Odani Nobutomo — The Sword Saint Who Ran the Shogunate's Military Academy

In late-Edo Edo there was one swordsman everybody agreed they could not beat. Odani Nobutomo — known by his common name Seiichiro, and remembered as the sword saint.

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Who Was Odani Nobutomo?

Odani was a shogunal retainer and the finest swordsman of the late Edo period. His school was the Jikishinkage-ryu.

Three things stand out.

He fought everyone in Edo and never lost. He refused no challenge, and it was said that there was nobody in the city who had not crossed swords with him.

He built and led the Kobusho, the shogunate's military training academy, opened in 1856; Odani stood at the centre of its fencing division.

He standardised the bamboo sword. Lengths had varied from school to school; he fixed them at three shaku eight sun. Fixing a single length at all is where the standardisation modern kendo depends on begins (today's adult shinai is capped at 120cm, about three shaku nine sun, so the measurement itself is not the same one).

He was born on 4 February 1798 and died on 17 August 1864, aged sixty-six (an alternative birth year is also recorded).

How Odani Nobutomo Always Gave One Point Away

The stories about his strength are really stories about how he won.

In every three-point match he made sure his opponent took one point — so that nobody left the floor humiliated.

And then: no matter how strong the opponent, they could never take more than the point they had been given.

Which meant the opponent worked out that the point had been a gift. He made his superiority understood without ever displaying it. That, more than any record, is why he is discussed in terms of character and called a sword saint.

Of Edo's three great schools it was said, "bearing from Momoi, technique from Chiba, power from Saito." Odani is usually placed outside that comparison altogether — he was not in the business of competing for a school's signboard.

Odani Nobutomo's Kobusho and Modern Kendo

After the black ships, the shogunate moved to rebuild its military training. The Kobusho opened in 1856, and Odani ran its fencing side, later serving as its commissioner.

Two decisions he took there outlived the shogunate.

He shifted training away from set forms toward armoured bouts with bamboo swords, and he fixed the length of the bamboo sword.

If every school uses different dimensions, schools cannot fight each other. One standard made cross-school matches possible. Kendo as a sport in which lineage does not matter starts here — even though the length in force today was set later.

Odani Nobutomo and Katsu Kaishu

Katsu Kaishu's father, Katsu Kokichi, was born an Odani and adopted into the Katsu house. On the family tree, Nobutomo is therefore Kaishu's cousin.

Kaishu learned fencing from Shimada Torinosuke, who was Odani's leading student. His swordsmanship comes down from Odani twice over.

Another of Odani's students was Sakakibara Kenkichi, the man who kept swordsmanship alive in the Meiji era by staging it as paid public exhibitions.

Trace the line of Japanese fencing from the Bakumatsu into the modern era and a great deal of it runs back to Odani Nobutomo.

Odani Nobutomo's Death and Grave

He died on 17 August 1864, aged sixty-six.

Three days later the Kinmon Incident broke out in Kyoto — the eve of the period's real fighting. Odani never saw the Boshin War. For all that he was reckoned the best swordsman of his time, no record survives of his ever cutting anyone down.

His grave is in Yanaka Cemetery in Taito ward, Tokyo.

Odani Nobutomo Timeline

His students were Shimada Torinosuke and Sakakibara Kenkichi; his contemporaries among school heads were Chiba Shusaku, Saito Yakuro and Momoi Shunzo.