By the late 1960s and early 1970s, film studios in Japan began to lose ground to television, although they continued to produce movies about Musashi. In 1967, Inagaki Hiroshi directed another Sasaki Kojiro, this time with Nakadai Tatsuya as Musashi; in 1969, in the “Traditions of the Great Swordsmen of Japan” series, Mikuni Rentaro played a very different Musashi based on author Shiba Ryotaro’s original work; and in 1971, Uchida Tomu directed A Match with Naked Blades, the story of Musashi’s duel with Shishido Baiken, with Nakamura Kinnosuke once again taking the role of Musashi and Mikuni Rentaro as Baiken. The latter was to be Uchida’s final film, and was produced posthumously, but Musashi was not laid to rest with this famous director.
MUSASHI ON TELEVISION
The Musashi story is still retold to large audiences via television. In 1957, the first television movie of Musashi appeared on Japanese NTV and starred Yasui Shoji. In subsequent years the role has been played by various actors, including Tanba Tetsuro, Ichikawa Ebizo, and Takahashi Koji. Yorozuya Kinnosuke and Kitaoji Kinya both performed in twelve-hour dramas based on the above-mentioned Musashi After That, and so portrayed Musashi at the end of his life as well as his youth.
The commercialization that is part and parcel of television has had mixed results. The extended TBS series “Miyamoto Musashi” produced as the New Year’s “wide cinema” in 2001, for example, included a theme song with electric guitars and refrains in English, several overthe-top performances by supporting actors, and a sweet-faced Kamikawa Takaya—who seemed to have intensely studied the late Bruce Lee’s facial expressions—as Musashi. Nevertheless, it was an actionpacked and interesting production of the Yoshikawa Musashi.
In 2003, NHK television offered its own fifty-two–week series on Musashi.12 Starring kabuki actor Ichikawa Shinnosuke (now Ebizo) in the lead, this presentation generally followed the Yoshikawa novel for the first thirty-eight episodes, but then continued far beyond its climax at Ganryu Island. Each weekly episode was followed by travel information for the various locations connected with Musashi’s life, and the entire country geared up for the Musashi pilgrimages that would ensue.
It is difficult to imagine another character from either history or literature who has so captured the imagination of a people. Miyamoto Musashi did not change the politics or shape events in Japanese history. Nor did he write a work that would affect a genre of literature or poems that would become classics. Yet there is something at the heart of his story that has commanded the attention of the Japanese people and others who have heard it. The story as told in any one iteration—any play, movie, novel, or comic book—is never definitive enough. The story of Musashi, even in its paucity of facts, is much too large to fit once and for all in any single package.
APPENDIX
2
Influences on and Parallels to
The Book of Five Rings
Musashi declared that he had never had a teacher in any “Way,” and with a reading of The Book of Five Rings, it becomes clear that the principles he advocated in his martial art were based in his own practicality and the numerous bouts and battles he had fought throughout his life. But it also seems clear that he was literate and inquisitive, and that one of his fundamental premises was a total rejection of prejudice for or against any particular proposition.
“You should investigate this thoroughly” is repeated more than any other phrase in his book. This is the exhortatory note of Musashi’s philosophy and that of the Zen Buddhism he studied so assiduously. Indeed, he quoted no one in The Book of Five Rings and wrote on his own authority, but this was no doubt to let his disciples know that none of the book’s contents had been taken on faith from former texts or “divine inspirations.” This was a book written of flesh and blood, written for the preservation of the same.
It is not unreasonable, however, to assume that Musashi kept his eyes wide open all his life and rejected nothing out of hand. And if he did not have “teachers” along the way, he certainly was not beyond accepting the influences of certain masters of the arts he admired, nor would he have rejected propositions on the martial arts that appeared reasonable to him and proved to be so.
A reading of Musashi’s story will quickly show that clear influences on his martial art cannot be documented, but it will be instructive to take a short look at four sources that, if not influential, show a strong parallel in cast of mind.
SUN TZU
This ancient Chinese classic on the art of war, the Sun Tzu, was likely read by every serious literate person in the warrior class in both China and Japan. Musashi, too, would have read this seminal work, and judging from its apparent parallels with The Book of Five Rings, not just once or twice. It is not difficult to imagine the solitary swordsman on his long travels throughout Japan, reading and rereading this short but very pithy work, internalizing and working through each phrase and recasting it in the light of his own experiences. Consider the following examples.
We have seen that Musashi’s first premise was that the purpose of the martial arts in combat is victory, not the demonstration of beautiful or dazzling techniques, or sincerity through death. Volume 2 of the Sun Tzu (II, 19) expresses a similar view:
Therefore, what is respected in war is victory, not lengthy [campaigns].
Again, while this may seem self-evident, the fact that two of the most well-respected works on combat in the Far East would state the obvious, may indicate that there is a need to keep this core principle constantly in mind.
Musashi also emphasized in both The Book of Five Rings and “The Way of Walking Alone” that his martial art was to be based on experience, not the supernatural as so many others were; and tradition has him walking away from the temptation to pray to Hachiman for victory before one of the fights with the Yoshioka. One was to depend entirely on himself. Concerning this, the author of the Sun Tzu wrote, in Volume 11:
Prohibit the supernatural and avoid its [concomitant] doubts, and you will avoid disasters until the time you die.
The great general Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) showed his understanding of this principle using reverse psychology. When his troops were unnerved by the bad omen of cawing crows just before a battle, Nobunaga flipped a coin declaring that “heads” would mean their victory, “tails” the victory of their opponents. The coin landed “heads” and his encouraged troops went on the victory, never knowing that Nobunaga’s piece of currency had no “tails” at all.
The Book of Five Rings also places great emphasis on training and discipline, and while these sentences from the Sun Tzu were mentioned in a slightly different context, the phrasing of classical Chinese is so terse and the vocabulary so packed with meaning that one can understand how Musashi might have taken them to fuel his own fires:
Anciently, those who were good in battle first made themselves undefeatable.
For this reason, it is a practical law of war not to rely on the enemy’s not coming, but to rely on the fact that I am waiting for him; not to rely on his not attacking, but to rely on the fact that I, myself, am unassailable.
In the very first section of the Fire chapter, Musashi discusses the need for a source of light, be it the sun or a fire, either to the rear or to the right, and there is a tradition that he used this tactic in the fight on Ganryu Island, positioning himself so that the sun was in Kojiro’s eyes. He further elaborates on gaining a higher elevation than one’s opponent, and the advantages of positioning the opponent so that natural obstacles are to his rear so that he might be backed into them (or off them, as in the case of Tzujikaze Tenma). The Sun Tzu would have given him much to think about in this regard, including:
In flat territory, make your location an easy one with an elevated area to your right or to your rear. Put death in front of you and life behind.
For the most part, armies prefer taking the high ground, and dislike being at a lower elevation; they value sunny places and despise the dark.
Benefit from the advantages of the land.
We should distance
ourselves from these places [of natural obstacles], but have the enemy approach them; and while we face them, the enemy should have them at his rear.
So then, the shape of the land is the fighter’s ally.
For this reason it is said, “Knowing the opponent and knowing yourself, your victory will not be in peril; knowing the land and knowing the elements, your victory can be complete.”
With these dictums, the fight with the Yoshioka clan at Ichijoji and Musashi’s routing of an entire force of men come immediately to mind. This kind of resourcefulness—not just in terms of sword technique but also much broader strategy—must have secured the victory in any number of Musashi’s sixty bouts.
Another of Musashi’s fundamental principles—fluidity—also finds expression in the Sun Tzu. The Chinese strategist predated the beginnings of Zen Buddhism in Japan by about eighteen centuries, so his sentences do not bear the same nuances as those of Takuan, but the idea of not being caught by either circumstances or one’s own prejudicial mind is an important theme in his work. Musashi wrote for “the small martial art” as well as the “large,” and one can see in the following passages from the Sun Tzu how he might have taken this very practical advice for generals and applied it to the solitary martial artist:
Circumstances are the purveyors of benefit; by such create power.
Therefore, in battle there are no constant conditions; with water, there is no constant shape.
And, significantly enough:
Therefore, among the Five Elements, none are predominant; among the four seasons, none stay for long; the days are long and then short; the moon waxes, then wanes.
And Musashi must have seen a parallel to his thoughts in “Mountains and Seas” in the Fire chapter, in this next passage:
Therefore, do not repeat what was victorious in one battle, but according to the shape of things, let your [tactics] be infinite.
First arriving late to a match, then arriving early; often fighting with a regular wooden sword, and then arriving with one carved from a boatman’s long oar—the opponent was always kept off guard and was constantly left in doubt.
Finally, in a simile that would have appealed to Musashi’s sense of never being held to one posture, strike, or tactic:
Therefore, those who are good at practical tactics are likened to a shuai-jan. The shuai-jan is a snake living in the Ch’ang Mountains. Attack its head, and it will come at you with its tail; attack its tail and it will come at you with its head; attack its center, and both head and tail will come at you.
While Musashi emphasized taking the initiative in combat, and the shuai-jan is always reacting, the image of constant flow—of making the necessary change with circumstances—must have impressed him with the similarity as to how he himself had had to react any number of times, especially when confronted with more than one opponent. And again, while Sun Tzu wrote for the general or the commander of large armies, Musashi would have easily been able to make the conversion to a single man holding not one, but two swords: the perfect unstoppable fluidity.
Musashi arranged his book in five chapters, each to be read with equal attention, and each one being necessary to the other. The Sun Tzu is a possible source for the origin of this structure. The Sun Tzu contains, in Volume 5, this interesting three-line passage alluding to the infinite and inexhaustible ways of combat achieved by various permutations of its basic elements. This also supports Musashi’s emphasis on keeping an open mind and moving appropriately to any circumstances one may find himself in:
The number of musical notes do not exceed five, but the changes of these five can never be exhausted in listening to them. The number of primary colors do not exceed five, but the changes of these five can never be exhausted in observing them.
The number of basic flavors do not exceed five, but the changes of these five can never be exhausted in tasting them.
The basic musical notes, colors, and flavors are limited in themselves, but their combinations are innumerable. Musashi found this to be true for his five fundamental stances in particular, and his martial art in general. Could this have been the source for his “five rings”?
Perhaps the most striking similar principle common to Sun Tzu and Musashi is the regular use of psychology. We think immediately of the fights with the Yoshioka clan and Sasaki Kojiro when we read:
Therefore, the highest form of soldiery is to frustrate the enemy’s plans.
Sasaki Kojiro in particular comes to mind with this passage:
Well then, a man’s spirit is sharpest in the morning, but is off guard by the afternoon. Therefore, the man who uses the martial arts well will avoid that sharp spirit and attack the sagging one.
Here we clearly see Kojiro dressed resplendently and sitting on his battle chair in the hot spring sun, waiting for Musashi while losing patience, focus, and spirit with every passing hour.
Throughout The Book of Five Rings, Musashi drives home the point that a swordsman of his style must be in control of his opponent at all times. He drives the enemy this way and that, pushes him toward dangerous parts of the surroundings, “twists and contorts” his mind, and constantly pulls out reactions to his own feints. In Volume 6 of the Sun Tzu we find:
Therefore, the man who is good at combat controls others; he is not controlled by them.
This is the underlying premise of both books, whether “controlling” refers to actively controlling the direction of an opponent, or eliciting his movements to better understand his intentions. In “Moving the Shadow,” in his Fire chapter, Musashi writes:
When you cannot see through your opponent’s situation in any way, act as though you were going to attack vigorously, and you will see his intentions. When your opponent has taken a stance with his sword behind him or to his side, if you make a sudden movement as if to strike him, his thoughts will be manifested with his sword.
This ploy is also noted a number of times in the Sun Tzu:
Provoke him and so know the principles of his activity or inactivity; manifest some form and so know the ground of his life and death.
Well then, at first act like an unmarried maiden, and the enemy will open the door for you; then act with the speed of a scared rabbit and he will be unable to resist you.
Other stratagems with parallels to The Book of Five Rings include these:
Therefore, though you are able, make a show that you are not; though ready to deploy, make a show to the opposite; when drawing near, make a show of removal; and when moving away, make a show of drawing near.
Show enticements and invite him in; show confusion and take him.
If he is angry, irritate him; show weakness and he will become arrogant.
Attack where he is unprepared; appear where he is not expecting you.
Sun Tzu declares that “Warfare is the Way of deception.” Musashi does not go so far with his words, but constantly discusses the value of disorienting and confusing one’s opponent, and using the opponent’s mind for his own defeat.
That Musashi would not have read the Sun Tzu seems almost unimaginable. What seems probable is that he made it his own, just as he encourages his students to make The Book of Five Rings their own. This does not mean imitation or “learning indoors,” but to drill and practice with every phrase deeply in mind. In the same way Musashi likely went through his more than sixty bouts ever mindful of the Chinese tactician’s short but compact sentences, weeding out what he found to be inappropriate to his own time, place, and circumstances.
Musashi was convinced that the goal of the martial arts was to win, and he must have found great interest in the words of this work written with the same aim some two thousand years before his own time. If he felt, as he wrote in the Earth chapter of The Book of Five Rings, that he himself had “no extraordinary skills in the martial arts,” from where would his victories have come? The Sun Tzu had a key, and it was Musashi’s for the turning:
In this way, the victorious martial [artist] will first win, and later seek to f
ight; the losing martial [artist] will first fight and later seek to win.
TAKUAN SOHO
In 1631, Musashi visited the northern province of Dewa on the invitation of a Lord Matsudaira Dewa no kami to demonstrate his sword style. This was at precisely the time when the Zen priest Takuan was in exile in Dewa and kept under the watchful eye of a Lord Matsudaira. While a meeting between the swordsman and the priest is not documented, it seems likely that they would have been introduced by their mutual “host,” or that they may have renewed their friendship from meeting in former times in Kyoto or elsewhere. If this meeting did take place, they would have had ample time to talk over subjects dear to them such as tea, poetry, Zen, and swordsmanship. At any rate, just a year later, Takuan wrote one of his most famous works, “The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom,” a treatise on the application of Zen to the art of the sword, which he sent as a letter to Yagyu Munenori.
The Lone Samurai Page 21
