>>718040789
>leads me to believe that they just expect me to cheese it as well
Yep, welcome to the arena. In Ishin Kiwami you can cheese it to hell with Wild Dancer + elemental sword and then just switch to Gunman, makes it a boatload easier and made getting the Golden Sword a joke that took like an hour.
In Ishin you Pistol them and learn to dodge Ginryu's one-shot slash. Elemental swords don't proc remotely as much in Ishin and the effect isn't really the same so they're just not as good. You could try crafting an Okanehira but it likely won't work out like the perma stunlock you can do in Ishin Kiwami.

If you are going to use Pistol then do Chicken Racing until you can afford to just buy the Golden Gun from the gambling hall. In Ishin it's the second best gun in the game and you can get it almost immediately. Get a Tsujikaze and break it down for Blink and slap that on your Golden Gun, then get whatever makes Two and slap that on it as well. You now have a rapid firing gun that shoots two shots every shot.