I've read a lot about Musashi Miyamoto and watched the trilogy starring Toshiro Mifune more times than I can count. I admire the guy quite a bit. He was remarkable and the fact that he was a real person and not some mythological trope is stunning. On that note, I grabbed a copy of his one and only book, "The Book of Five Rings," which is about strategy primarily and about succeeding at goals and at competition secondarily.
I grabbed a copy on eBay for next to nothing. I dove right in on the day I got it and knocked it out in just a couple of days. Musashi was more known for his prowess at sword fighting than for his writing. The writing style was direct, and the book is rather short. It was written late in his life and, indeed, finished in the year of his death. The copy I got is adorned with many illustrations, and some back story to Musashi and his life in addition to appendices further exploring the topics covered. I only read the actual book, though, and not the prefaces or extras.
I enjoyed the book quite well. I had heard that this is often used as a guide for business strategy courses. That is somewhat surprising to me as most of the content is specifically about sword fighting. There's some strategic themes and his strategy guidance is well-grounded on attitude, spirit, and practicality. That said, I think I learned more about how to approach a sword fight than I did about strategic business matters.
Musashi Miyamoto was a survivor. There are millions of untold stories of samurai during this time period, but his has gotten the attention it has due to Musashi defying odds. He was the best at fighting. Survivor of at least sixty duels and never losing one (though, according to Eiji Yoshikawa, he did have a draw with someone he had fought who wielded a bo). In addition, he survived battles and survived an ambush involving more than a hundred assailants. The latter is especially stunning to me. During this conflict, he adopted the 'two-handed sword technique against a great many human foes.' This technique is discussed in the book, though its origins are not. Musashi makes the point that it is an error to fall in battle with one of your swords undrawn, as most samurai would traditionally fight with a single drawn sword at the time.
"The Book of Five Rings" was surprisingly easy to read despite its age, having been written in the early 1600's, and the fact that it came from a very different culture than the one that I live in and from the ones I generally read about. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Musashi Miyamoto and feudal Japan. It's a treat to read it and remarkable that it even exists.
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