PG16- Musashi (v,b)

Eiji Yoshikawa (1892-1962) was one of Japan�s most prolific and popular writers. His long novel Musashi was first published in serial form in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun (1935-1939). This work has become an important part of Japanese culture; it has been reprinted numerous times, adapted for stage, television and cinema, and translated into several other languages. It has been published in the US in a huge single-volume hardcover (Musashi: An Epic of the Samurai Era) and as a five-volume paperback series. I can�t vouch for the quality of Charles S. Terry�s translation, though I can tell that it is not an exact literal translation.

Yoshikawa�s novel is a work of fiction, but attempts to accurately depict important historical figures of the time, including the title character. Fans of both martial arts stories and Asian historical pieces should enjoy this work. Yoshikawa provides well-developed characters with the context needed for a modern reader. And for you anime-fiends who crave an element of frustrated romance in your samurai stories, there�s some of that, too (though you�ll probably be disappointed at the scarcity of strong female characters).

Musashi is set in the early 17th century, just after Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan, ending generations of constant warfare. With the land at peace (however uneasy at times), the samurai were forced to adapt to a new age which needed something more than mere warriors. Miyamoto Musashi (1584?-1645) was a product of this time, a man of samurai descent who strove to perfect his swordsmanship as a path to achieving his full human potential. He spent most of his life as a wanderer, perfecting the Art of the Sword by studying works on strategy, by challenging other swordsmen and by more esoteric forms of enlightenment.

The Way of the Samurai (Book I of the Pocket Books paperback version) begins with the aftermath of the Battle of Sekigahara. Two youths from Miyamoto, Shimmen Takezo and Matahachi Hon�iden, had joined the army to earn names for themselves. However, they were nearly killed when their side lost, and are forced to go into hiding from Tokugawa�s soldiers. Matahachi falls afoul of a seductress and fails to return to his family--and to his fiancee, Otsu. Takezo tries to return to Miyamoto to let the Hon�idens know that Matahachi is still alive, but he gets blamed for his friend�s disappearance. His punishments at the hands of a Zen monk, Takuan Soho, begin his enlightenment, and kindle his desire to live and become a real human being, rather than dying as a brutal, ignorant beast. Reborn, he changes his name to Miyamoto Musashi, and sets out on his life-quest of becoming a master swordsman.

The paperback edition continues with The Art of War, The Way of the Sword, The Bushido Code, and The Way of Life and Death. These later sections continue Musashi�s early career, including his long feud with the Yoshioka School and his growing rivalry with another swordsman, Sasaki Kojiro. The fates of Matahachi and Otsu also play important parts in the novel. The story should be read in order from the beginning; the paperbacks provide short summaries of previous volumes, but the volume breaks are rather arbitrary and a reader will need the context of the previous sections to avoid being confused. Musashi has the episodic format typical of much Japanese storytelling, but it was written to be a single, long novel, not a series of stand-alone stories.

The novel ends while Musashi is still relatively young (28 or 29), but even by that age, he had earned a enduring place in Japanese legend. This swordsman continued to perfect his art, and near the end of his life, he composed The Book of Five Rings, a treatise on strategy. This work, which remains popular today with Japanese and gaijin alike, has a style and purpose similar to that of Sun-Tzu�s The Art of War, one of the works that Musashi revered.

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Last Updated: February 9, 2000

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