Abstract
Kata (form) has been of extreme significance in Ryuha (school) from the birth of martial arts. This is because it is the essence of a situation which is a matter of victory and defeat, or life and death. For this reason, I have been studying the Shinkage-Yagyu-Ryu in Owari during the Tokugawa era. I especially studied its early stage.
In this paper, I studied books on the martial arts to see how Kata are passed on in the Ryu. The summary is as follows;
1. Muneyoshi YAGYU set up Shinkage-Yagyu-Ryu on the basis of Kata which Hidetsuna KAMIIZUMI had brought into Shinkage-Ryu.
2. Muneyoshi not only implemented Hidetsuna's Kata as they were but also put in new Kata or removed several of them. These modifications show how he added his own personality to the original Kata.
3. Muto-dori (the way of taking an enemy's sword) is one of his originals, it is a secret of Shinkage-Yagyu-Ryu. The process of making up the Muto-dori is as follows; Hakka-hissyo→Marobashi→Muto-dori. Such a sequence means that both mind and body act in union to perform Muto-dori.
