about me

Hello, I’m Wilf Muecke. My interest in martial arts has been already awaken in my childhood days by the at that period very popular kung fu movies. However, I started only shortly before becoming an adult with a Japanese martial art (in this case it was a modern conglomerate of different old martial arts styles, which I back then thought was still traditional). I’ve been fascinated by the idea to study a martial art which has survived for centuries and still gets passed on from one generation to the next. A Western martial art of knights as described in old fencing manuals would’ve been enough for me, as for me the whole thing wasn’t about Asia’s exoticism only. Unfortunately, those arts have not survived.

It started shortly prior to or at the latest very shortly after my enrollment as a student of Japanese Studies (I later had to stop studies due to financial reasons, unfortunately). Due to my own researches, I did feel a growing sincere desire to study in addition to my martial art back then a real koryû (traditional Japanese school). These koryû were difficult to reach yet, I missed something in these schools or there were other reasons which delayed the accomplishment of my intentions. Independently from that, exactly 20 years to the day after I started training and as the “longest serving” local representative, I stopped to train in my old martial art due to different reasons to start all over once again.

In 2016 I finally was there, when I “had to” travel to the wedding ceremony of a good friend. Thanks to my longtime “online friend” Martin Stehli-Ono (respectively Stehli Martin Sensei, too), who enthused about a Japanese sword school totally unknown to me at that time, I was already curious about that school, the Hokushin Ittô-Ryû Hyôhô. I therefore made an appointment with the actual sôke (leader) of that tradition for an intensive interview and for additionally visiting the training in the evening. Since then I study the content of the Hokushin Ittô-Ryû Hyôhô, which was founded in 1820, directly under the aforementioned sôke (Ôtsuka Ryûnosuke Taira no Masatomo).

On the 16.07.2017, I took the keppan (a blood oath which in traditional Japanese arts is still customary up to the present day). Only following the keppan, after a getting-to-know each other phase as well as a test phase, I finally became a full-fledged student of the Hokushin Ittô-Ryû Hyôhô. Moreover the relationship between student and teacher itself has been officially deepened further through the keppan (ideally, this is valid for a lifetime).