A Book of Five Rings E-Book

Miyamoto Musashi

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 128

Beschreibung

The definitive translation now encompassing never-before-seen images, including artwork by Musashi himself. Japan's business executives have long applied Musashi's teachings to their business methods. This book - the original life-guide by Japan's greatest warrior - means you can do so too. Written in 1645 by the most famous and unconquerable of all samurai, A Book of Five Rings is the classic guide to kendo swordmanship and a distillation of the philosophies of Zen, Shinto and Confucius. The West is now discovering what the Japanese have always known: that the ancient wisdom of the Samurai Way provides a strategy for decision and action in all areas of life - the home, the battleground and the boardroom.

Leseprobe

A BOOK OF FIVE RINGS

MIYAMOTO MUSASHI

Translated by Victor Harris

CONTENTS

Title Page

Translator’s Introduction

Introduction

The Ground Book

The Water Book

The Fire Book

The Wind Book

The Book of the Void

About the Author

Copyright

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

Japan during Musashi’s lifetime

Miyamoto Musashi was born in 1584, in a Japan struggling to recover from more than four centuries of internal strife. The traditional rule of the emperors had been overthrown in the twelfth century, and although each successive emperor remained the figurehead of Japan, his powers were very much reduced. Since that time, Japan had seen almost continuous civil war between the provincial lords, warrior monks and brigands, all fighting each other for land and power. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the lords, called daimyo, built huge stone castles to protect themselves and their lands and castle towns outside the walls began to grow up. These wars naturally restricted the growth of trade and impoverished the whole country.

In 1573, however, one man, Oda Nobunaga, came to the fore in Japan. He succeeded in gaining control over almost the whole country for nine years, being appointed Uudaijin (Minister of the Right) by the Imperial Court. When Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582, a commoner took over the government. Toyotomi Hideyoshi continued the work of unifying Japan which Nobunaga had begun, ruthlessly putting down any traces of insurrection. He revived the old gulf between the warriors of Japan – the samurai – and the commoners by introducing restrictions on the wearing of swords. ‘Hideyoshi’s sword-hunt’, as it was known, meant that only samurai were allowed to wear two swords; the short one which everyone could wear and the long one which distinguished the samurai from the rest of the population.

Although Hideyoshi did much to settle Japan and increase trade with the outside world, by the time of his death in 1598 internal disturbances still had not been completely eliminated. The real isolation and unification of Japan began with the inauguration of the great Tokugawa rule. In 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu, a former associate of both Hideyoshi and Nobunaga, formally became Shogun of Japan, after defeating Hideyoshi’s son Hideyori at the battle of Seki ga Hara.

Ieyasu established his government at Edo, present-day Tokyo, where he had a huge castle. His was a stable, peaceful government beginning a period of Japanese history which was to last until the Imperial Restoration of 1868, for although Ieyasu himself died in 1616 members of his family succeeded each other and the title Shogun became virtually a hereditary one for the Tokugawas.

Ieyasu was determined to ensure his and his family’s dictatorship. To this end, he paid lip-service to the emperor in Kyoto, who remained the titular head of Japan, while curtailing his duties and involvement in the government. The real threat to Ieyasu’s position could only come from the lords, and he effectively decreased their opportunities for revolt by devising schemes whereby all lords had to live in Edo for alternate years and by placing great restrictions on travelling. He allotted land in exchange for oaths of allegiance, and gave the provincial castles around Edo to members of his own family. He also employed a network of secret police and assassins.

The Tokugawa period marks a great change in the social history of Japan. The bureaucracy of the Tokugawas was all-pervading. Not only were education, law, government and class controlled, but even the costume and behaviour of each class. The traditional class consciousness of Japan hardened into a rigid class structure. There were basically four classes of person: samurai, farmers, artisans and merchants. The samurai were the highest – in esteem if not in wealth – and included the lords, senior government officials, warriors, and minor officials and foot soldiers. Next in the hierarchy came the farmers, not because they were well thought of but because they provided the essential rice crops. Their lot was a rather unhappy one, as they were forced to give most of their crops to the lords and were not allowed to leave their farms. Then came the artisans and craftsmen, and. last of all the merchants, who, though looked down upon, eventually rose to prominence because of the vast wealth they accumulated. Few people were outside this rigid hierarchy.

Musashi belonged to the samurai class. We find the origins of the samurai class in the Kondei (‘Stalwart Youth’) system established in 792 AD, whereby the Japanese army – which had until then consisted mainly of spear-wielding foot soldiers – was revived by stiffening the ranks with permanent training officers recruited from among the young sons of the high families. These officers were mounted, wore armour, and used the bow and sword. In 782 the emperor Kammu started building Kyoto, and in Kyoto he built a training hall which exists to this day called the Butokuden, meaning ‘Hall of the virtues of war’. Within a few years of this revival the fierce Emishi people were subjugated, and many of the Ainu, the aboriginal inhabitants of Japan who had until then confounded the army’s attempts to move them from their wild lodgings, were driven far off to the northern island, Hokkaido.

When the great provincial armies were gradually disbanded under Hideyoshi and Ieyasu, many out-of-work samurai roamed the country redundant in an era of peace. Musashi was one such samurai, a ‘ronin’ or ‘wave man’. There were still samurai retainers to the Tokugawas and provincial lords, but their numbers were few. The hordes of redundant samurai found themselves living in a society which was completely based on the old chivalry, but at the same time they were apart from a society in which there was no place for men at arms. They became an inverted class, keeping the old chivalry alive by devotion to military arts with the fervour only the Japanese possess. This was the time of the flowering of Kendo.

Kendo, the Way of the sword, had always been synonymous with nobility in Japan. Since the founding of the samurai class in the eighth century, the military arts had become the highest form of study, inspired by the teachings of Zen and the feeling of Shinto. Schools of Kendo born in the early Muromachi period – approximately 1390 to 1600 – were continued through the upheavals of the formation of the peaceful Tokugawa Shogunate, and survive to this day. The education of the sons of the Tokugawa Shoguns was by means of schooling in the Chinese classics and fencing exercises. Where a Westerner might say ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’, the Japanese would say ‘Bunbu Itchi’, or ‘Pen and sword in accord’. Today, prominent businessmen and political figures in Japan still practise the old traditions of Kendo schools, preserving the forms of several hundred years ago.

To sum up, Musashi was a ronin at a time when the samurai were formally considered to be the elite, but actually had no means of livelihood unless they owned lands and castles. Many ronin put up their swords and became artisans, but others, like Musashi, pursued the ideal of the warrior searching for enlightenment through the perilous paths of Kendo. Duels of revenge and tests of skill were commonplace, and fencing schools multiplied. Two schools especially, the Itto school and the Yagyu school, were sponsored by the Tokugawas. The Itto school provided an unbroken line of Kendo teachers, and the Yagyu school became the secret police of the Tokugawa bureaucracy.

Kendo

Traditionally, the fencing halls of Japan, called Dojo, were associated with shrines and temples, but during Musashi’s lifetime numerous schools sprang up in the new castle towns. Each daimyo or lord sponsored a Kendo school, where his retainers could be trained and his sons educated. The hope of every ronin was that he would defeat the students and master of a Dojo in combat, thus increasing his fame and bringing his name to the ears of one who might employ him.

The samurai wore two swords thrust through the belt with the cutting edge uppermost. The longer sword was carried out of doors only, the shorter sword was worn at all times. For training, wooden swords and bamboo swords were often used. Duelling and other tests of arms were common, with both real and practice swords. These took place in fencing halls and before shrines, in the streets and within castle walls. Duels were fought to the death or until one of the contestants was disabled, but a few generations after Musashi’s time the ‘shinai’, a pliable bamboo sword, and later padded fencing armour, came to be widely used, so the chances of injury were greatly reduced. The samurai studied with all kinds of weapons: halberds, sticks, swords, chain and sickle, and others. Many schools using such weapons survive in traditional form in Japan today.

To train in Kendo one must subjugate the self, bear the pain of gruelling practice, and cultivate a level mind in the face of peril. But the Way of the sword means not only fencing training but also living by the code of honour of the samurai elite. Warfare was the spirit of the samurai’s everyday life, and he could face death as if it were a domestic routine. The meaning of life and death by the sword was mirrored in the everyday conduct of the feudal Japanese, and he who realised the resolute acceptance of death at any moment in his everyday life was a master of the sword. It is in order to attain such an understanding that later men have followed the ancient traditions of the sword-fencing styles, and even today give up their lives for Kendo practice.

Kendo and Zen

The Way of the sword is the moral teaching of the samurai, fostered by the Confucianist philosophy which shaped the Tokugawa system, together with the native Shinto religion of Japan. The warrior courts of Japan from the Kamakura period to the Muromachi period encouraged the austere Zen study among the samurai, and Zen went hand in hand with the arts of war. In Zen there are no elaborations, it aims directly at the true nature of things. There are no ceremonies, no teachings: the prize of Zen is essentially personal.

Enlightenment in Zen does not mean a change in behaviour, but realisation of the nature of ordinary life. The end point is the beginning, and the great virtue is simplicity. The secret teaching of the Itto Ryu school of Kendo, Kiriotoshi, is the first technique of some hundred or so. The teaching is ‘Ai Uchi’, meaning to cut the opponent just as he cuts you. This is the ultimate timing … it is lack of anger. It means to treat your enemy as an honoured guest. It means to abandon your life or throw away fear.

The first technique is the last, the beginner and the master behave in the same way. Knowledge is a full circle. The first of Musashi’s chapter headings is Ground, for the basis of Kendo and Zen, and the last book is Void, for that understanding which can only be expressed as nothingness. The teachings of Kendo are like the fierce verbal forays to which the Zen student is subjected. Assailed with doubts and misery, his mind and spirit in a whirl, the student is gradually guided to realisation and understanding by his teacher. The Kendo student practises furiously, thousands of cuts morning and night, learning fierce techniques of horrible war, until eventually sword becomes ‘no sword’, intention becomes ‘no intention’, a spontaneous knowledge of every situation. The first elementary teaching becomes the highest knowledge, and the master still continues to practise this simple training, his everyday prayer.

Concerning the life of Miyamoto Musashi

Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, or as he is commonly known Miyamoto Musashi, was born in the village called Miyamoto in the province Mimasaka in 1584. ‘Musashi’ is the name of an area south-west of Tokyo, and the appellation ‘No Kami’ means noble person of the area, while ‘Fujiwara’ is the name of a noble family foremost in Japan over a thousand years ago.

Musashi’s ancestors were a branch of the powerful Harima clan in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan. Hirada Shokan, his grandfather, was a retainer of Shinmen Iga No Kami Sudeshige, the lord of Takeyama castle. Hirada Shokan was highly thought of by his lord and eventually married his lord’s daughter.

When Musashi was seven, his father, Munisai, either died or abandoned the child. As his mother had died, Ben No Suke, as Musashi was known during his childhood, was left in the care of an uncle on his mother’s side, a priest. So we find Musashi an orphan during Hideyoshi’s campaigns of unification, son of a samurai in a violent unhappy land. He was a boisterous youth, strong-willed and physically large for his age. Whether he was urged to pursue Kendo by his uncle, or whether his aggressive nature led him to it, we do not know, but it is recorded that he slew a man in single combat when he was just thirteen. The opponent was Arima Kihei, a samurai of the Shinto Ryu school of military arts, skilled with sword and spear. The boy threw the man to the ground, and beat him about the head with a stick when he tried to rise. Kihei died vomiting blood.

Musashi’s next contest was when he was sixteen, when he defeated Akiyama of Tajima province. About this time, he left home to embark on the ‘Warrior Pilgrimage’, which saw him victor in scores of contests and which took him to war six times, until he finally settled down at the age of fifty, having reached the end of his search for reason. There must have been many ronin travelling the country on similar expeditions, some alone like Musashi and some enjoying sponsorship, though not on the scale of the pilgrimage of the famous swordsman Tsukahara Bokuden who had travelled with a retinue of over one hundred men in the previous century.

This part of Musashi’s life was spent living apart from society while he devoted himself with a ferocious single-mindedness to the search for enlightenment by the Way of the sword. Concerned only with perfecting his skill, he lived as men need not live, wandering over Japan soaked by the cold winds of winter, not dressing his hair, nor taking a wife, nor following any profession save his study. It is said he never entered a bathtub lest he was caught unawares without a weapon, and that his appearance was uncouth and wretched.

In the battle which resulted in Ieyasu succeeding Hideyoshi as Shogun of Japan, Seki ga Hara, Musashi joined the ranks of the Ashikaga army to fight against Ieyasu. He survived the terrible three days during which seventy thousand people died, and also survived the hunting down and massacre of the vanquished army.

He went up to Kyoto, the capital, when he was twenty-one. This was the scene of his vendetta against the Yoshioka family. The Yoshiokas had been fencing instructors to the Ashikaga house for generations. Later forbidden to teach Kendo by Lord Tokugawa, the family became dyers, and are dyers today. Munisai, Musashi’s father, had been invited to Kyoto some years before by the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaka. Munisai was a competent swordsman, and an expert with the ‘jitte’, a kind of iron truncheon with a tongue for catching sword blades. The story has it that Munisai fought three of the Yoshiokas, winning two of the duels, and perhaps this has some bearing on Musashi’s behaviour towards the family.