William de Lange - Famous Samurai: Kamiizumi Nobutsuna

Kamiizumi Ise no Kami Nobutsuna was born in 1508. The young boy was named Hidetsuna and spent much of his youth not far from the banks of the mighty Tone River. Hidetsuna was born into a family whose original clan name was go. The founder of the go clan was go Shigetoshi, a warrior of Ashikaga degscent who hailed from the west coast of Japan.

During the great upheavals of the nin War, one of Shigetoshis descendants, a man by the name of go Yoshihide, left his hometown in the province of Ttmi, along the Pacic Ocean. He and his family moved to the province of Kzuke to settle in a hamlet called Kamiizumi, just north of the village of Umayabashi (present-day Maebashi) and in the shadow of Mount Akagi.

In the tradition of feudal lords, Yoshihide took on the name of Kamiizumi. The Kamiizumi clan did well in their new place of abode. By carefully negotiating the upheavals that attended the growing rivalry between the great warlords in the Kant region, they managed to secure a small estate at the foot of Mount Akagi a few miles east of Umayabashi. There, on the southern slopes of the mountain, they built a small castle and, as a reminder of the clans origins, named it go castle. And it was at go castle that the founder of the most successful school of fencing of the next century was born.

Hidetsunas father was Kamiizumi Hidetsugu. In the larger feudal scheme of things, Hidetsugu was only a minor local lord. But Hidetsugu was his own master and he was heir to a long and proud tradition. The Kamiizumi clan claimed an ancestry that ran all the way back to the famous Fujiwara Hidesato, known by lovers of Japanese martial history as Tawara no Tta, the great warrior from Shimtsuke who had once helped bring the rebellious Taira Masakado to heel.

By the time Hidetsuna had reached his twenties, he yearned to venture into the world. Like his illustrious ancestors, he wanted to seek his fortune and prove his worth. Like his ancestors, Hidetsuna was raised in the martial tradition, and like them, his weapon of choice was the tait , or long sword. His father, too, was a swordsman of note. When young, he had studied the art of fencing under the great Iizasa Chisai and a number of other famous swordsmen. One of them was a certain Aisu Ik.

Iizasa Chisai, under whom Hidetsunas father had studied the art of fencing

Ik was a swordsman of great repute, who, through his remarkable exploits, had already become a legend in his own life. Hidetsuna knew that the Aisu clan hailed from the province of Ise. They were a clan of wak , pirates, who enjoyed the protection of Japans western warlords and made their living by preying on the ships that carried silk and silver between Japan and China.

At the age of thirty-six, however, he had suddenly turned over a new leaf. He had set out on an itinerant life, spending many years on the road in musha shugy honing his character and teaching his followers in a new and mysteriously effective school of swordsmanship. It was said he was able to disarm ones opponent without the use of ones sword, a technique he branded muttori .

As an old man, Ik had entered the service of Satake Yoshiatsu, the warlord of Hitachi, who had his headquarters in ta castle not far from the Pacic coast. There, together with his son, Koshichir, he instructed Satakes men in the tenets of the Shadow school of fencing.

It so happened that the Kamiizumi and the Satake were on friendly terms, and thus, with a letter of introduction from his father, the aspiring young swordsman set out for the province of Hitachi to seek out the old swordsman so as to master this mysterious Kage no Ry.