The Shosho-ryu Yawara during the Edo period is said to have been passed down as a secret jujutsu martial art only within Morioka domain. Today, however, many aspects of the names and classifications of the various techniques that make up the Shosho-ryu Yawara remain unknown, as do the details of each technique. The primary source used as research material until now-scrolls belonging to the Takahashi Family, a Shosho-ryu sect-is not enough to clarify the names and details of all the Shosho-ryu Yawara techniques. This is because a special feature of the Shosho-ryu Yawara is that when the master teaches his disciple a technique, he does not teach it fully. Hence, it is difficult to encompass all the Shosho-ryu Yawara techniques using only the scrolls handed down to a single sect.

The authors of this paper felt it essential to identify new primary sources. Our investigations resulted in the discovery of 13 scrolls at the Hanamaki Nitobe Memorial Hall in Hanamaki City, Iwate Prefecture, which had been kept as a record of the Shosho-ryu Yawara techniques and licenses handed down within the Eiichi Nitobe family. We annotated and reprinted all 13 of these scrolls so that the names and details of all the Shosho-ryu Yawara techniques can be organized and classified into a highly valuable source material. It turned out that the Nitobe family scrolls contained not only the list of techniques (names), but also included how to initiate these moves and their underlying knowledge. This is expected to greatly advance the academic understanding of the Shosho-ryu Yawara techniques.