Yagyu Munenori

Wooden statue of Yagyu Munenoris

The samurai Yagyū Munenori ( Japanese 柳生 宗 矩 ; * 1571 ; † May 11, 1646 ) was an exceptional sword master, author and became the official swordsman of the shoguns Tokugawa Ieyasu and Tokugawa Iemitsu at the beginning of the 17th century due to his services in the Battle of Sekigahara .

Trained by his father Yagyū Muneyoshi (1527-1606) and influenced by Confucianism , Daoism and Zen Buddhism , he left the script Heihō Kadensho ( 兵法 家 伝 書 ), which he wrote in 1632 (eleven years before Miyamoto Musashi his Gorin no Sho (Book of Five Rings) wrote) and into which he let the wisdom of his master Takuan Sōhō flow. In 1636 he owned 10,000 koku , which made him daimyo of the newly formed Yagyū - han fiefdom .

He remained a teacher until the third Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu . After his death, the Yagyū school split into two rival schools : the Owari Yagyū Shinkage-ryū in Nagoya and the Edo Yagyū Shinkage-ryū in Edo .

literature

• Hiroaki Sato (Ed.): The Way of the Samurai . Piper ISBN 3-492-23631-6

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Yagyū is the family name, Munenori the first name.