Another woman who helps Musashi to a full understanding of the Way is not a Buddhist devotee at all, but the courtesan Yoshino Dayu. Invited to the pleasure quarters by Koetsu, Musashi is introduced to the charms of a geisha house. He participates only minimally, and halfway through the night excuses himself, secretly going off and defeating Yoshioka Denshichiro. Upon his return, he is left with the beautiful courtesan. She invites him to enjoy the evening with her, but he refuses, and she senses his extreme inner tension. In a dramatic moment, Yoshino uses a short sword to split open a lute, and explains the source of the beauty and variety of its tone:
“To put it in another way, the tonal richness comes from there being a certain freedom of movement, a certain relaxation at the ends of the core. It’s the same with people. In life, we must have flexibility. Our spirits must be able to move freely. To be too stiff and rigid is to be brittle and lacking in responsiveness.”8
Although Musashi is unable to respond to this advice that particular night, it moves him to his very core. As a student of life, Yoshikawa’s Musashi takes his instructions from every source possible, from priest or prostitute, without prejudice.
Musashi is instructed by a number of unlikely scenes and objects encountered in his wanderings: the total concentration of a potter, the caustic comments on the samurai’s soul by a sword-polisher, the cut stem of a peony sent to the Yoshioka by Yagyu Sekishusai, and even his own plowing of the earth. One of the most dramatic of these is the wordless instruction he receives from the Zen Buddhist priest Gudo. Musashi has been experiencing extreme self-doubt and has been following the priest, imploring him to impart some wisdom, anything to put his mind at ease. Although Gudo has rebuffed him almost violently, taunting him with the Zen phrase that he had “not one thing” to offer,9 Musashi continues to dog the priest’s tracks. Finally, in a moment of exasperation, Gudo takes a stick and traces a circle in the dirt around Musashi. Then, tossing away the stick, he walks away. Musashi is outraged. Is this all he gets for his persistence and dedication? Finally, his anger subsiding, he looks at the circle again.
The circle—no matter how you looked at it—the circular line was . . . a circle. There was no end, no indentation, no extremity, no wandering. If you expanded this circle out infinitely, it was the universe itself. If you contracted it, it became his own one small point. He himself was a circle, the universe was a circle. They could not be two things. They were one.
Finally drawing his swords, he checks his shadow within this circle.
The shadow changed again, but the image of the universe—not by one whit. The two swords were but one. And they were part of the circle.
Yoshikawa read and reread The Book of Five Rings, carefully weaving Musashi’s principles into the words and actions of Takuan, Nikkan, Myoshu, Yoshino Dayu, Gudo, and the others. In this way he gave us a much more realistic picture of the historical Musashi than the professional storytellers had done.
Or did he? In The Book of Five Rings, Musashi informs us that between the ages of thirteen and twenty-eight or twenty-nine he “fought as many as sixty matches,” never losing once.
If Musashi had engaged in more than sixty matches during that fifteen-year period, he would have averaged about four bouts a year; and both this total number and the average are far more than the number of bouts Yoshikawa describes in his novel. Moreover, while the conversations with Takuan and the others give a wonderful fictional account of how Musashi came to understand his art, his own words indicate that he began to give serious consideration to those principles only after the age of thirty, after his fight with Sasaki Kojiro. In this respect, at least, the professional storytellers may have been a bit closer to the truth.
Yoshikawa did ample research, however, and the fights he described were for the most part the ones mentioned in the various records of Musashi’s deeds. Although the fight with Arima Kihei is given only two sentences, others are covered with a combination of research and imagination. The description of the dojo at the Hozoin temple and its background, for example, is well researched; and the reader feels that Yoshikawa may have witnessed a number of such matches himself and experienced the tension and energy involved.
As a serial novelist, Yoshikawa drew out the suspense leading up to the main action scenes as long as possible. Thus, while we are introduced to the Yoshioka clan on page 108 of the English translation, we do not get to the fight with Seijuro until almost two hundred pages later, and the final battle with Genjiro and his eighty or so swordsmen does not occur until well past the middle of the book. With Yoshikawa’s delightful combination of action and philosophical assessment of the various players, however, the reader is never disappointed or bored; the historical background and minor characters we meet along the way make the journey every bit as interesting as Musashi’s clashes with his various opponents.
The climactic duel with Kojiro is saved for the final five pages of the novel, and this is appropriate, as the first part of the historical Musashi’s life also seemed to end on that small island in the Kanmon Straits. As he wrote in the introduction to The Book of Five Rings, it was from this point that he began to think back over his life; and it was also from this point that he stopped defining the victory of his bouts as the injury or death of his opponents.
Yoshikawa Eiji took the image of Musashi and changed it radically from the way it had been portrayed for over two hundred years. Within the medium of a serialized newspaper novel, he was able to give the dramatic/fictional Musashi a depth he could not have attained within the time constraints of kodan, kabuki, or bunraku; he was also able to include Musashi’s principles, Zen Buddhist philosophy, Edo-period historical background, and the personalities of Takuan, Hon’ami Koetsu, Yoshino Dayu, and a host of minor characters who may have encircled Musashi during his time. As a historical novel, it only seems to improve with each rereading.
But in Miyamoto Musashi, Yoshikawa also created an individual seeking values and “the Way,” whose path is marked not only by successes but with failure and doubts; and in that sense, it is more than just a vastly entertaining book, but a spiritually inspiring one as well. Koetsu, it will be recalled, sees Musashi as not much more than a common man, but one who, “understanding his own common nature, is out to polish it unceasingly.” With that determination, discipline, and search for higher values, however, Musashi eventually transcends the rough material with which he begins and overcomes even the most formidable of obstacles. In the end, Yoshikawa assesses his victory over Sasaki Kojiro:
What Kojiro believed in was the sword of technique and strength; what Musashi believed in was the sword of the spirit. That was their only difference.
STILL OTHER IMAGES
As of this writing, Yoshikawa’s Miyamoto Musashi has never gone out of print, and it is Yoshikawa’s Musashi who first comes to the minds of most people in Japan and abroad. But for all the popularity of his novel, Yoshikawa did not hold a copyright on the subject, and a number of other writers tried their hands at recreating Musashi, with differing results.
Shibata Renzaburo, for example, in his Miyamoto Musashi, Duelist (1971), presents Musashi as a hard and stern swordsman who bears the guilt of having killed his own mother. In this three-volume work, Shibata describes Musashi making a living for himself during his ascetic wanderings, depicting the economic realities of the shugyosha’s life. Interestingly, this author portrays Sasaki Kojiro as the son of a Japanese mother and foreign father, like the hero Shibata is most famous for creating, the nihilistic swordsman Nemuri Kyoshiro.
In yet another Miyamoto Musashi, author Tsumoto Akira follows Musashi’s sixty bouts, beginning with his fight with Arima Kihei and finishing with his defeat of Sasaki Kojiro. This novel follows Musashi over the length and breadth of Japan as he seeks out and tests himself against men of strength, and in this way fills in a number of the gaps in Yoshikawa’s work. Tsumoto’s Musashi is depicted as a strong swordsman, but also as a man who sought out the unusual.
Sasazawa Saho�
�s Miyamoto Musashi began with the publication of the first volume in 1986, and was brought to completion 5,251 pages later with Volume 8 in 1997. It is the longest of the novels concerning Musashi. This work highlights Musashi’s later years, after the fight at Ganryu Island, and follows with some accuracy the extant records of the swordsman’s life during this period. Views on the fight with Kojiro not brought out in other novels are explored here, and Sasakawa’s novel gives a sense of what Musashi’s life must have been like during his final years in Kumamoto.
Another novel about Musashi after Ganryu Island is the single-volume The Last Days of Miyamoto Musashi (1959) by Nakanishi Seizo. Seizo writes about the complications that continued for Musashi even after he reached a degree of Zen enlightenment, and his choice of the Reigan Cave as a place to die. This work is considered a masterpiece for its psychological portrayal of Musashi in his old age.
A number of writers attempted to establish differing views of Musashi. One of these was Mine Ryuichiro, whose Miyamoto Musashi (1993), a ten-volume work, portrayed the swordsman as having a very dark side. In this novel, Musashi is self-reliant and confident, yet the victim of a fear and uneasiness he cannot escape. Wavering between these psychological extremes, he continues from bout to bloody bout, driven by a passion that is understood as an almost sexual drive. Although Mine’s Musashi is a clouded figure, his fear and uncertainty give him a decidedly more human quality.
Yet another approach to Musashi is found in an interesting newspaper serial novel, The Two Musashis (1956–57), written by Gomi Yasusuke for the Yomiuri Shinbun. Gomi theorizes that there were actually two Musashis, the Hirata Musashi and the Okamoto Musashi, with very different personalities and styles. Although the book is definitely fiction—Sasaki Kojiro kills both men’s teachers, and there are duels within the Yagyu compound and a final match between the two Musashis on top of the volcano, Mount Aso—the theory itself is neither unique nor as far-fetched as it might seem. Records kept during the Edo period were far from infallible, and there has always been speculation that there were two or three swordsmen during that time who took the name Musashi. Also, stories about Musashi seem to illustrate two very different aspects of his personality—hot-blooded intensity and calm self-possession. And last, there are the two different traditions of his birthplace: Sakushu (Mimasaka) and Banshu (Harima).
Finally, although the catalog of books about Musashi is nearly endless, mention should made of the current best-selling comic book by Inoue Takehiko, Vagabond. This multivolume series is based on the Yoshikawa Musashi, but with a bit more sex and a lot more gore packed in. Its limited dialogue and narrative are no substitute for Yoshikawa Eiji’s work, but there is no denying that it is extraordinarily well drawn—it received the 2000 Media Arts award for manga from the Japanese Ministry of Culture, and the Kodansha award for best manga. Lest the reader look with condescension on the concept of comic books in a country with one hundred percent literacy, there are currently over twenty-two million volumes of the series in print. Indeed, Vagabond is credited as being influential in introducing Musashi to an entirely new generation. Manga, however, has not been the only visual medium involved in this mission.
MUSASHI AT THE MOVIES
In 1954, the director Inagaki Hiroshi introduced Miyamoto Musashi, the first of his cinematic trilogy based on the Yoshikawa novel. This movie was soon edited and subtitled for the foreign market, and subsequently won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Suddenly Musashi leapt the borders of Japan and was known not only to a few students of Japanese art or swordsmanship, but to a worldwide moviegoing audience that was just developing a taste for things Japanese. In this way, Musashi was introduced to America and Europe in the captivating form of the actor Mifune Toshiro.
Ruggedly handsome, brooding, and full of explosive energy, Mifune was the perfect man for the role. He exemplified everything the overseas audiences could imagine the swordsman to be, and the two subsequent episodes of the trilogy, Duel at Ichijoji Temple and Duel at Ganryu Island, cemented his identification with the role. With one relatively obscure exception, no other subtitled version of the cinematic Musashi is available even today. Thus, for the non-Japanese audience, Mifune was Musashi.
This was not the case for the Japanese audience. Before Inagaki’s 1954 work, there had already been at least thirty films about Musashi, and, following the trilogy, there were fourteen or fifteen more. Mifune, as much as he seemed to embody the spirit of Musashi, was only one of many excellent actors who took the role, and was not necessarily considered the best by one and all.
The first “moving picture” about Musashi was entitled Miyamoto Musashi’s Subjugation of the Lustful Old Man,10 and was performed by marionettes rather than actors. Produced in 1908, it was based on the professional storytellers’ versions of Musashi’s life, as were all of the films on Musashi until the late 1930s. The themes of these movies—which after 1908 were acted by people rather than puppets—were often the same, working over various renditions of the swordsman’s subjugation of the rake, quelling mountain bandits, or taking revenge on his parents’ killer. A number of celebrated actors of the times took Musashi’s role, including Onoe Matsunosuke, Kataoka Chiezo and Arashi Kanjuro.
The sea change came in 1940 when Kataoka Chiezo took the role of the Yoshikawa Musashi in a film trilogy, directed by Inagaki Hiroshi. Chiezo had played Musashi before, as had Arashi Kanjuro, but this extended movie took on the proportions of the novel itself in terms of both length and Musashi’s character development. Interestingly, Inagaki’s direction still owed much to kabuki in the sense that the film’s scenes were encapsulated dramatic moments of the story rather than continuous moments of a comprehensible whole. The audience was assumed to be familiar with the novel, and Inagaki’s work brought them dramatic renditions of the most interesting and moving scenes of the story. It is still considered a masterpiece, and Chiezo’s aristocratic mien gives Musashi an air that contrasts strongly with the earthier characterizations by Mifune and others.
Inagaki, who, like Chiezo, practically made a career of Musashi films, was a master of sword choreography. During the filming of this 1940 trilogy, he often consulted with his friend, Ono Kumao of Kyoto, a seventh-degree black belt in kendo. Thus the action scenes were much more realistic in style and rhythm than the usual chanbara, or swordfighting films.
By the 1950s, Musashi’s character was beginning to expand again, and, during that time, a number of directors made films that either broadly interpreted Yoshikawa’s work or followed other writers altogether. Two examples of this trend were Mizoguchi Kenji’s Miyamoto Musashi, based on Kikuchi Kan’s theory that Musashi was not the strong swordsman people imagined, and Mori Kazuo’s The Coward at Ganryu Island. In the mid-fifties, the novelist Koyama Katsukiyo wrote The Young Musashi, and later Musashi After That (6 volumes); both were made into movies showing a different look at Musashi’s life, the latter as The Great Swordsman of the Two-Sword Style, starring, once again, Kataoka Chiezo. Finally, 1959 saw the release of The Night Before Ganryu Island, directed by Osone Tatsuo, in which Musashi becomes almost neurotic in his attempt to break through Kojiro’s technique.
New interest was also taken in Sasaki Kojiro, and a number of movies were produced during this same period centering around Musashi’s archenemy, portraying him as a sympathetic character. One of these, Sasaki Kojiro (1950), another film in three parts directed by Musashi specialist Inagaki Hiroshi, was based on an original work by Murakami Genzo.11 In this story, Sasaki was portrayed by the handsome kabuki heartthrob Nakamura Jakuemon. Unlike the single-minded, woman-spurning Musashi, he follows his dream of a life of both love affairs and the sword. After a number of sad affairs, he is finally cut down at Ganryu Island, and dies romantically, grasping a white chrysanthemum on a pebbled beach. The high-strung Musashi is played by a young Mifune Toshiro.
One of the most beautifully photographed and choreographed films of this genre is The Two Musashis (1960), based on the Gomi Yasusuke novel. The olde
r and more stable Musashi is played by Hasegawa Kazuo, who does not bring much character to the part; but the young saké-drinking, woman-loving Musashi is portrayed with wonderful intensity by Ichikawa Raizo, another actor from a kabuki background, who is most famous for his role as a blind swordsman in the Daibosatsu Toge series. Katsu Shintaro, who made his career playing another blind swordsman in the Zato Ichi movies, plays a nasty but not exactly riveting Sasaki Kojiro. The very best part of this film is the final showdown between the two Musashis atop the barren and sulphur-fluming Mount Aso. And, in splitting Musashi’s character in two, the film itself is possibly the last word in terms of “the other Musashi.” Nevertheless, filmmakers did not stop there.
THE ACTORS
Although numerous actors and directors have added their own adaptations and interpretations to the legend of Musashi, three men are especially noted for their portrayals of Musashi. The first, Kataoka Chiezo, is remembered, especially by the older generation, for the almost aristocratic dignity he brought to the role. Indeed, his ability to project a Musashi of innate quiet strength was considered a liability in his portrayal of the young spitfire Takezo suspended from a tree in the temple yard. Temper tantrums did not fit Chiezo’s own personality as well as did scenes of controlled confrontation or introspection. The genius of the second actor, Mifune Toshiro, was in manifesting the wildness of Musashi’s youth and grimness in the face of battle. Mifune displayed the unyielding aspect of Musashi’s personality, and his angst; but critics have commented that he lacked the versatility to bring a broader range of expression to his Musashi.
The actor considered to have given Musashi’s character the most realistic development was Nakamura Kinnosuke, also known later as Yorozuya Kinnosuke. His broad portrayal of Musashi was doubtless due in part to his fine acting abilities and his background in kabuki. But it was also due to the five-year span necessary to complete the cinematic version of the Yoshikawa Musashi story. Directed by Uchida Tomu, this five-part epic was produced at the rate of one film per year, beginning in 1961 with Miyamaoto Musashi, and continuing with Duel at Hannya Pass, Initiation to the Two-Sword Style, Duel at Ichijoji, and Duel at Ganryu Island. Not only did the length of the production allow for a much more complete rendition of Yoshikawa’s work, but the duration of the filming provided the time for this excellent actor to mature within the role. After nearly eight hours of cinema, it is little wonder that many Japanese moviegoers now saw Kinnosuke as the definitive Musashi. This is truly one of the most memorable depictions of the other Musashi, and Kinnosuke was ably assisted with outstanding performances by Mikuni Rentaro as Takuan, and a much older Kataoka Chiezo as Musashi’s benefactor Nagaoka Sado.
The Lone Samurai Page 20
