The Lone Samurai

by William Scott Wilson

  By the time Musashi was thirty-six, he too felt that he could no longer avoid this responsibility. Thus, at some point in time during this year, as he was riding a horse in the area of Amagasaki in Banshu, he encountered a young horse-pack driver by the name of Mikinosuke, who seemed to have ability far beyond his present station in life. Intuiting that the boy might present both a solution to his own succession problems and an opportunity to mentor a first-rate warrior, Musashi asked Mikinosuke if he would like to be educated as an apprentice under the swordsman’s own tutorship. The youth cheerfully responded that he would be happy to do so if it weren’t for the fact that he had two elderly parents to support. These were his circumstances, however, and he could by no means abandon his father and mother.

  With this response, Musashi was even more impressed with Mikinosuke’s qualities, and interrupted the progress of his journey to visit the home of the boy’s parents. After some discussion and reassurances, he provided the old couple with enough money to take care of themselves, and departed with a new apprentice and heir.

  Musashi’s intuition had not been off the mark. Although less outgoing and aggressive than Musashi, Mikinosuke studied and practiced hard, becoming an excellent scholar and swordsman. He later became a page to Musashi’s acquaintance, Honda Tadatoki, who relied on the youth for his many different qualities. Tadatoki had since become the second husband of Senhime, the daughter of the Tokugawa shogun Hidetada, and his stipend had been increased substantially. Among the responsibilities Mikinosuke held to this wealthy lord was that of sword instructor.9 This job had formerly been Musashi’s, but he had passed the position on to his adopted son.

  Tragically for both Mikinosuke and Musashi, the young man’s career was cut short by the unexpected death of Tadatoki at the age of thirty-one on 7 May 1626. Mikinosuke was in Edo when Tadatoki passed away in Himeji and, upon hearing the news, quickly started his return to his lord’s domain. Musashi, who was residing in Osaka at the time, somehow felt that Mikinosuke was coming to bid him a final farewell. To those around him he stated that if his son should come to visit him, he would be provided with “a grand meal as a memento of this life.”

  It happened exactly as Musashi had intuited. Mikinosuke stopped in Osaka, and the two of them exchanged farewell cups of saké without mentioning the event that would inevitably soon occur. The young man then left for Himeji, and committed junshi, or ritual suicide in sympathy for one’s lord, on the following day. He was twenty-three years old.

  Miyamoto Mikinosuke was known to be handsome, bright, and sensitive to the world of literature. He left the following death poem:

  Beckoned by the storm

  on the peak

  of Mount Tatsuta,

  the red leaves in the valley, too,

  are falling.

  Two years before Mikinosuke’s death, Musashi adopted another young boy, Iori, whom he met while passing through an isolated plain called Shohojigawara in far off Dewa. Musashi first encountered Iori selling mudfish by the side of the road. When the swordsman said that he would like one, the boy replied, “Take the whole bunch,” shoved the bucket of fish into Musashi’s hands and left without looking back.10 On the evening of the following day, Musashi lost his way on the plain, and stopped to ask for lodging at a small hut not far from the path. The same boy, Iori, appeared and reluctantly gave him permission to stay. That night, as Musashi was lying sleeplessly awake, he heard the sound of a sword being sharpened in the next room. Suspicious of the boy who had already acted eccentrically enough, Musashi yawned loudly, as a warning that he was quite awake. At this Iori laughed out loud and accused the traveler of being afraid of a skinny twelve-year-old child. In the discussion that followed, Musashi came to understand that the boy’s father had just died and, being too small to carry the body up the hill to bury it alongside the man’s wife, the creative and dutiful child was preparing to cut the body in half, so that he could transport it to the proper place.

  This was the second act of filial piety that Musashi had encountered in the youths he would adopt, and it must have impressed him deeply. He and his own father had not gotten along well, and, as we have seen, the young Bennosuke had left Munisai’s house at an early age. Iori’s determination and resourcefulness affected the swordsman so much that, after carrying the body of the old man up the hill in one piece and giving him a proper burial, he asked the young boy if he would like to become an apprentice. Iori mistook Musashi’s intentions and declared that he would never take the status of a servant, for it was his dream to become a samurai with a horse and spear. If he could not attain that, he said, he was better off remaining as he was—alone but free. Musashi assured him that he would train him to become a great warrior and realize his dream, and so an agreement was reached.

  Musashi did extremely well by Iori. Only a few years later, when he was offered the position of retainer in Akashi by Ogasawara Tadazane, Musashi felt confident enough to propose that Iori be employed in his stead. Musashi had no desire to become an official himself. To do so he would have to give up his freedom and the relative independence that warriors had enjoyed during the Warring States period (1333–1568). He realized, however, that very few men were cut out to live the life he had outlined for himself. Pouring all of his knowledge and training into Iori, he prepared the boy to be the best man he could for this new age of peace and bureaucratic management. In this way, Miyamoto Iori was taken into service as the daimyo’s personal retainer to Ogasawara Tadazane in 1626 in the castle town of Akashi, the same year that Mikinosuke committed ritual suicide in Himeji. Clearly, Musashi had accomplished more in those two cities than just town planning and garden building. His personality, circumspection, and many talents had brought him a tremendous amount of respect in the circles of political power as well.

  Iori’s career was destined to be a long and distinguished one. By 1631 he had risen to the position of chief retainer, although he was still barely twenty years old. Musashi had also taught the boy swordsmanship and courage, and at the Battle of Shimabara in 1637, to which we will return, Iori was given extraordinary praise by Kuroda Takayuki, daimyo of the neighboring Fukuoka fief, for rendering distinguished meritorious deeds. After this battle, his stipend was increased to four thousand koku, and when the Ogasawara clan was transferred to Kokura in Kyushu, Iori was granted land on Mount Tamuke, on the eastern side of the castle town. It was there that he would erect the Kokura Hibun, the monument engraved with the story of Musashi’s life, eight years after Musashi’s death.

  Miyamoto Iori died on 8 March 1678. The Miyamoto family continued to inherit the occupation of senior retainers, but Iori’s bloodline finally ran out in the sixth generation. In the end, the younger brother of the lord of the Nitta clan, a branch clan of the Ogasawara, was officially declared the seventh generation, taking over the family status of the house that Musashi had begun to build on the plain of Shohojigawara.

  A REAL LIVE HUMAN BEING

  In 1628, the same year that Takuan was punished in the Purple Robe Affair, Musashi was at Nagoya Castle in the province of Owari at the request of Tokugawa Yoshinao, Ieyasu’s seventh son and the daimyo of that fief. Asked to give a demonstration of his sword style, Musashi had a match with a skilled martial artist of what was now called the Owari clan. Musashi used two wooden swords and, scissoring the sword of his opponent, kept him from performing any meaningful action at all. Without harming the man, he led him in a circle around the dojo and commented, “This is how a match should be conducted,” demonstrating that with his style there was no need for injury. Yoshinao had been looking for something a bit more dramatic from the man who had defeated the Demon of the Western Provinces, however, and showed no further interest in Musashi’s style.11

  Just at the point of leaving Nagoya, Musashi saw a single warrior approaching from a distance and remarked to his disciples, “At last I’ve met a real live human being.” As the two men came closer, they called out each other’s names, even though this was the first time
they had ever met. The records then state that

  [T]he two men quickly opened their hearts to each other as though they had been friends for a hundred years. The man took Musashi to his mansion, where they traded saké cups, played go, but never once crossed swords in a comparison of technique. Later, Musashi explained the psychology of their meeting: “This mutual recognition might be called a subtle mental attitude or a transcendental principle. The fact that we did not cross swords was a mutual acknowledgment in silence of one another’s abilities.”

  The man in this short episode was Yagyu Hyogonosuke Toshiyoshi (1577–1650), head of the Yagyu-ryu in Owari and sword instructor to the above-mentioned Tokugawa Yoshinao. He is the only member of the Yagyu clan actually recorded to have met Musashi. It was his uncle, Munenori, who wrote The Life-Giving Sword and who was a friend to the priest Takuan. As the Yagyu family would become the premier clan in the world of swordsmanship during Musashi’s time and for a number of generations thereafter, it is important to take at least a brief look at its rise to fame.

  The Yagyu clan has traced its ancestry back to Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), the great saint of literature, thus tying it to arts other than the martial. It is not known when the clan actually moved into the village of Yagyu—partially hidden among the low mountains on the borders of Nara and Kyoto prefectures—but, by the 1600s, they seem to have resided there for centuries. The area had traditionally spawned men of great sword abilities, and the Yagyu figured strongly in this tradition.

  Yagyu Muneyoshi Sekishusai (1529–1606) was considered the finest swordsman in the area around the capital of Kyoto when his friend, the spearman Hozoin In’ei, arranged to have him fight in a bout with Kamiizumi Ise no kami Nobutsuna (1508–77), a man whose stature is now legendary among sword practitioners. The contest, which some consider the inception of the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu, was held at the Hozoin temple and was over in minutes. Paralyzed by Nobutsuna’s stare, the famous Sekishusai was unable to even raise his sword. He was thirty-five years old at the time; Nobutsuna, fifty-five. Both In’ei and Sekishusai begged to become Nobutsuna’s disciples. Nobutsuna agreed, and then spent the following two years at Sekishusai’s manor. At the end of that time, in April of 1565, the swordmaster awarded Sekishusai with a certificate noting that he had passed on all the hidden traditions of his style to the younger man. He also passed on his attitude that the study of swordsmanship was not to be used for the purpose of killing people, but rather to invigorate both a man and his opponent. Sekishusai would not forget this, and would later become famous, not only for his extraordinary ability and modesty,12 but also for his philosophy of the “death-dealing sword” and the “life-giving sword.” Sekishusai was already a master of the Toda Style of swordsmanship and, after Nobutsuna’s departure, dedicated the rest of his life to developing an amalgamation of styles, the culmination of which was his famous Muto-ryu, or No-Sword Style. In this style, the practitioner cultivates his intuitive powers and prowess to the point of being able to arrest his opponent’s stroke just before its execution. This is done by grasping either the hilt or blade of the opponent’s sword in one’s own bare hands—joined in a prayerlike (fingers extended, not entwined) lock and, needless to say, requires an extraordinary sense of timing.

  Sekishusai had eleven children—five boys and six girls. His eldest son, Yoshikatsu, had been devastatingly wounded in battle and was unable to follow his father as successor to his school. That honor would go, in part, to his youngest son, Munenori (1571–1646), a man skilled in swordsmanship and endowed with a superior sense of political tact. In 1594, Tokugawa Ieyasu invited the sixty-six-year-old Sekishusai and his son Munenori to Kyoto for an exhibition and was so impressed by the old man’s skill that he quickly declared himself a disciple and wrote up a contract pledging his support for the Yagyu clan. Sekishusai, however, declined the offer for himself, wishing to proffer the position of instructor to his young son instead. Ieyasu agreed and, in this one stroke, the Yagyu became a part of the establishment, already setting a precedent for a hereditary position with the Tokugawa.

  Munenori’s career is well documented. After his appointment, in addition to instructing three generations of Tokugawa shoguns, he also performed meritorious deeds for them in battle—probably involving espionage at Sekigahara, but also actually saving Hidetada’s life during the Summer Campaign at Osaka Castle. His stipend was steadily increased, as was his rank, and he eventually became a respected advisor, along with his old mentor, Takuan, to the third shogun, Iemitsu.

  But although Munenori established the Yagyu lineage at Edo, he was perhaps not his father’s true favorite. Sekishusai had devoted himself to the art of the sword and had involved himself with politics only when absolutely necessary for the continuance of the clan. Munenori, on the other hand, while showing a strong Zen Buddhist influence on his sword style, became progressively involved with the Tokugawa government, from Hidetada’s shogunate through Iemitsu’s. No public quarreling was ever recorded, but in his retirement, old Sekishusai may well have wondered where his son was headed with all these dealings outside the family’s tradition of swordsmanship.

  Regardless of the cause, it was Yagyu Hyogonosuke Toshiyoshi, Yoshikatsu’s son, that Sekishusai initiated into the secrets of the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu, and it was to this grandson that he gave the manuscript of recorded secrets conferred on him by Nobutsuna. Thus it was Hyogonosuke, not Munenori, who became Sekishusai’s successor. And, after a brief period of service under Kato Kiyomasa in Kumamoto, it was this same Hyogonosuke who would become the instructor of the Owari branch of the Tokugawa and who eventually would meet Musashi and enjoy an afternoon of saké, go, and conversation with the famous swordsman.

  It is difficult to imagine the feelings or the conversation that must have passed between these two that afternoon. Hyogonosuke had mastered the Muto-ryu and had studied both the Shingon and Zen sects of Buddhism as roads that might lead to greater concentration in his art. His reputation as a swordsman surpassed that of even his more politically connected and famous uncle in Edo, and his school is considered by many to have been the orthodox Yagyu line. Musashi, meanwhile, had established his reputation as one of the absolutely finest swordsmen in the country and an artist of unique talents. For all the security that Hyogonosuke and others of his clan must have felt at the patronage of the Tokugawa, one wonders if this master of the Owari branch of the Yagyu did not feel a great respect—and perhaps a pinch of envy—concerning Musashi’s independence and freedom.

  At any rate, these two men, both accomplished in their arts and steeped in years of discipline, must have shared a deep appreciation of the other’s experience. No doubt their disciples were anxiously waiting in the wings for the match that would prove one man superior to the other, but they would be disappointed. What the two swordsmen had understood was that each was a master who was truly beyond any dualistic consideration or comparison. There was no need to prove their skill, and so they simply passed the afternoon as they did. Any voyeuristic hopes that their disciples might have had—or any that we may have today—would go unfulfilled.

  ON TO KOKURA

  Even after Sekigahara and the battles at Osaka Castle, the political map was changing. The Tokugawa were always seeking opportunities to bolster their own position and were constantly making efforts to secure total hegemony. One of those efforts would affect Musashi directly, and took place in Kyushu, not far from the very place where he had made himself so famous years earlier.

  Kato Kiyomasa, who was one of the Toyotomi family’s greatest allies and well known for his ferocity and courage in battle, had died, perhaps as early as 1611. Now, although Kato had sided with the Tokugawa at Sekigahara and was given a woman in marriage who had been brought up by Ieyasu, his real feelings and loyalty toward the shogunate were never quite felt to be totally reliable. When he died, possibly by poisoning, his son Tadahiro took charge of their fief at Kumamoto in Kyushu, but with an uneasy status in regard to the Tokugawa. Finally, whil
e traveling from Kumamoto to Edo in 1632, Tadahiro was arrested and accused of conspiring against Tokugawa Iemitsu. In the end, his fief was dismantled and he was sent into exile at Tsuruoka in Dewa, where he would die twenty-one years later.

  In 1632, Musashi’s old friend, Ogasawara Tadazane, was transferred by the Tokugawa from Akashi to Kokura, the geographically sensitive fief at the straits between the main Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Kyushu, which was the center of foreign trade and the point closest to Korea and the Chinese mainland. This fief was vacated in October by the Hosokawa, who, it will be recalled, had ruled the area during the time of the fight at Ganryu Island. They, in turn, were moved into the larger fief at Kumamoto, to take over what the Kato had formerly governed.

  In 1634, Musashi came to visit his adopted son Iori and his old friend Tadazane, and was received warmly by the new daimyo of Kokura Castle. Predictably, a sword match was arranged with one of Tadazane’s own instructors, no doubt to satisfy Tadazane’s curiosity about the man’s ability. This was Takada Mataemon, who was five years younger than Musashi and a skilled practitioner of the Hozoin Style of spear technique. The bout was set up and witnessed personally by Tadazane—but, after three rounds, Mataemon suddenly threw down his spear and yelled, “I’m beat!” Tadazane was somewhat surprised and quickly reminded Mataemon that no victor had yet been determined. Mataemon replied that a spear, because of its length, should have a sevenfold advantage over a sword, and then continued, “I have the longer weapon, but am still unable to win in three rounds. This is the same as losing.” Musashi had made no effort to injure the man, but had simply shown him the futility of his attacks. He was fifty-one years old at this time. Once again Tadazane offered Musashi employment, and once again the latter refused. Instead he accepted guest status at Kokura, with its concomitant freedom of movement.