domain and only to specially selected people within the warrior-class. This was not an unusual practice in the Edo period. For example, in the 17th century, the Kage-ryū school of swordsmanship (battōjutsu) , used swords which were longer than the length legally permitted by the Tokugawa shogunate. Since these longer swords were forbidden by the government, Kage-ryū went "underground" , but was kept active in strict secrecy until the Meiji Restoration hundreds of years later. The main students of Gonnosuke's art were the men charged with policing the Kuroda clan's domain (Kuroda-han). During this period other schools (ryū) were created and taught in the Kuroda-han and in the various branches of the Shintō Musō-ryū system. During this period, two newly created schools which included the art of the police baton (jūtte), (among other weapons) and the art of restraining a man with rope (hojōjutsu), were taught within the branches of the Shintō Musō-ryū as a complement to the arresting (torite)-arts. After Gonnosukes death the art was mainly transmitted by the "Dangyō-shiyaku" (men's arts instructor), though not all branches of the Kuroda staff-traditions used the title of Dangyō-shiyaku. The Dangyō-instructor position was, unlike the swordsmanship instructor (kagyō) a non-hereditary position within the hierarchy of the Samurai. The Dangyō-instructor in the Kuroda-domain was the charged with teaching the lower ranking warriors (ashigaru) in the arts of the staff (jō), capturing/seizing/escaping (torite), gunnery (hōjutsu) and rope (nawa) among other arts. The position of Dangyō-instructor lasted until the abolishment of the Samurai and the feudal system in the 1860s-1870s. Over time there would arise seven different lineages from the main Shintō Musō-ryū system. These are collectively known as "The Staff of Kuroda" (Kuroda no jō). Of these seven branches of Gonnosuke's jōjutsu, only two would survive the ending of Japan's feudal system in 1867 and the resulting socio-economic modernization, to be informally merged into a single line that is today the modern . The first split in the SMR occurred after the death of the fourth headmaster Higuchi Han'emon. The split was the result of one of his licensed (menkyo kaiden) students, Harada Heizo Nobusada, breaking away to establish the (later informally known as Kansai-ryū), while another licensed student of Higuchi Han'emon continued the original "True Path" line (later known as Moriki-ryū). For several years Gonnosukes art was passed on by these two lines. The "New Just" line continued until after the death of