Hasegawa Eishin — Seventh Headmaster of the Hayashizaki Lineage and Founder of Hasegawa Eishin-ryu

The swordsman known in English as Hasegawa Eishin—more fully Hasegawa Chikaranosuke Eishin (長谷川主税助英信), or Hidenobu—is the figure from whom Muso Jikiden Eishin-ryu takes the second half of its name. In the orthodox lineage claimed by that school he is counted as the seventh-generation successor to Hayashizaki Jinsuke Minamoto no Shigenobu, the late-sixteenth-century originator of the seated and standing drawing methods that later generations called iai or batto. In another, equally traditional reckoning he is not merely a transmitter but the school’s founder (ryuso): the man who recast an older tachi art for the katana of the early Edo period and whose personal name became the style’s designation.

A biography of Hasegawa must begin with a caution. Almost nothing about him can be fixed with the precision expected of a modern life. Japanese encyclopedic treatments state that his dates of birth and death are unknown, that traditions about his birthplace conflict, and that “there are many points of doubt about the actual Hasegawa Eishin; the historical facts remain difficult to establish.” What survives is a composite of densho (transmission scrolls), later domain histories from Tosa and Shinano, and the memory of schools that claimed him as ancestor. This essay in Sword and Spirit distinguishes, as far as the evidence allows, what is widely repeated from what is merely possible.

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