The Lone Samurai

by William Scott Wilson

  Nevertheless, this is a matter of having him learn how to cross swords in battle, so there is no point called “the entrance to the interior.”

  In my style, there is neither entrance nor depth to the sword, and there is no ultimate stance. There is only seeing through to its virtues with the mind. This is the essence of the martial arts.

  In this way, Musashi taught each of his disciples individually at his dojo, judging each man for what would be appropriate or inappropriate for him to learn. Hating the hypocrisy and showmanship of other schools, he refused to make his disciples sign the usual blood oaths of secrecy and did not titillate them with promises of hidden principles and techniques to come. He was honest and understanding and did not push students to the point of collapse, as some teachers did then and do today. His approach was simple and direct.

  Stances, for example, are limited to five: the Upper Stance (jodan), the Middle Stance (chudan), the Lower Stance (gedan), the Left-side Stance (hidariwakigamae), and the Right-side Stance (migiwakigamae). “There are no other stances than these five. No matter which of these stances you take, you should not think of the stance itself, but rather that you are going to cut down your opponent.” Moreover, the stances are not essential in themselves, but can be adapted to suit the circumstances a practitioner encounters; as necessary, stances may be substituted one for another, or subtly altered. The point Musashi constantly drove home to his disciples was the importance of not becoming attached to even the simplest of techniques. Thus, all stances became one (or none) in his teaching of the Stance/No-Stance.

  The same principle applied to the Two-Sword techniques that Yoriyuki, the Terao brothers, and the others all learned. Some of these, which have now been taken up and given names by styles that splintered off from the Niten Ichi-ryu Musashi taught, are as follows:

  The Jumonji (“cross”) technique: The long and short swords are combined to make a cross. The practitioner waits for his opponent to attack, then pushes the opponent’s sword aside with the short sword and at the same time strikes with the long sword.

  The Taka no Ha (“hawk wing“) technique: The practitioner advances with both swords crossed in front of him. That is, the tip of the short sword held in the left hand points to the right, and the tip of the long sword held in the right hand points to the left. The instant the opponent attacks, the cross of the two swords is opened up. The form of this move is like the spreading of a hawk’s wings.

  The Hiryuken (“flying dragon”) technique: This was also called the Shuriken-uchi (“shuriken throw”). The practitioner throws the short sword like a shuriken. The short sword can either be brandished in front and then thrown or, while the long sword is revolved above, thrown from the left. This is meant not so much to hit the opponent as to destroy his stance.

  The Ryusetsuto (“snow on the willow”) technique: The practitioner takes a stance in which the left side of the body is in front, with the short sword thrust forward, and the long sword is held to the right and back. When the opponent strikes in an effort to brush away the short sword, one drops that sword on purpose. In other words, losing the sword does not matter; rather it should fall from the hand “as the snow would fall from a willow branch.” The opponent’s blade will cut through a void without resistance, and at that instant, one strikes him with the long sword.

  None of these techniques, however, was absolute. What was important in their execution was the same as in suibokuga: keeping the body fluid and the mind totally unmoved.

  Thus, Musashi spent his late fifties teaching, painting, meditating, practicing tea, and writing poetry, among many other endeavors. He also advised Tadatoshi’s son, Mitsuhisa, from time to time and participated in the activities of the fief. One interesting episode indicates that, although old and sick, he was still a man to be reckoned with.

  On the third night of the New Year during this time, a ceremony of the first recitation of Noh drama was held at Mitsuhisa’s Flower Garden Mansion, and Musashi attended. Before the standard formalities had begun, a certain Shimizu Hoki, who held the rank of group leader, yelled over from his seat to Musashi, “There’s a story going around that when you fought Ganryu years ago, Ganryu managed to strike first! What do you say to that?” Musashi said nothing, but picked up a lamp and went straight to where Hoki was sitting. “When I was young, I had a kind of abscess on my head called a ‘lotus root,’” Musashi said. “Because of the marks from that abscess, I’ve been unable to shave my forehead and have had to keep a full head of hair. In my fight with Ganryu, he used a real sword while I used a wooden one, so if he had struck first I would still have a scar. Take a good look.” So saying, with his left hand holding the lamp, he pulled his hair back with his right hand and thrust his head into Hoki’s face. Hoki drew back and said, “There’s no scar that I can see.” Musashi, however, pressed him further and in a quiet voice ordered, “Take a careful look, please.” When Hoki said, “I have checked and I am sure,” Musashi adjusted the lamp and returned to his seat, smoothing down his hair, calm and composed. The records note that “of all the samurai in attendance, there was not one whose hands were not sweating in breathless suspense.”

  By the early fall of 1643, however, when Musashi was sixty years old, he understood that his remaining time was limited. On October 10, he once again climbed Mount Iwato, prayed to the Iwato Kannon, “bowed in veneration to Heaven and stood before the Buddha” in an act of purification, and began to compose his literary legacy, The Book of Five Rings. He would now spend two years in meditation on his life and experiences, writing what he felt could be transmitted in words in the five short scrolls that made up this work. As he dipped his brush into the ink and wrote out the characters in his unique hand, he would have had no idea of the kind of interest that would be garnered by this effort, not only in Japan, but far beyond his own place and time.

  THE FIVE-STORIED PAGODA

  Musashi wrote The Book of Five Rings as a harmony of five chapters, with the image of the five rings of the title being related to the five-storied pagoda or stupa. The structure of the stupa traditionally symbolizes the true reality or expression of the universe, from the fundamental to the ethereal: earth, water, fire, wind, and the Void. None of these elements can exist independently, and all make their transformations according to circumstances and in accordance with each other. The chapters—actually individual scrolls—of Musashi’s book were composed with this same interdependence in mind.

  In the first chapter of his book, the Earth chapter, Musashi gave a brief summary of the contents of each chapter. The Earth chapter, he says, is an outline of the Way of the Martial Arts and of his own style. The Water chapter contains the principles of swordsmanship (“With the one, know the ten thousand”). The Fire chapter is concerned with victory or defeat in battle. The Wind chapter is on the other martial arts and their various styles. The Emptiness chapter is written so that readers “might naturally enter the Way of Truth.”

  A fuller summary is as follows:

  In the Earth chapter, Musashi explained the significance of the martial arts as he had come to know them over the course of a half century, stressing the utter necessity of knowing the advantages of the weapons used and the fundamental principles of using them. Likening the martial artist to a master carpenter, he pointed out the relative levels of skill and explained the necessity of knowing one’s tools. As Musashi himself had learned first-hand in his more than sixty bouts and six major military engagements, the martial artist must be practical: partiality towards (or bias against) one weapon or another is anathema, as is one-sidedness of any kind. On the one hand, he urged the student to wield the weapon that would be “fitting to his own abilities.” On the other, he stressed the need to be ambidextrous and the advantages of being able to use two swords at once. The fundamental point of the martial arts, he declared, is to win: “Your real intent should be not to die with weapons uselessly worn at your side.”

  Musashi closed this chapter with rules for putting his m
artial arts into practice, and they are the bedrock of practicality supporting the entire book:

  1. Think without any dishonesty.

  2. Forge yourself in the Way.

  3. Touch upon all of the arts.

  4. Know the Ways of all occupations.

  5. Know the advantages and disadvantages of everything.

  6. Develop a discerning eye in all matters.

  7. Understand what cannot be seen by the eye.

  8. Pay attention to even small things.

  9. Do not involve yourself with the impractical.

  In the Water chapter, Musashi related the philosophy and the practice of his own style of swordsmanship, the Niten Ichi-ryu. This included the practical measures and practices for mental attitude, body posture, use of the eyes and feet, and the various ways of striking with the sword. In other martial arts, instructors taught their students to make extraordinary changes in both their mental attitudes and their body postures to adapt to the extraordinary circumstances of combat. Musashi, however, concluded that one’s mind and body should be changed very little, if at all, from everyday attitudes. According to his experience, both body and mind “should be at peace and unwobbling.”

  This is to say that Musashi cautioned the student against being needlessly tense or lax, and advocated adaptability to any situation. Concentrate on a ploy, a stance, or a place on the opponent’s body, and your actions will coagulate and bring about your defeat. This was a teaching he held in common with the Zen priest Takuan, the fundamental point being to let both body and mind work freely, and not to allow them to be “caught” anywhere at all.

  In the Water chapter, Musashi taught various stances and strikes that the student was to practice day and night. Still, the culmination of these was to be in the above-mentioned Stance/No-Stance and in the No-Thought/No-Concept Strike. Perhaps he was remembering the fight at the Ichijoji temple with the Yoshioka clan when he wrote, “It is best to think that one will cut a man down without considering a stance.”

  In the heat of battle, one does not have time to think about form, but only strikes his opponent down; and the practitioner’s aim is not correct movement, but winning. Thus the student leaves by the same door through which he entered, and is no different than before. Yet, having internalized all of his practices, he is totally changed.

  In the Fire chapter, Musashi wrote about the strategies and practical applications of combat, and developed the extrapolation of the “large martial art” from the “small martial art.” This chapter begins with a section entitled “On Place,” which considered the advantages and disadvantages of light sources and obstacles in the immediate area of an encounter. Musashi described this with such concrete examples that the reader can visualize situations the swordsman had experienced and the ways that he might have come to these insights. He made a subtle shift here, however, demonstrating that geographical advantages are psychological, and not just physical advantages, and he quickly moved to an emphasis on psychological techniques that continues throughout the chapter.

  Taking the initiative, breaking the opponent’s rhythm, checking stalemates, agitating or confusing the opponent, beating him down beyond his ability to recover—all of these are stressed as the psychological components of battle necessary to gain the victory. And yet, much as in the previous chapter on stances and strikes, he advises: “In order to win, do not select a method.”

  This is psychology at its best. It is also the foundation of Musashi’s martial art and its very point of departure.

  A reading of Musashi’s life shows that he was a master of psychology as a technique, and that he used it time and again. The Yoshioka fell to it, as did even the Demon of the Western Provinces, Sasaki Kojiro. Although Musashi could have relied on strength and speed—recall that he was described as being big-boned, remarkably strong, yet nimble—he used strategy instead. As he wrote in the Wind chapter, “In my martial art, it is essential . . . that you bend and warp your opponent, taking the victory by twisting and distorting your opponent’s mind.”

  When Musashi was sitting high up in the Reigan Cave writing The Book of Five Rings, there were a great number of competing schools of swordsmanship, each claiming superiority over the others by virtue of some hidden way of grasping the sword or some secret stance. In Kyushu, both the Shinkage-ryu and the Taisha-ryu were popular; it will be remembered that Hosokawa Tadatoshi himself had studied the former style and been very satisfied with it, leaving it only when Musashi defeated his own Yagyu-appointed sparring partner. In Higo Kumamoto, a sizeable and strategically important castle town, there were any number of stylists who had hung out shingles and were doing their best to attract students with flashy techniques and promises of the “deepest hidden traditions.” In his Wind chapter, Musashi exposes the failings and contrivances of these other schools, with the undercurrent of thought that is expressed clearly in the Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese classic: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you will not be endangered in a hundred battles.”

  The danger Musashi alludes to here, however, was more concerned with what the swordsman might do to himself if he considered the “heresies” of other schools to be the True Way. In the beginning Musashi states the thrust of the chapter quite concisely: “The other schools get along with this as a performance art, as a method of making a living, as a colorful decoration, or as a means of forcing flowers to bloom. Yet, can it be the True Way if it has been made into a saleable item?”

  This is followed by a very crucial point: “Moreover, the other martial arts in the world only give fine attention to swordsmanship: teaching ways of handling the sword, body postures or hand positions. Can you understand how to win from such things? None of them is the unfailing Way.”

  Thus, in exposing the faults of other styles, Musashi criticized hypocrisy, the kind of thinking that limits the martial arts to sword technique and, most importantly, the deep attachment to form and equipment that could scotch a student’s freedom of movement and mind. Other schools taught absolutes in terms of a certain length of the sword, a special stance, or in a secret way of fixing the eyes. Musashi pointed out the failings in techniques themselves and in the insistence on using a certain technique or weapon regardless of the circumstances. Musashi’s main concern was practicality, and in this chapter he demonstrated the impracticality of some of the more esoteric approaches to the martial arts.

  The Emptiness chapter provides in very few words a frame of meditation for the philosophical foundation of the preceding four chapters. It is a description of the Great Way in which Musashi’s Way is deeply rooted. Emptiness is Existence, Existence is Emptiness, and attachment is the great heresy. The Book of Five Rings has been an article of daily meditation and recitation for sword practitioners over the centuries, much as the Heart Sutra has been for Buddhists all over the world; and the Emptiness chapter is the perfect parallel to the mantra at the end of that sutra.

  It is natural that this chapter would be Buddhist in its orientation. Musashi lived within the context of Buddhism all his life, from the Pure Land Buddhism of his parents to the Rinzai Zen of his friend Takuan and the Hosokawa clan. Moreover, his students would have been familiar with the concepts in this chapter, as would most educated and cultured people of his time.

  Yet, if the vocabulary is Buddhist, the phrasing is pure Musashi, each sentence supporting and deepening the principles of his Way. At its center, the chapter points directly to the martial arts, to the art of Musashi’s life, and to the mature understanding that he gained by the final years of his life. The Emptiness chapter1 brings The Book of Five Rings around in a full circle to the Earth chapter again. It is the perfect enso (circle of enlightenment),2 giving the work a center that is everywhere and that cannot be pinned down. The Emptiness chapter is the blade and the grip of the sword, the hand that grasps it, and the mind that informs it all.

  Make the heart of truth your Way, . . . Accordingly, you will make Emptiness the Way, and see the Way as Emptiness.
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  THE CONCEPT OF THE FIVE RINGS IN ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

  Traveling the backroads of Japan or wandering through the temple precincts there, one often finds five-tiered stone monuments called stupas. These can range from two to more than ten feet high and they are often made of plain granite or some other hard stone. Stupas are descended from original monuments that held relics of the Buddha and, later, his saints. Believers consider them to hold the actual presence of the Buddha or his Truth. There is an interesting connection between this ubiquitous monument and The Book of Five Rings that is worthy of note.

  When the monk Kukai returned to Japan from China in C.E. 806, he brought with him an understanding of a new, esoteric form of Buddhism that he called the Shingon, or True Word, sect. Kukai was not only a devout Buddhist but a brilliant teacher, and an artist. He is credited with having created the kana system of Japanese orthography (the syllabaries that are used together with kanji), and is considered the patron saint of calligraphy. The Shingon sect grew rapidly in importance during his lifetime and gained favor especially among the aristocracy, who loved its rituals and artistic representations. Kukai taught that the esoteric meanings of Shingon could be conveyed not in wordy explanations, but rather through art. This notion of Truth through Art had a direct appeal to Japanese sensibilities, and the basic assumptions of Shingon have always been a strong undercurrent in Japanese culture, despite the later ascendancy of the Zen and Pure Land sects of Buddhism. Even the tea ceremony, with its well-known connections to Zen, probably in fact owes its aesthetic foundations more to Shingon than to Zen.