吉岡伝七郎

Yoshioka Denshichirō

Yoshioka Denshichirō is the second Yoshioka to face Musashi in the 1654 monument. It says he came with a wooden blade more than five shaku long, and that Musashi took it from him and struck him dead.

Life

Not recorded

Notes on the dates below

Evidence

Traditional

How sure the record is that he lived and did this

Traditional

Episodes

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Kyoto

Duel record

One bout on record: seized the long wooden blade and killed by Musashi (1654 monument)

Traditional

Born: Not recorded.
Died: Killed in his bout with Musashi, about 1604 by calculation (1654 monument).
Side: Yoshioka school, Kyoto

Who he was

Traditional · Later accounts

Almost everything known about Denshichirō is a few lines of the 1654 monument. His name is written 伝七郎, Denshichirō. The monument calls him a Yoshioka and says nothing else about him: no age and no father.

The monument does not say he was Seijūrō's brother. A Kumamoto book of 1755 calls him a younger brother of the house, and one of 1776 calls him a powerful fighter. Both were written 150 years or more after the event. The film does not claim the two men were brothers.

No description of his face, build or clothes survives. The film's picture of him is a design.

The road to the fight

Traditional · Later accounts

After Seijūrō, the monument says, Denshichirō "again" came out to settle victory and defeat. The place is only "outside the city". It does not name the ground.

He came, the monument says, with a wooden blade of over five shaku. A shaku is about 30 centimetres, so the blade was more than about a metre and a half. The monument does not give the exact length.

The monument gives no reason beyond settling the contest. The 1716 book on the Yoshioka does not mention this bout at all. A later Kumamoto story says Musashi turned up late to both of the first two bouts and wore the Yoshioka down by waiting. That story is legend, and it is not in the monument.

The date is the same calculation as the first bout: about 1604.

The contest

Traditional · Later accounts

The monument is short. Musashi, "meeting the moment", took that wooden blade from him and struck him. Denshichirō fell to the ground and died on the spot.

That is all the source says. No source says how the blade was taken, where Musashi stood, or what he held in his hands. A book of 1776 says he was killed in one blow and calls him a powerful fighter, but that is colour added 120 years after the monument.

The film shows how the blade is seized. That movement was invented for the episode. It was designed from a teaching in the Fire scroll of Musashi's own book, "hold down the pillow", which is about watching for the start of an opponent's strike. The source says only that the blade was taken, and that it ended in a death.

After, and how we know

Traditional · Later accounts

The monument is the only early account of this bout. The Kyoto-side telling in the 1716 book is silent on it.

Silence does not prove the bout did not happen. But we have one source, from Musashi's family, written about 50 years afterwards.

The monument goes on to say that the Yoshioka martial house was finished. Other records say otherwise, and Denshichirō is not named in them.

The monument states his death plainly. We treat that with the same caution as everything on this stone: it is the account of his opponent's family.

Sources

Kokura monument inscription (Kokura hibun), put up by Musashi's adopted son Miyamoto Iori at Tamukeyama, Kokura (1654)

Primary source · A family memorial written about nine years after Musashi died. It is not an independent witness: for the early bouts it follows his own book. The linked Kitakyushu City page is about the monument; it does not support the duel claims. The Japanese text was read in a modern reading (Fukuda Masahide, 2003, as reproduced on Japanese Wikipedia) and in the 1716 printing, not on the weathered stone.
Hinatsu Shigetaka, Honcho Bugei Shoden (Short Lives of Japan's Martial Artists), Yoshioka entry and copy of the Kokura inscription (1716)

Later tradition · Read as page images in the 1915 Bujutsu Soshu reprint (National Diet Library). Gives a Kyoto-side version with a different ending: no winner. It is an Edo-period collection, not a Yoshioka family account. Also quotes the 1614 record of the Imperial noh incident.
Tachibana (Tanji) Hokin, Tanji Hokin Hikki (also titled Heiho Taiso Bushu Genshin-ko Denrai) (1727)

Later tradition · The earliest surviving written version of the Arima story and the source of the pine fight in Episode 2. Written about 130 years after the Arima bout. Read through a modern scholar's transcription of the Yoshioka passage (linked; archived copy); the manuscripts were not seen. The date of the Yoshioka passage is inferred.
Toyoda (Hashizu) Masanobu, Bukoden (Life of Lord Musashi), Higo line (1755)

Later tradition · A biography written in Kumamoto about 150 years after the Kyoto fights. Source of the dated years 1596 and 1599, which are sums from Musashi's age, and of the late-arrival and killing-at-the-pine stories. Read through a modern scholar's transcription (linked; archived copy), not the manuscripts.
Toyoda Kagehide, Nitenki (Record of Niten) (1776)

Later tradition · A later Kumamoto biography built on the Bukoden. Adds the name Sasaki Kojiro, the date in the 4th lunar month, and the age of 18 for him. Not read in full; quoted passages were read through other writers.

Appears in

Coming soon

Episode 02 · 7 min · Opponent

The Yoshioka

In Kyoto, the Yoshioka sword school meets Musashi in three escalating contests, as told on a stone his adopted son set up in 1654. The episode then lays that account beside the other versions, including the tellings from the Kyoto side.

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