Background
Yagyu Munenori was born in 1571 in Japan. He was the second son of Muneyoshi.
柳生 宗矩
Yagyu Munenori was born in 1571 in Japan. He was the second son of Muneyoshi.
Yagyu Munenori entered the service of Tokugawa Ieyasu at a young age, and later was an instructor of swordsmanship to Ieyasu's son Hidetada. Still later, he became one of the primary advisors of the third shōgun Iemitsu. He began his career in the Tokugawa administration as a hatamoto, a direct retainer of the Tokugawa house, and later had his income raised to 10,000 koku, making him a minor fudai daimyo (vassal lord serving the Tokugawa), with landholdings around his ancestral village of Yagyu-zato.
In about 1632, Munenori completed the Heiho kadensho, a treatise on practical Shinkage-ryu swordsmanship and how it could be applied on a macro level to life and politics.