Part III: the Mujuushin in Samurai Champloo--Mariya, Kariya, Takeda

There is an ancient maxim that says a samurai's sword is his soul, and no samurai or ronin in the history of anime has taken this more deeply to heart than Jin does. His sword is his identity, his reassurance, the only thing he has left of his old life and stature, an extension and reflection of himself. "Those swords are my life," he says to Isaac in #6, and he means both "the total of my experiences" and "the thing that keeps me alive". Whatever school of kenjutsu he had been trained in, he would surely have upheld it with all the honor and dignity he is capable of—and that's been shown to be considerable. So why the Mujuu? Why was this strange, obscure discipline chosen as the foundation of Jin's heart and innermost nature? And how is that choice reflected in the series?

The first thing we were told about it was a typically contradictory statement by series organizer and head writer Shinji Obara, in the Sept. 2004 Newtype: "Jin uses a real style called Mujushin kenjutsu, but the way he moves is completely different from the actual mujushin kenjutsu." (...uh, thanks so much for clearing that up, Obara-san…) As we've already seen, this--on the surface--is an accurate statement: to the casual eye, Jin seems to watch and react to his opponent like a fighter trained in any ordinary school. The only clue to his specialized experience is his unbelievable skill in predicting an adversary's next moves--he is always there ahead of them--and, indeed, in correctly guessing virtually anything about anyone from the slightest clue.

As time passes in the series, we get more information --and more clues for speculation--on the intricate connection between Jin's nature, his history, and the subtle art of which he becomes the last master. We know, for example, that it's only by chance, not his own choice, that he came to study the Mujuu: he was enrolled in Mariya Enshiro's dojo after being orphaned at a young age. (It's a reasonable supposition that Mariya-san --unmarried and childless--is a distant relative, and adopted the child Jin as his son at the same time he accepted him as a student. This is borne out when we later learn that he intended to make Jin his heir and pass the dojo, and the Mujuushin, on to him; and when we see Mariya-san, in episode 25, wearing a montsuki bearing the same Takeda clan diamond that Jin wears.) It's an interesting kindness of fate, as the tranquillity of the Mujushin style gives the young orphan a balance for his suppressed anger and ferocity, assuring him with its Zen-based philosophy that calm of spirit and purity of skill are far more important than fighting to win. Just as Jin, though become ronin, upholds the principles of bushido as seriously as if he had never been cast out from its community, so he finds a way to remain mindful of the high principles of the Mujuu even though forced to fight daily for his survival and that of those he swears to protect.

One regrets to say that finding out Mariya Enshirou was a real person has not given us much more information on him than we could already have guessed. He was, as we've said, the third, and last known, headmaster of the Mujuu, the pupil and heir of Odagiri Ichiun. It's quite possible he met Master Sekiun in person, and even if not would have been deeply versed in his teachings, having been trained by his direct successor. A good deal of what we know today about Mujuushin Kenjutsu we owe to him, since his pupil Kawamura compiled his writings and notes into the Zenshu volume that --along with Master Ichiun's writings --became the school's legacy.

Merging real history with Champloo's plotline, we can theorize that Sekiun-sensei would have been headmaster from his creation of the Mujuu in c. 1640 until his death in 1662, Ichiun from 1662 to sometime in the 1670s, and Mariya Enshirou from then until approximately 1675, when he met his death on the sword of his star pupil and would-have-been fourth headmaster, Takeda Jin. --These dates would benefit from adjustment, since we do get the impression that Mariya was the master of Jin's dojo for Jin's entire life, which would argue that he came into possession of the Mujuu closer to 1660 than 1670. Perhaps Ichiun doesn't exist in the Champloo universe, and the rank of Mujuu hachidan sensei passed directly to Mariya from Sekiun himself. (Alternately, perhaps Sekiun-sensei passed the school on to his disciple earlier; there's room to speculate.)

Whatever is the case, we are sure that the teachings Mariya-san acquired were still in their pure form when he learned them, only two generations from their source, and this is seen in the highly rarefied training Jin has received; including as it does the ultimate Mujuushin technique, the simultaneous strike.

---This technique was the core of Master Sekiun's enlightened understanding of the use of the sword. [Much more about this in Parts I and II of this essay.] It alters the "brute" attitude of "ai-uchi"--in which the attacker, though he dies, preserves his honor by killing his adversary as well--to one of "ai-nuke", in which it's possible for both fighters to survive. The point is not to kill, but to force a draw between adversaries, in which exacting use of pure technique lets the swordsman rise above the mere animal need to kill and defeat, and triumph on a higher level. This is exactly what Sekiun intended the Mujuu to convey, and exactly what Mariya-san tells Jin to do --and he does--in his moment of greatest crisis.

Sekiun would, I think, be proud.

It may indeed be the Mujuu's very nature that makes it an ideal target for the Shogunate plot that unwinds in the series' final episodes, the course of events that ruined Jin's life, made him a fugitive, and set him on the road to vengeance and final understanding. Kariya Kagetoki, a gifted but poisoned swordsman (I have a feeling he's one of Sekiun's final thirteen but not one of the ultimate four--he has tremendous skill, but a deeply flawed sensibility), approaches Mariya Enshirou with an offer from the Shogunate: to take over the Mujushin and turn it into a training ground for assassins. Kariya is not only a swordsman of awesome speed and precision, he has apparently mastered an extreme form of hassun no nobegane, and can use his sword to extend a field of will-powered force far beyond his own reach. The assassins he has already presumably had a hand in training, such as Sara, show similar abilities. He believes the Mujuu, with its mind-centered philosophy, its detachment, its purity of technique, would be an ideal breeding ground for more assassins of such otherworldly skill.

[Note: It's my speculation--and only my speculation--that this plan of the Shogunate originated with their acceptance of the renegade samurai-turned-Shaolin-swordsman, Shouryuu, formerly Ukon. In the episode that tells his story, "Lethal Lunacy" (#10), we learn that when Shouryuu returned from China, filled with his new training and burning with desire to reform what he saw as a weakened and degenerate Japanese sword tradition, he went from dojo to dojo and was spurned at every point. Eventually he sought a position with the government, and then dropped out of human sight. It's my hunch that Shouryuu found that position, and taught his new techniques--just as in real life Ogasawara [Part I] returned to Japan with the hassun no nobegane he'd learned in China, and rebuilt Shinkage-ryű around it--to Japanese-trained shogunate fighters with deadly success. Thus, I think, we have a line connecting Shouryuu and his ki-based strike; Sara, whose blindness is no limit to her skill, and whose kama-yari cuts objects without touching them; and Kariya Kagetoki, who I suspect merged a high-level Mujuushin education with these fierce Chinese techniques to become the most feared swordsman of Champloo's time. Goroujuu says of him that he believes no living man could kill him, and he has gone into retirement, quietly gardening, because no one can offer him enough challenge to be worth fighting; he emerges only when he hears that the gifted Sara--judging by age differences, I suspect, his own pupil--has been killed by her intended target…

Kariya retired when he failed to seize the prize he desired the most keenly, the Mujuu. But he had missed, I think, the most basic point, and his effort was doomed to failure even had his plan succeeded, because his acquired training had corrupted his understanding of Mujushin kenjutsu. The essence of the Mujuu is to withdraw from all earthly reasons to use the sword, to use it for itself and its discipline alone. It could no more produce deliberate assassins than it could werewolves. It is a mark of Master Mariya's desperation, his belief that he will lose his dojo unless he makes this devil's bargain, that he even considers bowing to this perversion of the art. And Jin--the Mujuu's heir-apparent-- does not consider it, not for a moment. He is adamant that the Mujuu must not "walk the path of darkness," and his stern refusal marks him for terrible retribution. The Mujuu and Jin here stand together, representing the last stand of bushido, honor, pure and stainless fighting art, against the future that must take them all down.

And more deeply to the point: As we see in the teachings of Joshu, the syllable "mu" can mean "to not have". As shown in the illustration above, it can be rendered as "innocence," in the literal sense of something in its original state of purity, having never been changed or tainted by experience; as we've seen in discussions of Mugen's name, it can also be rendered "without" and "none" and "never." It is the essence of silence, it is is about what is not done, not possessed, not touched. It means clear, empty, uncorrupted; also, relating to nothing, eyes closed, moving in isolated stillness; a discipline in which you fight by withdrawing not only from your opponent but yourself as well. The Mujuu is not just Jin's principle: it is Jin himself, in every way that we see him: in his orphan childhood, his isolation, his loneliness, the terrible losses he has suffered, the ice-cold purity of his strike. It could not be more perfect. Had it never been, they would have had to invent it for him.

In the end, I think the final disciples of the Mujuushin kenjutsu may be neither Terada nor Shirai but our friends at Manglobe and Simoigusa Champloos, who at a remove of some 350 years have brought Sekiun's insights to life in a new form he could never have imagined. Who knows: its pure style, a haven and inspiration to students of the sword centuries ago, may be even more valuable today.

Other footnotes:

In between these two schools of the sword, there is interesting evidence that Mujuushin kenjutsu also influenced a school of jujutsu, or classical unarmed combat. Kono writes that: "--the Mujushin kenjutsu and Kito-ryu jujutsu…seem to share a doka, or 'song of the way' [a poem written to convey a point of martial arts philosophy] that is not found in any other tradition. In the Mujushin kenjutsu tradition, this doka written by founder Goroemon Harigaya Sekiun is one of two in the Jisoku Ikyoho Zenshu written transmissions of Kawamura Yakobei, a pupil of the third Mujushin kenjutsu headmaster Enshiro Mariya. It goes:

"Autumn wind in the mountain near town, that fiercely sways and shakes the leaves of the oak, breathes but weakly against the pampas grasses."

This poem, not a particularly well-written one, is found with only minor variations in the transmissions of Kito-ryu as they appear in the Ribizuihitsu writings:

"Autumn wind, deep in the mountains, fiercely sways and shakes the leaves of the oak, while barely moving the pampas grasses."

While it is not uncommon in the budo world for similar verses to appear in the transmissions of several different traditions with only minor variations, as far as I know this particular poem only appears in the Zenshu of Mujushin kenjutsu and the Ribizuihitsu of Kito-ryu. Of course, this alone is not sufficient evidence to conclude that Kito-ryu was influenced by Mujushin kenjutsu, but we may still suppose that Okunojo Yoshida, who had switched to Kito-ryu at the private order of Lord Toshiyasu, sensed in Kito-ryu some of the same esoteric, mind-oriented flavor of Tenshin Heiho. …Such sophistication is probably to be expected in an unarmed combat system and such stunning techniques and the dreamlike, or "no-mind", state undoubtedly necessary to perform them very well, may have contained elements or aspects that could be regarded as shimpo bujutsu."

Toru Shirai, sounding a lot like Jin:
"I began training on my own, intending to realize that elusive state of emptiness I sought, but I was unable to attain my goal. Master told me that while rentan no ho is conducted through a state of emptiness, bujutsu is a path of tactics and maneuvers, and that even saints would not refrain from using such methods when confronting an evildoer. We attempt to deceive the enemy or lure him to strike so that we may trap him, but when the enemy is strong we react instinctively and any state of emptiness we have achieved vanishes. By then it is already too late to calm the mind and technique inevitably degenerates into something vulgar and crude. When I confronted truly aggressive opponents, the vicious-minded kenjutsu of my youth would boil to the surface and I would be overcome by a venomous impulse to strike my opponent down. Perceiving this terrible ferocity, my opponent would become alarmed and lose the urge to face me. I would withdraw from the encounter alone and ponder why I seemed to be unable to shed the mistaken attitude that gave rise to such vicious technique. I am ashamed to say it, but I fear that the words of Sekishi [reference unknown] fit me all too well: "When the time comes for you to strike you will forget what you have learned."

Shirai: "The kenjutsu that I am attempting to impart represents the shortest path to attaining the most pure form of tenshin, and the simple (shoden) and the deep (gokui) are the same and as one. Accordingly, students who are able to study and know this will have their ki fill the Universe and their spirit extend across all ages and times; they will become one with the spirit of the Divine, and that which is Other will become one with them. Then, when the self acts, it is not the self acting but the Universe, spontaneous and realizing natural law in and of itself."

I owe my profoundest gratitude to Yoshinori Kono of the Aikido Journal, without whose tireless and extensive research there would be no historical background to this article at all. (--The Champloo Roman Album confirms Kono-sensei's research as one of the most important influences on the series, especially his book Ken no seishinshi: Mujushin kenjutsu no keifu to shiso.)

Famous Swordsmen of Japan: Muneari Goroemon Terada
Aikido Journal #103 (1995)

Famous Budoka of Japan: Mujushin kenjutsu & Kito-ryu
Aikido Journal #111 (1997)

Famous Budoka of Japan: Sekiun Harigaya, Founder of Mujushin Kenjutsu
Aikido Journal #114 (1998)

--and his five-part series on the career of Toru Shirai.

...go back to Parts I & II: The Historical Mujushin.

..go back to Sword of No Abiding Mind.