Miyamoto Musashi : His Life and Writings

Rating:
Summary: Repetitive
Review: I would love to give this book 5 stars but I just could not do it. Though, I found this book to be very informative I also found it repeating itself (literally). If you took out all the repeated quotes you could probably get rid of at least 50 pages.

Rating:
Summary: Great book on the legendary swordsman
Review: This is the most exhaustive and detailed study I've seen on Musashi yet. At 488 pages, with almost 150 pages of appendices, notes, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography, there is a wealth of material here on the legendary swordsman.

Although a translation from the Japanese and intended to be a thorough, well-researched, scholarly work on Musashi, I thought it was pretty readable, well-written, interesting, and not nearly as dry and forbidding as it could have been for an academic study. If you have some previous knowledge of Japanese history or martial arts you shouldn't have any trouble with it. But be forewarned that it does require a little more patience than the more popular accounts of his life and times.

There are chapters on Musashi's childhood and training, his duels and battles, his mature years, three chapters on his writings, and seven chapters covering Musashi's martial arts concepts and style of swordfighting, which includes chapters on training, budo, Musashi's school of swordsmanship today, and finally two chapters entitled "The Relationship Between Adversaries," and "One Life, One Art."

There are many aspects of Musashi's life and ideas that get discussed in the book, but I thought I'd write a bit about what I learned about his personal philosophy. Many of you are probably knowledgeable about the specifics of his fencing concepts from having read his Book of Five Rings, so I thought I'd mention something about that instead, since it was something I didn't know as much about myself until I read this book, being more familiar with his ideas about the True Way of the Sword from having read his The Book of Five Rings previously.

Musashi was in many ways a complex, contradictory, and perplexing personality, but we get important glimpses and insights into his character through the author's descriptions of his battlefield experiences, duels, and other exploits, and also in the discussion of his personal philosophy. For example, in the "Dokkodo," or Musashi's 21 Precepts About Life, which he wrote only a week before his death, he offered the distilled essence of his experience and thought.

For example, his 5th precept is, "Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world," which seems at odds with reports about Musashi's pride and ego, at least during his younger years. According to Nakanishi Seito, Musashi's pride kept him from working in the service of a lord with less than 500,000 koku (a "koku" being a bushel of rice owed to a lord from his subjects and vassals, and a standard way of determining wealth back in those times). And the first precept, "Don't go against the way of the world that is perpetuated from generation to generation," seems to contradict the 15th precept, "Do not act following customary beliefs."

It's easier to understand some of the other precepts, such as #5, "Be detached from desire your whole life long; #10, "Do not let yourself be guided by the feelings of love," #13; "Do not pursue the taste of good food;" and #18, "Do not seek to possess either goods or fiefs for your old age." These certainly seem to reflect the more Zen-like and ascetic cast to Musashi's philosophy which he developed as a result of study and reflection and spiritual disciplines in his more mature years.

Some of them are interesting for what they have to say on other subjects, such as #19, "Respect Buddha and the gods without expecting their help," and also #16, "Do not seek especially either to collect or to practice arms beyond what is useful,"--an interesting sentiment coming from the most respected and dedicated swordsmen of his age.

But as I said, this just goes to show that Musashi was a complex individual whose ideas about the sword and personal philosophy aren't necessarily easy to grasp without more than a passing familiarity with their author.

While we're on the subject of Musashi, I thought I'd include a few comments here more specifically to do with Musashi's famous Book of Five Rings, which Tokitsu also discusses in detail in this book, since it contains, as I said, three full chapters devoted to the analysis and consideration of Musashi's writings. These comments reflect more my own interpretatation of Musashi's ideas, but I offer them for what they're worth in case you find them useful, as I approach the subject from the standpoint of both eastern and western ideas, philosophy, and science. Also they focus specifically on how to understand Musashi's seemingly paradoxical ideas about sword technique, so perhaps they'll be of interest to some of you for that reason.

The Book of Five Rings sets out Musashi's philosophy and correct Way of the Sword. But the principles Musashi espouses are bound to sound perplexing to many people. Musashi says that the best stance is no stance, that too much strength is bad (your sword may shatter when clashing swords), and that even too much speed is bad (it may upset your balance), and that none of these are the true Way of the Sword. The best technique is, in fact, no technique.

This sort of philosophy is bound to be more than a little confusing, so I'll see if I can clarify it a little. I'm not sure I understand Musashi either, although I've studied martial arts for many years and have read my share of both western and eastern philosophy, but I'll give you my ideas on how I relate to them just in case you find them useful.

Basically what Musashi is saying is that once you've learned a technique and committed it to memory and especially "muscle memory," it becomes fixed and is no longer adaptive. Your body becomes channelized into this form or technique, which then becomes limiting, preventing you from achieving true mastery, which is the ability to adapt and flow with any of the infinite number of situations you may encounter. Fixity is therefore dysfunctional and is not the true Way of the Sword. This might be what Musashi means when he speaks of the Way of Emptiness being his way and the true Way of the Sword. In other words, his technique is no technique because it is empty of all fixed, unchangeable, and unadaptive aspects.

There is an analogous principle in Zen. In Zen, the highest level of technique is called "the technique that can't be seen." This doesn't mean that the technique is so fast it's invisible. It's that the technique is so advanced and subtle that its principles aren't obvious and easily seen. Musashi's ideas seem to reflect this Zen Buddhist principle also.

Interestingly enough, this idea has some support from western research into learning and the brain. In learning theory, there is the idea of "stereotyping," (which has nothing to do with social or racial stereotypes), where motor movements that have been learned become fixed into a certain sequence or pattern, but which is not necessarily the most efficient or effective. My learning theory instructor used the example of shaving strokes. He realized after some years that he always did his shaving strokes in the same way, after having learned how to do them, but that they weren't necessarily the best way to shave, anymore. Now that he'd been shaving for years, he "re-engineered" his shaving strokes so that they were more efficient.

This may apply to the martial arts too. After we've learned a certain movement and achieved a certain level of skill with it, we may become complacent and never go back and question the movement again, all because we believe we've achieved a level of "skill." I notice Paul Vunak, an important martial artist in Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do and the Filipino martial arts, also emphasizes the learning of principles rather than "technique," and specifically mentions this in his seminars. The idea is that once one has learned the principle behind the technique, one can do an infinite number of those techniques, depending on the situation.

Another interesting physiological principle that is almost as paradoxical as Musashi's ideas has been found by western science. There is a phenomenon in neuromuscular physiology known as reciprocal inhibition of flexor-extensor pairs. This means that during muscle activity the opposing muscle tension is inhibited to reduce effort on the flexing muscle. So if you're trying to do a straight punch, the tricep tenses and the bicep relaxes, thus reducing resistance. The paradoxical aspect arises from the fact that by performing a small jerk backwards in the opposite direction to the punch the outward extensor motion can be speeded up. In kinesiology they refer to this as a "pliometric jerk," and is how basketball players jump higher. But it also has equal application to the martial arts, and I've had good results using this to get more speed and snap in my own techniques and for my students.

Anyway, I just thought I'd offer a few suggestions from my own experience on Musashi's book, although I can't say I fully understand it either. But I hope you find them helpful in some small way in your own understanding and training.

Overall, this is a well-written, detailed, and exhaustive book on the life and times and philosophy of the famous samurai and swordsman.