By Christopher Scott Thompson

It is one of the most iconographic images in the mythology of the martial arts- the lone swordsman, his face perhaps obscured by a hood or a straw hat, wandering from place to place to test his skills or avenge a wrong. From the sociopathic anti-hero of Sword of Doom to the noble wanderers of Samurai Trilogy or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this is clearly one of the most enduring images of the swordsman in popular culture.

Of course, the lone warrior in history was very much the exception and not the rule. Professional warriors did not exist for their own sake, but because their services were required by the communities that employed them. Any warrior who couldn’t manage to fit in with his comrades, or who couldn’t find legitimate employment, was more likely to starve or be forced into banditry than to wander the countryside having adventures. As many authors have pointed out, the "lone wolf" is not so much a romantic figure as a doomed outcast, unlikely to survive for long outside the pack. Nevertheless, such characters did exist for various reasons, and in some cases they could be nearly as formidable as their fictional counterparts. The following is an eyewitness account of a duel between an unemployed samurai (or ronin) and three opponents:

The swordsman in this case is an impoverished ronin, but the wandering swordsman in Japanese history was not necessarily unemployed. Frequently, he was a respectable warrior engaging in a musha shugyo or "warrior’s pilgrimage" in order to perfect his martial skills with the full permission of both his lord and his own teacher. This could mean anything from studying at a variety of dojo across the country, to wandering around and seeking out other expert swordsmen to engage in challenge matches. These could be either friendly bouts with practice weapons, or outright duels to the death. The reason for seeking such contests could be a simple desire to test oneself, or a long-term plan to come up in the world by proving one’s superior skill and thus securing a position as fencing instructor to a powerful lord. Many of the greatest swordsmen in Japanese history made their reputations through musha shugyo. Despite the great risks involved in the warrior’s pilgrimage, the way of the shugyosha was not condemned as wasteful or reckless by knowledgeable swordsmen:

Even though the swordsman’s actual motivation might have been simple ambition, the use of the word shugyo ("austere training") indicates that this path was seen as an ascetic discipline with an almost religious connotation. Some shugyosha did apparently see themselves in such terms:

The founder continued to tour the country, not just to practice his martial skills but also as (a) form of Shinto training. I think that we can imagine that these trips were more about finding his path than about polishing his skills. For him the sword was an instrument of ablution, an act of opening himself to the deity Amitabha and a way of exploring the realm of nothingness...

The closest parallel to this custom in Western culture would most likely be knight errantry, in which a knight would wander aimlessly in search of adventures, looking for opportunities to perform chivalric deeds. While the term itself dates back to the medieval epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the elaborate fantasies of later writers have so obscured the picture that it is difficult to say what the custom was actually like outside of fiction.

On the other end of the scale from the noble practice of musha shugyo, some Japanese swordsmen used the custom of challenge matches as a cover for extortion:

Whereas it was common for expert swordsmen such as Miyamoto Musashi and Tsukahara Bokuden to travel the country seeking to have their skills tested and improved, others did it for personal gain, bringing disgrace upon what was originally a noble and chivalrous concept. Such ruffians would haunt a local dojo hoping to pick on some unsuspecting pupil... They coerced others into fights, and made contests for bets, taking sake or cash as prize money.

What is interesting, and also not generally known, is that a virtually identical custom once existed among the swordsmen of Scotland. This practice seems to have been very ancient, as a wandering Scottish swordsman named Liot the Pale is mentioned in the Viking sagas. Apparently he had become quite wealthy through his skills, but he eventually lost to the Norse warrior Egill Skallagrimsson.

This custom survived in Scotland as late as the eighteenth century. In the words of fencing master Archibald MacGregor:

Those gladiators (vulgarly called bullies) used to travel from one place to another, challenging whole armies, towns and cities to produce a man who would fight them. There is a tradition to this day among us, that when any of these gladiators came to a place, the people were obliged to give so much money, or produce a man to fight them with the sword. With regard to their demand, and the town or city being obliged to comply with it, I will not take upon me to assert the truth of it at present, having never been furnished with materials to solve this tradition. But, be that as it will, ‘tis a certain fact they were allowed to go about in the manner I have described, and no doubt but it was in order to create emulation and spirit in people to learn the art of defence. I have conversed with people, who were none of the oldest, that remembered of seeing many of these gladiators fight upon stages all over the three kingdoms.

The wandering swordsman was frequently seen as a disreputable or even sinister character in Scottish lore. Sometimes he is described as having supernatural powers:

A wonderful man, a wizard, a magician, a necromancer… challenged the bravest cavalier in the kingdom to combat- and he slew all that came forth against him- and he lived like a prince magnificently- and the burden of his living fell upon the city- and it was grieved greatly- and the laws of chivalry were, that he might so live until vanquished by the champion of the challenged city… no man of woman born can kill him; no man whose person bears iron can hurt him; no man who travels in leather shoes can prevail against him; no sword that iron ever touched, or leather sheath received, can pierce him; in fine, if the sword be withdrawn from the wound, he revives again; and while fighting he has a shade on each side, which leads his opponent to believe that he has three fighting against him… at every onset (he) would with his two shadows, leap shoulder-high, and fall on his enemy with dreadful downward plunge.

Despite the fantastic nature of this story, we know that the custom was a genuine one, as it is supported by contemporary newspaper accounts:

This tradition even made its way to the New World, where a peculiar bout was fought in colonial Boston, as later described in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine:

A fencing-master had appeared at Boston, challenging any man in the colonies to play at swords with him; and this bravado he repeated for several days, from a stage of Thespian simplicity, erected in a public part of the town.

In the end, a local champion defeated him, as is generally the case also in the Scottish accounts, though in this case the local champion was armed only with a cheese and a filthy broomstick, which he used like a sword and buckler to thoroughly humiliate Boston’s challenger.

Despite the extortionate nature of the Scottish custom, it was seen as a fitting occupation for men of aristocratic birth, including clan chiefs. Perhaps the most infamous of the Scottish wandering swordsmen was a chieftain with the colorful name of Black Rory the Unjust:

On another occasion, Rob Roy declined a similar challenge from the same Donald McBane mentioned above, on the grounds that McBane was not of sufficient social rank to challenge him.

In Japan, the customs of musha shugyo and its disreputable cousin dojo arashi ("dojo storming") eventually gave birth to a public sporting event called gekken kogyo ("severe swordsmanship performance"), in which martial artists would fight each other on a stage for the entertainment of a paying audience. This practice was created by a former samurai named Sakakibara Kenkichi in the nineteenth century. Kenkichi was concerned that swordsmanship would disappear from Japan with the abolition of the samurai class, so he started to stage public bouts for which expensive tickets were sold:

This new breed of wandering martial artist included an amazing woman named Murakami Hideo, who brought the spirit of the shugyosha back to life in the nineteenth century:

Still in her teens, she left her home and went to Kyushu, wandering from dojo to dojo. At one point, she studied a form of Shinkage-ryu. Then she continued her travels in Honshu, traveling alone, testing her skill against other fighters, studying as she went.

In the gekken kogyo, Hideo was undefeated. However, these performances were sensationalistic and vulgar, involving noisy explosions and scantily-clad waitresses, causing traditional swordsmen to view them with disgust. The novelist Eiji Yoshikawa anachronistically has Japan’s most famous shugyosha Miyamoto Musashi invited to join one of these "martial circuses":

"...What we have in mind is a series of matches that would teach the people about the martial arts, and at the same time give them something to lay bets on."

The gekken kogyo also had a near parallel in Western swordsmanship, in the form of a custom called prizefighting. The prizefighters or stage gladiators were men who fought for prize money in front of paying audiences, using sharp swords and other weapons:

During the late 17th to mid 18th centuries "prizefighters" would fight against all comers for prizes of money, free beer, hats or cups. Other gladiatorial showmen fought to test the skills of a rival teacher or his students or for some real or imaginary slight. These were no-holds-barred contests which would usually take place over three bouts, one of swordplay with a choice of live swords, daggers & shields, one of boxing, and one of quarterstaff or cudgels.

Prizefighting is often described as an English custom, but the tradition existed throughout the British Isles and is referenced often in Gaelic lore, where it is combined with the concept of the wandering champion as described above.

Prizefights were bloody affairs, but death was not the intended outcome, so the methods used were slightly different from battlefield swordsmanship. Nevertheless, prizefights were brutal by today’s standards:

In June 1663 Samual Pepys recorded in his diary "the first prize I ever saw in my life" which was held in the New Theatre, a former tennis court. It was between Matthews and one Westwicke, "who was soundly cut several times in the head and legs that he was all over with blood; and other deadly blows did they give and take in very good earnest, till Westwicke was in a most sad pickle."

The equivalent custom in Renaissance Germany was known as the Fechtschule. While this literally means "fight school" or "fencing school," the Fechtschule was actually a public entertainment, in which martial artists would fight on a stage with various weapons (but especially the longsword) for cash prizes. These prizefights were organized by rival fencing guilds (known as the Marxbruder and the Federfechter), who taunted each other in rhyming verse prior to the actual bouts. Victory went to the swordsman who could inflict a "Red Flower"- a bleeding head wound- on his opponent.

While Fechtshulen and prizefights existed for the purpose of competition, profit and entertainment, some Western swordsmen did take it upon themselves to travel in the manner of the shugyosha in order to perfect their martial skills. Fiore dei Liberi, the father of Italian longsword fencing, states in his manual that he traveled in different lands or regions and studied under a variety of masters in order to learn more about the longsword.

The 14^th century master Johannes Liechtenauer, who founded the leading tradition of German longsword fencing, also traveled in "many lands" to learn his art. The smallsword master Domenico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo, originally from Italy, traveled through Europe and studied in France before establishing his academy in London in 1759. However, the concept of wandering to perfect one’s swordsmanship never seems to have become widely established in Europe. Instead, the European wandering swordsman was essentially an adventurer and bully, seeking challenges for their own sake or else for profit. In Scottish lore, it is always the local swordsman who is the hero, cutting down the impudent challenger on behalf of the outraged community.