidental by the way in the fact that the Coyo Gungan is normally said to be around 1616, or that some sections were added from later manuals. So the option one is that Yamamoto Kanske wrote this book. He added some of the spears, the swords and everything. But then he died and later on somebody added another manual or the other one is that this isn't and this has always been my opinion it is an early Edo period i.e. 1616 1620 document which may be from the school of Yamamotoanske maybe one of his students maybe uh you know a grand student if you like uh in the fact that there's one person between them it could have been from someone within the clan uh that that's you know a possible or it was someone later in 1890 or 1850 or something who wrote this and basically said you know this is from Yamamoto Kanske all Three are possible. But the difference here is that it's now possible that this is an early peri Edo period manuscript if not some of it is late Zangoku or most of it. Now if you're going to buy one martial art book from this video, I would recommend Zen and the Samurai Sword. I think the author is quite nice. He's quite good.

[00:06:17]He's done a good job on this one. So well done to him. If you're going to do buy two, get yourself this Thomas Clear.

[00:06:23]I think Thomas Clear is now dead if I remember rightly I did a video on it a while ago and um so but to return to the argument so the problem here is we've got one picture from the Shaolin staff manual which is 1616 but I'd have to do more research on how much is crossed over because it's only a single picture and it's a very standard picture and some of the Japanese some of the Japanese copied from it the text copied from all of the documents doesn't quite add up or doesn't match. Clearly, some of the images match, but they've put their own text in. I'm not quite sure. This is one of those where you just go deeper and deeper into the into the uh discussion, but I still think this is one of the best documents we have out there because I personally believe it's early Edo period. I personally believe someone in the early Edo period was collecting information on martial arts and everything and they put this together so that you know they could teach or teach from it or it was cuz cuz it's clearly not this is you know it says it's from Yamamoto Kansuke but it's clearly not just his teachings from Chinese classics as well and there's quotes from all over the place and and there's bits of martial arts in this so it's almost like an eclectic mix of things which could very very possibly. So uh basically I've just double checked the date of Yamamoto Kansuke dying in 1561 and some of these documents are from 1557. So he he wrote it in in the middle of the Sangoku period just before his battles and he wrote it down which sounds like it's not true. That would be amazing. Don't get me wrong. It'd be amazing. But like I've said this is pushing that date back and back. But the big if question here is the fact that it could also be written in 1850. There's nothing to stop it being there's nothing to say this is early because all those I could write this today and use the same quotes and use everything and it would still be written in 2026. You can't go earlier.

[00:08:28]Just because the just because the quotes they're using are early dates doesn't mean the writing is from an earlier time. It just means that the base age it can go to. So its oldest possible age is around 1550 with some 1557 with some possible ad additions on that is the absolute best.

[00:08:50]So the absolute best thing would be Yamamoto Scan Kansuke wrote this in 1557 getting hold of a brand new Chinese text which had just come from chi you know it's not really that plausible but if imagine that a text was written that year it was brought over the next spring or whatever and he got a copy of it he wrote it down and then he died in battle and we have that now probably not true but and and some people added some bits to it or somebody in the early Edo period wrote wrote this down and we still have it and they did it from collective things. Hopefully someone connected to Yamamoto Kansky. Okay, my name is Anthony Cummings. I am actually the author of Zen and the Samurai Sword.

[00:09:31]Do get yourself a copy and I hope you've enjoyed this