Matsudaira Chikaranosuke, personal name Tadatoshi (松平忠敏) and styled Kazusanosuke (上総介), was a son of Matsudaira Chikayoshi (松平親芳), the sixteenth of the Nagasawa Matsudaira house. He learned Ryūgō-ryū from Naoi Hidekata (直井秀堅; also recorded as Naoi Katsugorō, 直井勝五郎), a student of the founder Okada Sōuemon. When the Rōshigumi (浪士組; the masterless-warrior corps that was the forerunner of the Shinsengumi) was organized in Bunkyū 2–3 (1862–63), he was named one of its first supervisors (rōshi-toriatsukai / torishimari-yaku), though he resigned the post early; the following year he became a Kōbusho kenjutsu shihan-yaku.
He was also accomplished in waka poetry and is said to have given Katsu Kaishū instruction in verse. After the Restoration he served as a poetry official at the Outadokoro (御歌所; the imperial Bureau of Poetry), and he died in Meiji 15 (1882).
Ryūgō-ryū (柳剛流)
Ryūgō-ryū was founded by Okada Sōuemon Kiryō (岡田惣右衛門奇良, 1765–1826), who was born at Sōshinden in Katsushika district, Musashi province (present-day Satte, Saitama). He first trained in Shingyōtō-ryū under Ōkawara Uzen (大河原右膳) — so that this school is itself an offshoot of the same Shingyōtō tradition that supplied three of the Kōbusho instructors — and after further study of Sanwa Muteki-ryū, Tōgun Shintō-ryū and other lines, devised his own method. The name is traditionally explained by the image of a streamside willow (柳; ryū / yanagi) lashed by the wind yet never broken, captured in the saying “no snow-break on the willow” (柳に雪折れなし). Ryūgō-ryū was a composite art transmitting kenjutsu, iai, jōjutsu (杖術; short-staff) and naginatajutsu (薙刀術; glaive), and its signature was the sune-giri (脛斬り; shin-cut) — apparently borrowed from the glaive’s low sweeps — together with cutting on the tobichigai (飛び違い; the crossing pass). The result was a markedly practical method of disabling opponents at the legs while advancing; by the Man’en 1 (1860) martial register it reportedly counted more students than the Hokushin Ittō-ryū. Curriculum levels were simple — kirigami (切紙), mokuroku (目録), and menkyo (免許) — and a licensee was free to found a branch, so the school proliferated into many local lines.
Fragments of Ryūgō-ryū survive in regional traditions (for example in former domains such as Sendai and a Tamaru, Mie, line); English-language material is sparse.
