The Lone Samurai

by William Scott Wilson

  Musashi’s distant relatives, the Akamatsu, had built a castle in Himeji as far back as 1350, but the site had been controlled by a number of clans by the time Toyotomi Hideyoshi took control of the town and rebuilt the castle in 1577. Known today as the Hakurojo, or White Heron Castle, it is considered the most beautiful and graceful castle in Japan. After the Battle of Sekigahara, Ieyasu gave control of the castle to Ikeda Terumasa, who changed its name from Himeyama to Himeji. The Honda clan was established at this site in 1617, and it was from this time that Musashi began his work there.

  During this period, as Musashi found himself with more and more students, he continued to develop his own sword style to include concepts that could be taught, rather than simply intuited by himself. As early as 1604, when he was in Edo (Tokyo), he had written a short “book” entitled The Mirror of the Way of War, which was an outline of the Enmei-ryu, or Perfect Enlightenment Style, that he was creating. The first edition of this book contained only eighteen articles, but it was later expanded to thirty-five and bore a strong resemblance to his later works, The Thirty-five Articles of the Martial Arts and The Book of Five Rings. It emphasized, in particular, taking the initiative—and it was probably a prototype for the latter two works.

  The Enmei-ryu was clearly a precursor to Musashi’s Two-Sword Style, but other than that, little is understood of it. The word enmei, in addition to its meaning of “perfect enlightenment,” has connections to a phrase for two kinds of Buddhist wisdom, daienkyochi (大円鏡智) and myokansatsuchi (妙観察智), which translate respectively as “Great Perfect Mirror Wisdom” and “Wonderful Observation Wisdom.” Interestingly, it is also a “pillow word” (or well-known literary referent) for Akashi in classical poetry, a subject with which Musashi was beginning to be familiar.

  One man who became acquainted with the Enmei-ryu at close range was a certain Miyake Gunbei. His story is related in great detail in the Miyamoto Musashi monogatari nenpyo, published in 1910. The year was 1621, and Musashi was thirty-eight years old:

  In the town of Himeji there was a man famous for his Togun-ryu by the name of Miyake Gunbei. He was a very large man, was very good at the take-down techniques of the Araki-ryu, and had had many experiences in real battle. Gunbei had nothing but contempt for Musashi and laughed at him scornfully. One day, he finally petitioned for a match with Musashi and went to the latter’s residence accompanied by three of his companions. They were led together into a fourteen-mat room.

  Suddenly Musashi appeared from the narrow corridor that passed by the kitchen. He was casually carrying two wooden swords; one long, one short. Without changing his manner or position, he said, “Now!” upon which Gunbei and the others were thrown into confusion. Musashi added, “Taking on the four of you together would be all right, too.” Chastened, Gunbei stepped forward indignantly.

  The two faced off at a distance of about seven feet. Finally, Musashi slowly backed up to the corner at the doorway. Gunbei also gradually backed up and took a stance at the sliding paper door to the veranda. Suddenly, Musashi combined his swords into an enkyoku (circle), or gassho (steeple shape), and advanced toward Gunbei. Gunbei raised his sword over his head in the jodan position, advanced, and struck straight downward. Musashi separated his two swords and evaded Gunbei’s blow. Combining his swords again and restraining Gunbei’s attack, Musashi took a step backward. Gunbei swung his sword free from this restraint, and with a sort of leap, struck again. Musashi repeated his own maneuver, once again restraining Gunbei’s sword and backing away. This action was repeated a number of times until Musashi had his back to the wall and appeared to be stuck. This time Gunbei pointed his sword directly at Musashi in the chudan position and, sure of his victory, stabbed forward with both hands on the hilt. Musashi yelled, “Watch yourself!”, parried Gunbei with the short tachi he held in his left hand, and stabbed the man’s cheek with the tachi he held in his right hand. Gunbei fell on the spot and his shocked companions ran up to him. Musashi calmly brought in some medicine and a strip of cotton cloth, and applied them to Gunbei’s wound.

  Later, Gunbei bowed to Musashi as a teacher, and held him in deep respect.

  This Gunbei5 was a retainer to Honda Tadamasa, the daimyo of Himeji Castle, and was the premier swordsman of the fief. He related later in life that he had known only two frightening moments in his entire career. One was at the Summer Campaign at Osaka Castle when the opposing armies were at the point of contact, and the other was when he first encountered Musashi—that instant when the swordsman appeared with his two lowered swords.

  Gunbei had a number of things to be thankful for in this bout. The first was that it had not taken place ten years earlier, when Musashi was still deciding his matches with “extreme prejudice.” The experience with Sasaki Kojiro affected Musashi deeply and, after 1612, his individual bouts would never again end in death or the terrible wounds that disabled Yoshioka Seijuro for life. No doubt his growing acquaintance with Buddhism and the arts of tea, poetry, and india ink painting was having an effect. The second was the fact that Gunbei himself was a retainer to the Honda clan, with whom Musashi was on excellent terms. Certainly he would not have seriously injured a retainer to that clan, regardless of the man’s arrogance and bad manners. And third, one might say that Gunbei had been fortunate enough to have really seen a “comparison of technique” in this bout, as Musashi led, or actually, drew him around the room, demonstrating his style. It was only Gunbei’s impetuousness that led him into the tip of the better man’s sword; and had Gunbei not brought along his friends, in front of whom he could not back down, he might have gotten away with only a bruised ego. As it turned out, Musashi was even kind enough to tend to Gunbei’s wound, an act of sympathy and concern.

  Musashi was now walking steadily on the path that had been prescribed for the true warrior since Heian times in Japan, and in China even back to the time of Confucius. This was the path that included both the arts of war and the arts of peace (bunbu no michi), and he would become perhaps more accomplished in this ideal than any other warrior in Japan’s history.

  THE KYOTO RENAISSANCE

  In the opening pages of The Book of Five Rings, Musashi states that “I have never had a teacher while studying the Ways of the various arts and accomplishments, or in anything at all.” This is remarkable coming from a man who was not only one of the most singular swordsmen of his time, but also an extraordinarily skilled painter, sculptor, and metallurgist. As we have seen, he was also well acquainted with poetry—especially the classical style of the Heian period (794–1185)—and the Way of Tea; and he was adept at the recitation of Noh drama, garden design, and perhaps even carpentry. If he had had no teachers and lived his life in the solitary way that is so often depicted, how could he have become accomplished in so many of the arts?

  It is important to note that Musashi, while eccentric and uncompromising in many ways, was certainly not the near-sociopath that his detractors have made him out to be. He was, after all, on good terms with Ogasawara Tadazane and both Honda Tadamasa and Tadatoki, and one of his still-extant letters indicates that he was friendly with one or two other daimyo as well. Such men were at the very top of the hierarchy in a very stratified world. Musashi, however, was an intellectually and artistically curious man of astonishing talents, and he lived at a time when communication among the various levels of society had been opened dramatically. Generals, wealthy merchants, and talented artisans might now sit together and mingle during the tea ceremony in a way that earlier would have been almost impossible. Artistic individuals like Musashi had many opportunities for contact with each other and with those who appreciated their talents. Art transcended social class in Japan of the seventeenth century as perhaps in no other time in history, and in the capital of Kyoto—an easy two or three days’ walk from Himeji and Akashi—this tendency was concentrated like no other place in the world.

  Musashi was active during a time aptly called the Kyoto Renaissance, a period of about a century, from 1550 to 1650
. After suffering a devastating century and a half of civil wars during which countless art treasures were destroyed, ancient temples and buildings burned, and libraries lost forever, Japan was brought back to unification and eventual peace following the decisive battles at Sekigahara and Osaka. After so many years of social upheaval, this peace brought a surge in economic prosperity and a flourishing of the arts in almost every arena. Castle architecture blossomed, there was a renewed interest in classical poetry and painting, the art of the tea ceremony reached its height, the world of ceramics spread in new directions, and schools offering training in the martial arts proliferated, with every new disciple striking out on his own and hanging up his own shingle. How the various players of this period influenced Musashi is not documented, but considering his artistic talent and curiosity, his insistence that his students learn all the arts, and the time that he spent in the urban centers of the Kansai area, it is fitting that we look briefly at two men representative of the period with whom he is very likely to have associated.

  At the aesthetic center of the Kyoto Renaissance was Hon’ami Koetsu (1558–1637), a man whom tradition, if not recorded evidence, links with Musashi. Koetsu came from a family of sword polishers and appraisers—well known in that field since the fourteenth century—and was much in demand for his skills in this work. Moreover, there were few other arts that he did not practice. Granted by the shogun an area of land—Takagamine, or Takaramine—just outside Kyoto, he established an art colony comprised of fifty-five friends and relatives that would act as a sort of launching pad for everything from papermaking to lacquerware to pottery. Koetsu himself is best known today for his calligraphy and pottery, but his strong ties to the samurai sword and his intense and friendly personality would have made him an engaging companion for Musashi. The swordsman’s extraordinary talent, broad interests, and remarkable character, on the other hand, would likely have seemed to the older artist like a fresh breeze on a hot summer day.

  Koetsu’s wide-ranging artistic pursuits were likely an inspiration to Musashi. The refined aesthete’s ties to Noh recitation may have sparked Musashi’s later participation in that art; and one of Koetsu’s friends, Sakon Tayu, was head of the Kanze school of Noh. It is not unlikely that Musashi would have made his acquaintance, along with many others in the arts. Among Koetsu’s associates were also Tawara Sotatsu, the cloth designer and painter; Furuta Oribe, the warrior and tea master; Raku Don’yu, the potter to the tea masters; and Hayashi Razan, the Confucian scholar. Musashi could not have helped being influenced, even if only peripherally, by this society of talented men, and Koetsu’s reputed strong character and intense dislike of greed would have fit well with the same tendencies in the swordsman’s own personality.

  Musashi insisted that through an intense study and practice of the Way of the Martial Arts, the Ways of all other arts would be understood. It is possible that these thoughts began to form in his mind as he talked to the old sword polisher-turned-aesthete at the Takagamine artists’ colony at the edge of Kyoto, and that he found a certain confirmation of them as he sat down at a potter’s wheel or took up a metallurgist’s hammer himself. Visits to Takagamine would have given Musashi the physical material to work his own budding ideas into the reality of art. In this way, the shadow of Hon’ami Koetsu seems to pass over the pages of The Book of Five Rings, in subtle but convincing hues.

  Takuan Soho (1573–1645), also traditionally linked with Musashi, was a Zen Buddhist priest of the Rinzai sect and another influential figure in the Kyoto Renaissance. Like Koetsu, Takuan was a polymath who excelled in calligraphy, painting, poetry, gardening, and the tea ceremony. He must have also enjoyed being in the kitchen, for it is said that he invented the pickle that is a constant in the Japanese diet and to this day retains his name. Takuan was a prodigious writer whose collected works fill six volumes. He was an advisor to the emperor and shogun alike, and became abbot of the Daitokuji, a major Zen temple in Kyoto, at the unlikely age of just thirty-five. Musashi would have appreciated the man’s personality. Unlike a number of other Buddhist prelates who would, from time to time, feel a necessity to toady to the shogunate, Takuan stood his idealistic ground and got in trouble for it. In one such incident, the Purple Robe Affair of 1628,6 he was punished and eventually sent to exile in the northern part of Japan; he was not pardoned until 1632. He had enough of the “bad boy” in him to have appealed to the former gaki daisho of Hirafuku and Miyamoto.

  The tradition that names Takuan a mentor to Musashi is brought into focus in Takuan’s essay, “The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom.”7 This essay is written not to Musashi but to Yagyu Munenori, the head of the Edo branch of the Shinkage-ryu of swordsmanship. It deals in part with the relationship of mind, body, and technique, a subject also covered extensively in The Book of Five Rings. In the essay, Takuan writes:

  When you first notice the sword that is moving to strike you, if you think of meeting that sword just as it is, your mind will stop at the sword in just that position, your own movements will be undone, and you will be cut down by your opponent. . . .

  What is called Fudo Myo-o [a wrathful manifestation of the Buddha Vairocana]8 is said to be one’s unmoving mind and an unvacillating body. Unvacillating means not being detained by anything.

  Glancing at something and not stopping the mind is called immovable. This is because when the mind stops at something, as the breast is filled with various judgements, there are various movements within it. When its movements cease, the stopping mind moves, but does not move at all.

  If ten men, each with a sword, come at you with swords slashing, if you parry each sword without stopping the mind at each action, and go from one to the next, you will not be lacking in a proper action for every one of the ten. . . .

  [T]he action of Spark and Stone . . . underscores the point that the mind should not be detained by things; it says that even with speed it is essential that the mind does not stop. When the mind stops, it will be grasped by the opponent. On the other hand, if the mind contemplates being fast and goes into quick action, it will be captured by its own contemplation. . . .

  Putting the mind in one place is called falling into one-sidedness. One-sidedness is said to be bias in one place. Correctness is in moving about anywhere. The Correct Mind shows itself by extending the mind throughout the body. It is not biased in any one place. . . .

  The effort not to stop the mind in just one place—this is discipline. Not stopping the mind is object and essence. Put nowhere, it will be everywhere. Even in moving the mind outside the body, if it is sent in one direction, it will be lacking in nine others. If the mind is not restricted to just one direction, it will be in all ten.

  Not surprisingly, the relationship of mind, body, and technique is one of the main, mostly implicit themes running throughout The Book of Five Rings, and it is important to note that Takuan wrote these words during his exile at Kaminoyama in Dewa, sometime between 1629 and 1632. It was in 1631 that Musashi was also in Dewa, probably visiting Takuan and discussing exactly these matters, as well as giving a demonstration of his style to the daimyo Matsudaira Dewa no kami Ienaka. Thus, Musashi was likely every bit as influential on Takuan’s writings on the sword as Takuan was on Musashi’s writing on Emptiness in the final chapter of The Book of Five Rings. One can easily imagine Musashi and Takuan talking quietly together, each gaining from the other’s experiences. Nor would they have limited themselves to discussions over tea. Both men believed absolutely in the value of actual experience, and the subject matter would inevitably have led them from the sitting mat to the dojo. Born into a samurai family, Takuan must have held his wooden sword with relish. Later, he would pick up the brush and write one of the most important works on Zen and the sword in Japanese literature.

  While the passage quoted above from this essay in no way exhausts the subject of the relationship between the sword and Zen Buddhism, it certainly expresses the core of the subject, and it affected Yagyu Munenori so deeply that he paraphras
ed the work more than once in his own book, The Life-Giving Sword (Heiho Kadensho, literally, The Book of Clan Traditions on the Martial Arts). Later, we will take a closer look at the circle of influence that connected these three men.

  In the end, Takuan may have had yet another effect on Musashi’s life. As early as 1603, the year before Musashi defeated the Yoshioka clan, Takuan became good friends with Hosokawa Yusai, the general, diplomat, and man of great taste, whose approach to scholastics was strikingly similar to Musashi’s approach to the arts in its eclecticism. The friendly relationship between the priest and the Hosokawa clan would span three generations of that warrior family, and Musashi’s name no doubt came into their conversations and letters a number of times before Musashi himself went to live with the clan in his final years.

  Musashi’s association with the artists and Buddhist priests of the Kyoto Renaissance cannot be accurately documented, but neither can it be dismissed. It is clear in terms of his own development—from his rural birth to his rise to the status of both undefeated swordsman and multitalented artist—he would have had, if not teachers, then companions and associates on the Way. Kyoto is and always has been a closely interconnected society, with strong ties among people of high aesthetic abilities and tastes. Nor was this social network limited to Kyoto. Even in his wanderings around the country, from northern Kyushu to Edo, Musashi may very well have encountered eccentric Zen artists (his contemporary, the eccentric Zen painter Fugai, comes to mind), just as he encountered the sixty-odd martial artists he would fight and defeat.

  FAMILY NAME

  By 1619, Musashi began to have concerns directly connected with neither swordsmanship nor art. He had early on understood that having a family would be an impediment to his progress in swordsmanship and, in fact, to all other Ways. Having chosen the life of a perpetual shugyosha naturally precluded a long-term relationship with any woman, and having children was out of the question. Although Musashi was not an only son, he no doubt felt a certain duty to carry on the family line, for the importance of continuing the family name is paramount in Japan. It is, for example, not uncommon for a family without sons to adopt the husband of the eldest daughter, thus insuring continuity of lineage and the family name for at least another generation. The bridegroom, of course, would have to be the second or third son of his own family in order not to jeopardize his own family tree.