Yoshioka Seijūrō

The 1654 monument calls him the heir of the Yoshioka, a house it describes as first in Japan in the art of fighting. A book of 1716 says the Yoshioka were Kyoto swordsmen who taught the Muromachi shoguns' household. It adds that the family's own teachers were said to go back to older schools. Those lineage claims are stories, not records.

His name is written 清十郎, Seijūrō. The monument gives no age, no father and no brothers. One variant in the 1716 book describes the Yoshioka opponent as still wearing a boy's forelock and under twenty. Later books from Kumamoto name a father, but they were written 150 years after.

No portrait or description of him survives. The film's picture of him is a design choice.

Musashi's own book says that at twenty-one he went to Kyoto and fought several bouts. He names no one. The Yoshioka come from the 1654 monument, written by his family.

The monument says a man called Yoshioka asked to settle the contest. For the house, the heir fought. The place was Rendaino, outside the city. The two agreed beforehand that it would be a single stroke.

The date is a calculation: about 1604, from Musashi's age, though 1602 is possible.

Later books add a story that Musashi kept his opponent waiting. A Chikuzen book of about 1727 says he pretended to be sick and arrived in a palanquin. A book of 1755 says he was late. These stories are legend. The film mentions the waiting once and says "later accounts".

The monument gives the fight a few lines. The two men "contended like dragon and tiger". Musashi struck one stroke with a wooden blade. Seijūrō fell and his breath stopped.

Because they had agreed on one stroke beforehand, the monument says, Musashi spared his life. The pupils lifted Seijūrō onto a board and carried him away. With medicine and warm baths he slowly recovered. In the end he gave up the art of the sword and shaved his head.

What is not recorded: the weapon he carried, where the blow landed, and who moved first. A later book of 1755 says he carried a real blade. One research site argues the detail was borrowed from the later island duel.

The film shows the stroke and the carrying away. The approach and the movement are the film's own invention. The monument gives only the result.

The monument was written about 50 years after the events, by Musashi's adopted son. It is Musashi's side of the story.

Kyoto-side tellings are different. The 1716 book, an Edo-period collection of martial tales, says the contest ended with no winner. In one telling both men struck each other on the forehead. Musashi wore a persimmon-dyed headband and the Yoshioka man a white one, so his blood showed first.

A tale of 1684 about the Yoshioka has a man called Musashi struck on the brow by a Yoshioka. Whether that Musashi is the same man is unclear, and the Yoshioka in it are not named as Seijūrō.

We cannot tell which version is closer to the truth. What survives is a one-stroke result in the winner's family's words, and a draw in a Kyoto-side telling.