The Lone Samurai

by William Scott Wilson

  Part II takes the reader through Musashi’s numerous adventures on the way to Ganryu Island and is delivered in the same style, with little character development for the hero but plenty of action. This is, of course, exactly what the kabuki, bunraku, and storytellers’ audiences were expecting, along with the righteous and sometimes tragic underpinnings of the adauchi, or vendetta.

  Musashi travels on, this time to meet Yoshioka Kenbo (Kenpo). The text here adds even more historical confusion by stating that Kenbo was a former student of Musashi’s, but a master of Munisai’s style, and that he was an upright, yet licentious, man. Kenbo and Musashi have a match, are mutually impressed, and spend a few happy days together.

  Musashi then resumes his travels. He is nearly boiled to death while trapped in a bath by an envious sword instructor, saves a young woman who has been kidnapped by thieves, and subdues and reforms a band of robbers deep in the mountains. Each adventure is related with great flourish and colorful language, and it is easy to imagine the rapt Edo-period audiences listening to these stories in humble venues.

  In literature it seems that every swordsman must meet a legendary teacher or two to learn the deepest secrets of the trade, and the Kokonjitsuroku eiyubidan is no exception. In the next episode, Musashi makes the acquaintance of an old “priest” who first modestly denies any great knowledge of swordsmanship with a quote that carries a warning:

  “Ah, well! The time was when I was fond of fencing, but, as the saying is, ‘An inexpert fencer comes in for heavy blows.’ This was my experience, and so I gave it up.”

  After some rude prodding by our hero, however, the old man demonstrates a marvelous skill in swordsmanship, takes Musashi in as a disciple, and teaches him the very heart of his style. When Musashi finally takes his leave and asks his teacher’s name, the old priest replies:

  My name I cannot reveal to you. All I can tell you is that I am a single sword [Itto] that has buried itself in the mountains.

  From this hint, Musashi—and the audience—deduces that the old man is Yagoro Tomokage, or Ito Ittosai (1560–1632),5 one of the most famous swordsmen of all time, who lived to over ninety years of age.

  Through another series of adventures, Musashi makes his way to the isolated house of yet another old man, apparently a retired warrior. By one machination or another, the old man agrees to a bout with Musashi, but confronts him with only a potlid. Musashi is indignant with this approach, but the old man says:

  “What stuff! . . . What’s the difference whether a spear, sword, halberd, stick or a potlid be used? The principle is the same. If you have any doubt about it, then, see how it acts.”

  The old man then beats the young swordsman so soundly that he faints. Upon regaining consciousness, Musashi is quick to apologize, stating:

  “Though I possess eyes, it was as though I had none . . . for I failed to see that I was in the presence of a superior man.”

  This scene was one of the most popular in the storytellers’ repertoire, and was often illustrated on the handbills advertising kodan performances. Musashi is seen coming from behind with his sword raised over his shoulder, ready to strike, while the half-kneeling, long-haired old man turns with the wooden potlid in hand to ward off the blow. In the corner, the contents of a large iron pot boil away against the snowy cold outside.

  As it turns out, the old man is none other than Tsukahara Bokuden (1489–1571),6 another of Japan’s most legendary swordsmen, whose death, in fact, predated Musashi’s birth by at least thirteen years. The narrator, undaunted by such trivia, tells us that Bokuden was at one time an acquaintance of Munisai’s, and is outraged at the circumstances of his death. He now confers upon Musashi the deepest secret of his style, which is not in actual skill with the sword, but in seeing through to the intentions of one’s opponent. This, it might be recalled, is one of the basic principles of The Book of Five Rings.

  Musashi’s steps now take him closer and closer to Kyushu and his fateful duel on Ganryu Island. Nevertheless, first he must cross over to the island of Shikoku in his search for his opponent, Ganryu. On the ride across the Sea of Harima, the ferry is endangered by a marauding shark, which Musashi kills after leaping into the water with his sword. This story is likely the source for the wonderful woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Miyamoto Musashi’s Subjugation of the Whale, in which Musashi, Ahab-like, stands on the back of a huge whale, driving his sword into its back. Fantastic though Musashi’s life was, there was something about it that moved storytellers to make it still more fantastic and fanciful.

  Sasaki Ganryu meanwhile has also traveled to the west, improved his style by watching and imitating the flight of swallows, and changed his name to Kandayu for fear of being detected by Musashi. He has ingratiated himself with the feudal lord, Kuroda Nagamasa (1568–1623), who refuses to make him a retainer but allows him to stay in Kokura to teach. Here, for lack of a better plan, a somewhat disgruntled Ganryu settles in to live the life of an instructor of swordsmanship.

  By this time, Musashi has returned to the Chugoku area of the main island of Japan and is wending his way toward Kyushu. On a path through the mountains, he meets the famous jujitsu teacher, Sekiguchi Yarokuemon (Sekiguchi Jushin, 1598–1670), who apparently perfected his craft by watching a cat fall from a roof and land safely on all fours. He warns Musashi of Kandayu’s low character, and informs us that Ganryu is actually about forty years old.

  Finally Musashi enters Kokura and decides to stay at an inn that is, serendipitously, run by Munisai’s old servant, Kyusuke. Not recognizing Musashi, Kyusuke talks to him about Ganryu and relates the story of Munisai’s death and the subsequent suicide of Musashi’s elder brother, Seizaburo. At this point, Musashi is at last taken to Ganryu and, after a sequence of harsh words followed by the necessary permissions from their two lords, a match between the two is set.

  In this version of the story, we are told that the fight was set to take place on a small island known as Nadashima, and that the date was set for 18 April 1599, some thirteen years before the actual event. The narrator sets the scene:

  The two fencers had spent a decade of years in preparing for this eventful day. Month by month they had each been improving their styles. Musashi had received the benefit of instruction from the two most noted adepts in the art of fencing that the country contained at the time. Ganryu, on the other hand, had been more incessantly engaged in practicing and testing his style at the fencing schools that he had opened than Musashi’s wandering life admitted of his doing. The two men hated each other with a deadly hatred, which was intensified by the antipathies of their natures. In the conflict that was about to take place, there were to be arrayed, on the one side, perfidy, pomposity, cruelty and utter callousness to most of the nobler feelings of human nature; on the other, honesty, humility, benevolence, and a rare mental and moral refinement. But notwithstanding this, the trial was one of skill and not of moral qualities.

  The outcome of the match was known by the Edo-period audience and is known by the modern reader as well. After a series of exchanges and an intermission for rest, Ganryu executes his tsubame-gaeshi, which here is described as a somersault (this would seem to be indicative of a kabuki or bunraku script), and nearly cuts into Musashi’s leg. Musashi, however, has employed Bokuden’s technique of looking ahead and leaps into the air. The end is near: Ganryu suffers a loss of spirit—“the embryo, as it were, of his defeat”—and Musashi delivers the fatal blows, a left-hand strike to the head followed by a cut across the chest. Musashi then delivers a coup de grâce through Ganryu’s throat and finally cuts off his head.7

  In the final paragraph of Dening’s book, he mentions that Musashi wrote good verses, and notes that “some of his paintings are said to be still extant.” It is remarkable that a foreigner in Japan in the late 1880s, less than thirty years after the country had been opened to outsiders, had even this much information on Musashi.

  No doubt the publication of Dening’s book was noted in Japan. And it is not enti
rely unlikely that a copy of this curious work in English may have found its way into the hands of a young writer by the name of Yoshikawa Eiji, who would, some fifty years later, write the novel through which Musashi is best known today.

  THE YOSHIKAWA MUSASHI

  On 23 August 1935, the writer Yoshikawa Eiji published the first installment of his new serialized novel, Miyamoto Musashi, in the Asahi newspaper. His story would run for 1,013 episodes to 11 July 1939, and become one of the most successful novels in modern Japanese literature. A perennial seller in Japan, it has been translated into a number of foreign languages and has been the basis for innumerable movies, magazine articles, television series, and, currently, the best-selling comic book series, Vagabond. It is through Yoshikawa’s novel and the movies that followed its story line that Musashi’s image is known throughout the world today. It was also through this book that the common view of Musashi changed radically from what it had been for hundreds of years prior to its appearance—section by anxiously awaited section—in the daily newspaper.

  Although editors at the Asahi originally argued for a novel based on the traditional kodan stories, Yoshikawa was determined to provide his readers with an account that would be far less two-dimensional than that of the professional storytellers. Typical of his other historical novels, Yoshikawa based his work for the most part on the known facts of Musashi’s life, then filled in the large gaps with his own imaginative accounts of what could have been. Musashi’s encounters with his opponents are portrayed with psychological sensitivity, he suffers through the same problems of love and desire that ensnare us all and, even though primarily a swordsman, he is described as a man who is curious about and accomplished in cultural pursuits. Musashi becomes a “seeker of the Way,” whom Hon’ami Koetsu assesses as a man of common talents, but who polishes those talents ceaselessly. In short, Musashi becomes wholly human. The problem for the reader is the tendency to believe that Yoshikawa’s Musashi is in fact the historical Musashi. Endlessly entertaining and instructive, it is a story we want to believe is true. At nearly four thousand pages in the original Japanese and abridged to nine hundred and seventy pages in English translation, the story and Musashi have become at least a small part of our lives by the time we reluctantly reach the final paragraphs.

  Yoshikawa’s Miyamoto Musashi begins at the end of the Battle of Sekigahara, with the defeat of the Toyotomi forces and Musashi lying face up in the mud and rain. Although the seventeen-year-old had been brash enough to think that he could make a name for himself in this grisly conflict by simply swinging a sword, Yoshikawa’s young warrior departs from the traditional kodan and kabuki in the very first few lines by reflecting, “What kind of thing is it . . . this movement of Heaven and Earth? The actions of individual human beings are nothing more than a single leaf in the autumn wind.” This sets the tone for the entire four thousand pages: What is the world, and what can a man make of himself in the face of his seeming insignificance? What, really, do we do with our lives?

  The ensuing story centers on Musashi’s determination to polish whatever talents he has and a continuing but often convoluted expansion of his understanding of how he is to apply those talents to the sword. In this way, while Musashi is the hero of the book, determination and understanding are its twin undercurrents, or Musashi’s true two swords, and those attributes are contrasted with the qualities of the characters in the subplots that Yoshikawa weaves into Musashi’s tale.

  Musashi’s boyhood friend, Hon’iden Matahachi, is the archetypical man who passively waits for good fortune to find him. Lazy, impulsive, and without self-discipline, he is the perfect foil for Musashi, and he inevitably ends up disappointed by the poor results of his schemes for quick gain. Along with disappointment, his most outstanding feature is self-pity. With envy, he watches Musashi’s character grow and is unable to understand why he himself slides continually downhill.

  Love, family, and children are symbolized by Otsu, the woman who follows Musashi throughout the twelve-year span of the novel. At first engaged to the feckless Matahachi, she falls in love with Musashi; and her determination to follow him is exceeded only by Musashi’s determination to follow the Way of the Sword. He is not immune to this temptation, however; a major theme of the story is the various ways he deals with his own desire for a normal life and the comforts and distractions it affords.

  The Three Obstructions in our lives, according to Buddhism, are Ignorance, Desire, and Hatred. If the first two of these might roughly be embodied in Matahatchi and Otsu, the third is manifested by an old lady whom Yoshikawa portrays as a figure much like the harpy of Greek epics. This is Osugi, the mother of Matahachi, who is so certain that Musashi was the cause of her son’s debasement that she will do anything to thwart or even kill him. Her hatred and desire for revenge are frightening, if sometimes comical, and her single-mindedness is on a par with that of Otsu.

  Yoshikawa’s Musashi attempts to deal with these three obstructions throughout the book. They are the material and companions of everyday life, and Yoshikawa understood that Musashi would have had to contend with them just as we do. It was his further understanding that dealing with such mundane problems was as much a part of working on the Way of the Sword as were Musashi’s matches. This is a quantum leap beyond the kodan tales and makes Yoshikawa’s story more like our own.

  Another departure Yoshikawa made from the old kodan stories of Musashi was on the subject of teachers. The professional storytellers ignored Musashi’s statement in The Book of Five Rings that he had never “had a teacher . . . in anything at all,” and romantically portrayed the young swordsman as meeting and studying under the greatest masters of the time. Yoshikawa, on the other hand, does not give Musashi instructors in swordsmanship, but rather provides him with instructors in life throughout the novel. These instructors, moreover, are perceived as absolutely necessary to the maturity of Musashi’s art.

  Musashi’s first lesson is about the difference between the true aspects of brute strength and courage. This he receives from the Zen master Takuan, who has captured and tied up the young fugitive, and then suspended him from a high branch of an ancient tree. Musashi feels tricked, but not defeated. Takuan replies:

  “In the long run, it doesn’t make any difference. You were outwitted and out-talked instead of being outpummelled. When you’ve lost, you’ve lost. It would have been crazy of me to try to take you by force. You’re too strong physically. It’s the same with your so-called courage. Your conduct up till now gives no evidence that it’s anything more than animal courage, the kind that has no respect for human values and life. True courage knows fear. It knows how to fear that which should be feared. Honest people value life passionately, they hang on to it like a precious jewel. And they pick the right time and place to surrender it to die with dignity. You were born with physical strength and fortitude, but you lack both knowledge and wisdom . . . people talk about combining the Way of Learning and the Way of the Samurai, but when properly combined, they aren’t two—they’re one. Only one Way.”

  It is this speech that gives the young Musashi the moment to consider his life up to this point, and that provides him with the material for values beyond simply defeating others. It is not the last time in the novel that Takuan will advise Musashi, but it is the hero’s first turning point.

  The next man who instructs Musashi is Nikkan, the old Nichiren priest from Ozoin temple. Musashi has just defeated the head disciple of the Hozoin spearman-priests, but is still inwardly uneasy, especially after having sensed a frightening aggressiveness from the old priest earlier in the day. Meeting with Nikkan that evening, he at first feels that he is being flattered when the old man tells him that he’s too strong. But Nikkan persists with a very simple but fundamental lesson:

  “You’re too strong. Your strength is your problem. You must learn to control it, become weaker.”

  First the foundation of his courage had been attacked by Takuan, and now his strength—one of the central virtue
s of the swordsman—was being called into question by a doddering old man. Sensing Musashi’s doubts, Nikkan invites the swordsman to look into his eyes. Melting before the old man’s gaze, Musashi realizes that he has lost to his advisor and that he had better listen for all he is worth. He later learns that the fearsome feeling he had sensed from Nikkan earlier that day was just a shadow of his own aggressiveness.

  In a following episode, immediately after defeating Yoshioka Seijuro, Musashi happens upon Hon’ami Koetsu and his mother, Myoshu, enjoying an outing for painting and tea. At first alarmed by the young swordsman’s tense aspect, Myoshu quickly warms to him and invites him to her home for a tea ceremony. Watching the elderly woman, now a Buddhist nun, perform the ceremony, Musashi reflects:

  It’s the Way, the essence of art. One has to have it to be perfect at anything.

  Musashi is invited to participate, but protests he is ignorant of the rules and techniques of the art. Myoshu responds with yet another lesson for Musashi:

  “If you become self-conscious about the proper way to drink, you won’t enjoy the tea. When you use a sword, you can’t let your body become too tense. That would break the harmony between the sword and your spirit. Isn’t that right?”