Ittouryu Info

[nodachi]

Pardon the spelling.

Anyone got any good sources of info on Ittouryu? Internet sites, books, whatever. My brain is beyond full from tonight and a study guide of some sort would be helpful.

And how many Ittouryu Kata are there? May as well as ask while I am here.

Night

[munenmuso]

Try Classical Budo by Donn F,Draeger.Excerpts:
"Ito Kagehisa(1560-1653) was a warrior renowned for his superlative skill in swordsmanship. For him the exemplar of swordsmanship lay in the use of one sword technique only. He evolved a theory which stated that an infinite number of techniques could be derived from a single basic sword technique; he named that single technique kiri-otoshi(cutting down). On the basis of his theory he renamed himself Ittosai "one sword-[technique] man", and founded the Ittoryu................

This book is also about the formation of the budo system, classical weapon system(from kenjutsu to kendo, from iaijutsu to iaido, other weapon systems), and the classical budo today.Included also are so many ukyo-e by the famous Katsushika Hokusai. First edition is 1973 and published by John Weatherhill Inc.

[Kent Enfield]

Is the original Itto Ryu (i.e. not one of the seemingly gazillion "Nani-nani-ha Itto Ryu") still extant?

[nodachi]

Where I practice on saturdays, I was told that we are learning Itto Ryu, no crazy style name added, just simply said Itto Ryu. So, maybe. Unless they are not giving me the full name, but I don't think that's the case.

[mingshi]

Plenty of info from Koryu.com (http://www.koryu.com) ---
Concerning different Ha (branch) within Ittoryu, there are mainly these:
Hokushin Itto-ryu kenjutsu
founded late Edo period (ca. 1830)
Mizoguchi-ha Itto-ryu kenjutsu
founded early Edo period (ca. 1630)
Ono-ha Itto-ryu kenjutsu
founded early Edo period, ca. 1630
Kogen Itto-ryu kenjutsu
founded mid-Edo period (1783)

Here's Canada's Tokumeikan site of Ono-ha Ittoryu, with a lot of history, charts and images of all the different Ittoryu Kamae.
Tokumeikan Canada (http://home.cogeco.ca/~tokumeikan/itto%20ryu.htm)

There are, I believe, around 50 "entrance" Itto Kata (namely the Otachi) that you can learn right fromthe start. But as the techiques develops you can get more than 100...

Here's the website of Chouseikan, Ono-ha Ittoryu's Osaka Honbu.
Chouseikan (http://homepage1.nifty.com/makom/tyouseikan/index.html)

Here's Hokushin Ittoryu's Tokyo Honbu dojo (a rather empty site).
Genbukan (http://www.dtpro.co.jp/genbukan/)
From there site I can see that they have heavy emphasis on Otachi Kata... Because they've stage 3 as Shinai Keiko (which is only after learning fundamental Otachi and Battojujsu).

Since you are in Japan, there are some Japanese books on Ittoryu, which you see from doing a search on Ittoryu in Amazon.co.jp. This one looks good (5524 yen):
Ittoryu Gokui by Sasamori Shunzou (Ono-ha 16th Soke)

These are what I manage to find online.

[nodachi]

Great!!! That otachi chart is very helpful for the kinds of things I was looking for. Mingshi rules!

[mingshi]

Do'h! ...I mean Kumitachi (partner-training with sword), not Otachi (long sword). So damn hard to find out the pronoucation of Kanji in Japanese sometimes.

Yeah, anyway, the chart helps a lot in remembering the different kata... Sometimes when you watch/practice too much you'll get so confused...