I don't know if this will add anything or not to what Chris posted but I was having a conversation with one of the more prominent folks in the Tenkara blog world today on this topic and I will try to paraphrase what we talked about.

Much of the law/rules of Tenkara that have been introduced to the US so far are coming through the perspective of one or two individuals. However the more some of us learn and study Tenkara as it is in Japan we find that the rules there are written by ten different authors of the same book....and they are all using pencil. Nothing about Tenkara is carved in stone, there has not been any master of Tenkara have a burning bush experience. Many in Japan practice Tenkara with multiple flies in their box, some use a single pattern but not all. Some carry a single type of line or only one rod to the stream, yet others will have multiples of both.

Much of the "Dogma" surrounding Tenkara is coming from one interpretation. If you want to go fishing then go fishing, how you do that and with what cosmetic differences of one rod to the next don't matter to the fish. If you want to learn and study what Tenkara is, it's history and the deeper layers of technique then dig deeper than the surface layer of the past 3-4 years and find out what is beyond. Only then can you have a view that will let you see more than what is on the surface.

I feel a little Yoda-esk now...without backwards speaking I was.