Aisu Iko, a.k.a. Aizu Hyūga-no-Kami Iko, Aisu Hisatada (1452 - 1538) was a Japanese martial artist and the founder of the

Kage-ryū is a Japanese koryū martial art founded in the late Muromachi period c. 1550 by Yamamoto Hisaya Masakatsu. __TOC__ About The system teaches battojutsu using very long swords known as choken. The kanji for Choken Battojutsu Kageryū (''景 ...

school of

sword fighting Swordsmanship or sword fighting refers to the skills and techniques used in combat and training with any type of sword. The term is modern, and as such was mainly used to refer to smallsword fencing, but by extension it can also be applied to an ...

. Aisu was originally a

pirate Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

based in Kumano, who raided Japanese and Chinese shipping and whose travels took him on occasion as far as the Chinese mainland. After suffering a severe shipwreck off

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

, of which he was the only survivor, Aisu abandoned his life as a pirate and entered into seclusion at the Udo caves in

Miyazaki Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Miyazaki Prefecture has a population of 1,073,054 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 7,735 km2 (2,986 sq mi). Miyazaki Prefecture borders Ōita Prefecture to the north, Kuma ...

. Here he purportedly had a dream in which a monkey deity taught him the secrets of swordsmanship. He named the new style he developed the Kage ("Shadow") School, which based its movements on natural phenomena such as wind and waves. Aisu's student,

Kamiizumi Nobutsuna Kamiizumi Nobutsuna, (上泉信綱), born Kamiizumi Ise-no-Kami Fujiwara-no-Hidetsuna, (c.1508 – 1572/1577) was a samurai in Japan's Sengoku period famous for creating the Shinkage-ryū school of combat. He is also well known as Kamiizumi Iseno ...

, (who also studied with Iko's son Aisu Koshichiro) would later adapt this style into the Shinkage ("New Shadow") school. After travelling throughout Japan on a martial pilgrimage for some years, Aisu returned to Kyushu, where he died of natural causes.

References

Japanese swordfighters 1452 births 1538 deaths {{Japan-martialart-bio-stub