What is Shugyo?


Musha shugyō, or “training in warriorship”, was inspired by Zen monks, who would engage in similar ascetic wanderings (which they called angya, “travelling on foot”) before attaining enlightenment. Kamiizumi Ise-no-Kami Nobutsuna, who founded the Shinkage-ryū school of swordsmanship in the mid-sixteenth century, was a shugyōsha.

– Courtesy of the very scholarly resource known as Wikipedia