OGASAWARA-RYU

What is OGASAWARA-RYU?

　In recent years many have been heard to say "The Japanese have become slack in etiquette over the past few decades. "It is indisputable that many youngsters no longer bow when they greet their seniors, and most must be shamed into relinquishing a bus or train seat to the elderly or disabled.

　Japanese etiquette is suffused with the spirit of Confucianism , a class-based ethical system giving deference to elders that was devised by Confucius.　Long ago it was deemed that , in older to keep social order ,the Japanese should co-opt Confucian "etiquette."

　In the context of Japanese culture, "etiquette" is manifest as "manners" which are meant to convey consideration and sympathy for others through an esthetic sense of innate and dispassionate self-control.

　One school of traditional, warrior-class manners, the Ogasawara school of etiquette, has handed these Confucian-inspired rules of deportment down to the present day. Originally the exclusive domain of the warrior class, and "not to be taken out of the house, "the Ogasawara school developed from the accepted techniques of archery and horsemanship as taught to Minamoto no Yoritomo, who founded the Kamakura Shogunate some 800 years ago.