“The Way of strategy is the Way of nature.” (The Earth Scroll)
This article is not an exegesis of Miyamoto Musashi’s magnum opus, the Book of Five Rings. Its purpose is to highlight the reason why a work on martial arts philosophy and tactics is equally relevant to the strategic level of warfare and statecraft. In uncovering how this is so, the essay invites the reader to consider the Book of Five Rings as an essential—if overlooked—classic of the defense and security studies library, and beyond.
Introduction
Musashi’s main contention in the Book of Five Rings is that the secrets of the ultimate style of successful samurai swordsmanship contain the secrets to success in warfare itself. Therefore, a revelation of such secrets is as important to the front-line combatant on the ground, as it is to the commander and to the planner(s). My argument is, in turn, that Musashi’s equation of perfection in the Way of combat strategy, to perfection in any Way (tradecraft, art, or profession) means that Musashi’s manuscript was intended to transcend its immediate reception. If such an argument were to be accepted as a premise, one may partially begin to comprehend how Musashi’s work has ended up being read by students of any competitive discipline, indeed utterly transcending the time and the space which gave birth to it; not to mention making it on the list of classics considered by the Classics of Strategy project.
Miyamoto Musashi (1582-1645) is considered Japan’s greatest swordsman—and perhaps one of the most famous swordsmen anywhere. He was born in Harima’s Yonedamura Village as the second son of Tabaru Iesada. At some point in the late 1580s, Miyamoto Munisai of Mimasaka adopted the young Musashi. Musashi lived a considerably long life, becoming supremely accomplished in all aspects of the world of a bushi or warrior. In 1643, he began writing the manuscripts of the Five Rings. He died on the nineteenth day of the fifth month of the very year in which he passed the aforementioned manuscripts to his student Terao Magonojo. With both folklore and popular culture elevating his story to legend status, Musashi epitomizes the ideal of the warrior-scholar of late feudal, pre-modern Japan.
Not only did Musashi reach the acme of combat skill as a duelist ronin (masterless samurai), he was also celebrated as a “retainer” who served in battle and who demonstrated his military leadership. A brilliant tutor and mentor, our protagonist was the creator and developer of his own unique style and school of martial arts [Nito (or Niten) ichi ryu],[1] and he would later be renowned as a martial arts philosopher and critic. This last aspect of Musashi’s legacy is what will be delved into here, specifically through the lens of his arch-famous Book of Five Rings (Gorin-no-sho in Japanese).[2] Hopefully, this exposé will lead to a contribution in favor of revealing Musashi’s teachings as essential in nature—and not merely of historical interest.
Why Musashi Became a Household Name
Modern notions of nationalism in the West were decisively instilled in the common people as a direct product of young nation-states instituting liberal, mass education.[3] This process took place especially in the wake of the bourgeois revolutions that unfolded during the early-to-mid 19th century in Europe. The Japanese parallel or equivalent to such a transformation of collective identity took place during the early 20th century, from the late Meiji period (1868-1912) into World War II, and it has been called Samuraization.[4]
While many may have heard of bushido, they might not have grasped the meaning of the term from the ideological perspective. The composite word generally translates to “the Way of the guardian” (bushi meaning samurai warrior or guard, and do meaning path or ethos). The word samurai is normally translated as “to serve.” Etymologically speaking, therefore, bushido is the moral code of the armed servant as it was conceived during the so-called Samurai Age[5]—an era prior to 1603. However, that conception took place over many centuries within the context of a cherished oral tradition, with rarely any actual systematic codification being done. (Further below, I will briefly summarize the hybrid nature of bushido, owing to the fact that it drinks from at least four distinct streams of religion and ethics.) When bushido was finally put on paper, it was already a nostalgic notion of the glory days of a chaotic past.
Twentieth-century imperial Japanese authorities went even further than ever before in their efforts to extract bushido out of its historical Sengoku-period context (1467-1568/1615, the “Warring States Period” of Japanese history), and to disseminate the code as a doctrine for the masses of Japanese subjects, in order to instill the warrior-class ideal into everyday life. So it was that a set of principles and values, systematized ex post facto during the Edo period (1603-1867/8), officially came to -nearly exclusively- define Japan’s national character. This occurrence had been prophesied three decades before by shrewd minds like Inazo Nitobe’s.[6]
It was during the pre-war apogee of imperial fervor that bushido went from warrior code to warrior cult. Such a movement needed legends, myths, heroes, and classic works. Somewhat ironically, a pop icon was unearthed from the past. The classic image of the renegade, lone-wolf swordsman Musashi[7] became the model for many searching for inspiration from Japan’s epic history. To make a risky parallel, one could say that Musashi became for Japan what Achilles had come to be for ancient Hellenic civilization: the epitome of the Maverick warrior turned into a social representation used to channel the collective effort of a nation. And, much like with Achilles and the other heroic leaders of the Iliad, that depiction upon which the ethical example had been set was largely based on the products of artistic rendition (initially from plays and novels) and imagination. The cultural representation of Musashi consequently took on a mythological life of its own, aided chiefly by fiction.
Divulging Musashi’s Way of Combat Strategy: The Five Rings Method
Describing the shock waves sent by the modern Musashi boom, martial arts scholar and master Alexander Bennett relates that “Takano Sasaburo, a pioneer in the formulation of modern Kendo, included Gorin-no-sho in the appendix of his classic book Kendo (1913), which became a standard instruction manual for Kendo in schools nationwide.”[8] Musashi’s classic treatise was perhaps bound to eventually resonate and pair up with the requirements of martial arts pedagogy, in a period of Japanese history in which the leadership saw the urge to harmonize the modern with the traditional.
The very style in which the lessons of the Book of Five Rings were conveyed speaks to the uniqueness of the author, as much as it transmits a quality of the pre-modern world lost to us. The tendency to reveal through concealment is something that I believe the vast majority of this book’s readers can testify to. Let us now take a moment to examine Musashi’s method for immortalizing his message and for living on through its pages.
Following the esoteric tradition—which Musashi had access to by way of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Taoism—he divides his lessons among five scrolls, which represent the five elements: earth, water, fire, wind, and ether. Hence, the “five rings.”
The first scroll, Earth, contains the groundwork or basis for understanding combat strategy (heiho); starting from the social, cultural, and ethical context within which the samurai must develop himself, going all the way down to the philosophical principles that the student of the sword must bear in mind throughout the entire book to guarantee comprehension. Here Musashi also issues a visual aid for the military commander who seeks an epistemological framework, or thought method, for his discipline: strategy is like carpentry (think of architecture, construction, masonry); building a fighting force means creating an edifice employing a proven millenarian art; making it work according to experience level, purposeful division of labor, and the right allocation of resources.
The second scroll, Water, approaches the correct attitudinal flow, or disposition, that the warrior must adopt in combat. It has to do with the state of being and the mindset necessary to correctly assume posture, stance, weapon handling, awareness, and such like. Ultimately, it proclaims how the Way of combat strategy reveals itself to the student through both training and contemplation until, in modern psychological terms, the skills “sink in” from a—superficial—discursive consciousness, down into a practical consciousness, and further down into the level of the unconscious. It is from an advanced stage in that revelation that the warrior catches the first glimpse of the intimate commonality between close-quarters combat and large-scale combat, starting with the intermediate scale of one-against-many.
The third scroll, Fire, is perhaps the most pertinent to the readers of the Classics of Strategy website. It is the chapter that more greatly delves into what we can call a “Musashi way of war.” The Fire Scroll discusses the swordsman’s view of warfare and what the demand for victory entails. With the enemy’s defeat as a baseline for preparation and action, Musashi burns through in order to dispel the fog of war from the mind of the reader. Our sensei stands in reassurance that adopting the offensive is the absolute key for any commander on the field—whether he commands only his own body or that of an entire army. However, offensives are sound offensives only if the warrior is a true student or practitioner of the Way. Finally, this scroll or chapter convinces any warfighter and commander of the necessity to become an excellent judge of the situation; a master evaluator of his own battlespace awareness; a total reader of each and every factor affecting all levels of warfare.
The fourth scroll, Wind, is a veritable treat to the martial arts historian. It blows off the waste, paraphernalia, redundancies, and absurdities developed and cherished by other influential schools of swordsmanship contemporary with Musashi’s own. Musashi analyzes and weighs everything from tools, to techniques and styles, to the language employed in the teachings of such schools. In making the case for his own, Musashi casts his style and approach as being informed by the true Way—underlining not just combat strategy but nature itself. This single point is supremely important for this article, as much as for anyone trying to understand why this seventeenth-century manuscript enjoys the stature that it still does.
The fifth and last scroll, Ether,[9] is perhaps the most esoteric or “cryptic” of the lot—to the current reader, at least. This closing chapter is said to have been rushed in articulation, as it was written the closest to Musashi’s inner realization that his death was drawing nearer. The entire Book of Five Rings is Musashi’s seasoned, matured attempt to condense his martial arts and combat knowledge in the plainest language possible. He intentionally[10] avoids most of the metaphysical jargon that appeared in other military texts of his time. However, in this closing and, frankly, abruptly-brief chapter, the retired swordsman makes a run for transmitting the inexplicable while remaining true to a tradition in which less is more, oral is above written, and the non-verbal trumps the verbal. Paradoxically, in “Ether,” the warrior’s path is illumined by a complete clarity, as the path itself dissolves into the type of freedom that can only be attained upon finally grasping the true meaning of the Way.
Musashi’s Style, Intellectually Speaking
Seamlessly combining the exoteric and the esoteric is a unique hallmark of Musashi’s work. By delving into the esoteric teachings in the Way of combat strategy, a sort of meta-strategic discussion emerges—a talk about the basic disposition of the warrior, a set of dos and don’ts of a strategic attitude. This is nowhere better exemplified than when he talks about the teaching of “stance, no-stance” in the context of both the proper fighting stances of the body and battle formations (found in the Water Scroll).[11]
The exoteric conversation concerning the need to be flexible and adaptive without becoming fixated on a set of tactics, formations, techniques, or weapons, easily morphs into an esoteric inquiry into the qualities of the mind and situational awareness of the swordsman.[12] In the Way of strategy, these distinctions are just analytical. The famous concept of “looking in” and “looking at” self and the battlefield simultaneously (the Fire Scroll), is linked to a discussion of both developing the muscle memory of combat, and of the proper distribution and allocation of vital energy during a fight.
Musashi’s fighting style was fairly liberal, in the sense that he did much like, during modern times, Bruce Lee would do with his Jeet Kune Do. This means that Musashi took what was worth keeping and discarded what was wasteful from other styles and approaches, and liberally created a hybrid of all of these that optimized lethality in combat, without getting stuck on a ritualistic repetition of the meaningless habits of third-party influences. He had, however, many traditionalist complaints toward the warrior-class of his later days, because, among other things, a whole generation had already passed without any real experience of the trials and tribulations of war. This, Musashi believed, was facilitating the cultivation of a tendency towards paraphernalia and fluff, which was contaminating the Way itself. Likewise, Musashi was a type of minimalist conservative. Why? Because he believed in passing on—intact—the core psychological and philosophical foundations of the Way of combat strategy, which he sought to codify with his “technical” treatise.
Gorin-no-sho is a training manual, in the widest sense. Musashi called it a spiritual guide for sword wielders to learn the true Way. For the author, an instructor at heart, training was the widening of the soul, permitting the disciplined to win intuitively; to win through the wisdom of strategy regardless of who possessed the strongest hand in the match, while seeking perfection in rectitude. In the end, the Way of strategy is the Way of perfection. “Live your life seeking perfection in the Way” is Musashi’s deontology.
Swordsmanship as the Essence of the Military Profession and Vocation
A superficial reading of the aphorism in which the author claims that mastery of the sword[13] is the essence of warfighting might give the impression of mere self-aggrandizement or self-justification. Nevertheless, a closer look at the statement provides a great deal of heuristic value. In a sense, the statement even reveals the strategic wisdom of the book.
It must be kept in mind that the samurai were the “sword nobility” (to use a stretched-out European reference) of that age in Japanese history. There is no shortage of comparisons between bushido and the chivalric code of medieval knightly orders, for example. Musashi was adopted and raised by a samurai family; his own adoptive father was himself a celebrated samurai swordsman.[14]
Furthermore, traditional Japanese lore is packed with cultural and spiritual references to the famed swords of the samurai, the sword-making process, and the lethality and quality of both the wakizashi (short sword) and the katana (long sword). It was said that the sword was the soul of the warrior,[15] with larger-than-life Japan unifier Tokugawa Ieyasu having died peacefully clutching his sword after a lifetime of war.[16]
Musashi was no stranger to the introduction of firearms during the Sengoku period, and to the massive effect they had already had on the course of warfare in the country. He was equally well acquainted with the more traditional cavalry roles and functions of the samurai forces in battle—those of superb mounted archers. The author argues, multiple times, against a fixed preference for this or that weapon of choice, and reminds the warrior that the true Way demands mastery of all available weaponry (bows, guns, pikes, glaives, for instance). Nevertheless, he sticks to his argument about the fundamental wisdom afforded the warfighter through swordsmanship.
The Book of Five Rings is, on its face, a book about sword fighting: it is a tactics manual. The life-long discipline and practice required for mastery of this weapon is akin to service in the military profession itself. Incidentally, the psychological elements and milestones required to achieve victory in a sword bout or duel can be scaled “up” to the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of warfare, if one is to abide by the Musashi lesson reflecting the Zen principles of awareness and “no mind.”[17]
Seizing the initiative, keeping the enemy on his heels and pinned down; thwarting the enemy attempt at finding his place and regaining any sort of grounded action; staying on the offensive even when it is made to appear like something else—these are all patterns in strategic thinking that resemble issues encountered very much throughout modern discussions[18] on leadership and command. Musashi suggests many of these from the perspective of a master duelist holding the katana on one hand and the wakizashi on the other.
For Musashi, the metaphysical aspects of war are universal and they can be understood profoundly by embarking upon the journey of the warrior swordsman. Swordsmanship doesn’t cover the entire Way of the warrior, therefore it doesn’t suffice, but it is a necessary condition. Probably the most recommended Japanese book on samurai wisdom after the Book of Five Rings is Hagakure. It too transmits an air of Sengoku-age nostalgia that is somewhat akin to Musashi’s fascinating opinions. The quintessential enigmatic quote from Hagakure reads: “The Way of the warrior (bushido) is to be found in dying.”[19] In other words, to embrace the life of one who lives by the sword is to fully embrace death.
A Musashian interpretation of the quote above, from the standpoint of the study of war itself, is that the military vocation will always entail putting one’s own life on the same line that the sword-wielding warriors of old did. It is not an archaic belief about the dignity of close-range combat what ultimately drives Musashi to affirm what he wrote; rather, it is the reality of the carnage of war, old and new, which informs his timeless teaching about the art of the sword and about how those pursuing the Way should not stop seeking its mastery.
One could explore multiple analogies between fine swordsmanship and command in war, but the idea that there’s a rhythm, a tempo, a flow, or a cadence inherent to sword combat, that one chooses not to tune into at one’s own peril, is a fascinating concept to evaluate at all levels of warfare throughout history. Successful campaigns and battles most definitely have involved commanders and leaders who are excellent timers, able to read the “flow” of unfolding events and patterns of situations to their advantage.
Musashi is quite unambiguous about this point: Only a true swordsman is a strategist. In fact, there can be no knowledge of strategy without its practical dominance at the most essential level—combat strategy using the sword. The strategist and the swordsman are one and the same.
Musashi’s Principled “Hermetic” View of Military Ratio
Just as Machiavelli established human nature as the grounds for thinking about raison d’état (reason of state), so does Musashi establish the foundations for studying military logic (raison or ratio) on the grounds of what can be called hermetic teachings.[20] This is not to assert that Musashi came into contact with Hermetism during his lifetime, but we’ll take the suggestions of Julius Evola[21] when he develops his theory of an underlying universal connection between all of the metaphysical approaches regarding war, and the meaning of war, from various cultures and traditions.
There are noteworthy similarities between Musashi’s logic and the laws of the Kybalion. Chief among them is the principle of correspondence: “As above, so below; as below, so above.” The simple fact that we can extrapolate interesting strategic lessons from the Book of Five Rings is essentially due to Musashi’s insistence on the scalability of close-quarters combat onto the tactical and operational levels of war. He even writes of “large-scale strategy” (a battle) and “small-scale strategy” (a duel or single combat).
Noteworthy is Musashi’s word of confidence for those who fight outnumbered: One can defeat ten, he says, as surely as ten can defeat 100, and 100 can defeat 1000, and so on. In other words, a ten to one numerical disadvantage can be overridden by perfection in the Way of combat strategy (heiho no michi).
The principle of polarity can also be found as analogous to Musashi’s view of using any technique and tool in combat. It is the acknowledgment of the existence of the negative and the positive in all things, everything having its opposite extremes. Much like in hermetic and alchemical parlance, Musashi views a true master of the Way as a user of such laws or principles of nature for his own advantage.
For example, in the psychology of battle (whether small or large) he identified the tendency to vicariously degrade one’s action into an imitation of the opponent’s movements, that is, reacting instead of acting. The commander can gain, retain, and maintain the initiative if aware of this principle, understanding and making conscious the fact that the enemy is as much a prisoner of these universal laws as one can be. Musashi hence talks about flipping the tendency onto the enemy and managing the opposing force as if it were one’s own troops. In other words, use polarity in your favor—break the psychological composition of the flow of battle by assuming full consciousness of inertia, and by doing the opposite of the enemy constantly, until you can rearrange that composition to make inertia work for you by becoming the master of circumstance instead of its slave.
Another hermetic principle worth identifying within Musashi’s logic is the principle of rhythm. It is remarkably similar to the idea of cadence explained in multiple passages of the Water Scroll, and then later into the book, to describe the opportunities and openings presented in a sword bout that are inherent to the development of the fight per se. The hermetic principle here concerns itself with the universe’s cycles, patterns, structural timings, and tempos, which cannot be altered but can be made to provide those who are alive to them the correct circumstance for maximizing the effect of a desired action. In battle, one cannot alter a particular rhythm that is natural to the dynamics of maneuvers, movements, assaults, counter-assaults, suppression, or retreats. However, knowing such mechanics and dynamics will undeniably aid the warrior in spotting the exact instances during which force can be optimized to dominate, through synchronization of one’s actions with that cadence. This guarantees success in combat.
Samurai Culture, its Inner Tensions, and the Edo Period (Pax Tokugawa)
To understand the depth of Musashi, it is important to consider that the man was a polymath, or, as some have said, a Japanese version of a Renaissance man.[22] A brilliant martial artist, painter, calligrapher, architect, designer, philosopher, instructor, and warrior, Musashi was also deeply familiar with the spiritual and literary traditions of his land.
The Earth Scroll is a moving display of Musashi’s love for his country and the society that surrounded him, as well as an unparalleled window into Musashi’s own appreciation of—and interest in—all professions, arts, tradecrafts, and disciplines. He teaches the young warrior student to recognize the Way in all occupations—the warrior’s Way being just one manifestation of this fundamental order of things, manifested in just one particular functional organ of society: The warrior class. This is why Musashi argues that the samurai needed to have an interest in and appreciation for -and toward- all manifestations of the Way in order for him to perfect his own.
But was it just bushido and budo that nurtured a spirit like Musashi’s to reach such conclusions? What was this moral code forged from in the first place? Here is where the necessary familiarity with Japanese Buddhism (particularly Zen), Confucius, Mencius, Tao, and Shinto comes into play. Perhaps the most intimate reason why the history and traits of the samurai, as a socio-historical phenomenon, captivate the imagination of so many even today is the little-known fact that their ethos was comprised of multiple, distinct spiritual influences or currents.[23] Indeed, the religious-theological—as well as ethical—pressures of each one of these currents forged the mettle of bushido.
Buddhism was perhaps the highest-ranking influence in this process. The rallying power that Buddhist sects and fighting monks wielded during the twilight of the Sengoku period is conspicuous in the accounts of the campaigns carried out against their forces by Tokugawa Ieyasu, early on in his career,[24] under the banners of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi—right around the time that Musashi was growing up. Buddhist spiritual goals and practices aim to dissolve ego attachments and to cultivate calm mindfulness of the interdependence or inter-relatedness of all things.[25]
The great Chinese classics of deontological thought, Confucius and Mencius, had a centuries-old sway over the Japanese social order, and were the remote origins of much of the hierarchical ideas and rulings of their feudal historical formation. With the emperor at the pinnacle, as a quasi-divine figure, the rest of the edifice of society had organic, complementary roles to play within a segmented and stratified pyramid. Obedience, loyalty, reverence of authority, duty, indebtedness, personal sacrifice for the good of the collective structure, and a sacred regard for hierarchy were all derivative traits of this school of moral philosophy.[26]
Another Chinese classic that had a ubiquitous presence in the cultural milieu of ancient and traditional Japan was Lao Tzu, the founder of philosophical Taoism. The word Tao itself is at the root of the Japanese word do in the composites bushido and budo; it is the famous Way. To be abusively brief here, one can say that the Tao signifies the undercurrent of the natural order of the universe; the principle or energy that holds all things through harmonizing polarities, or dualities, or extremes.
Living according to Tao is the key of the Way, and the art of using this key is the effortless flow of action suggested in the concept of wu wei. To the Musashi reader, the relationship between these snippets of Taoist thought and the teachings within the Book of Five Rings would feel like a truism, because a warrior who incorporates this mentality into his self-improvement is the ideal student of Musashi’s school.
Last, but far from least, is the mystical and customary presence of the beliefs from Shinto or Shintoism, the foundational religion of Japan. A polytheistic cult of deities, ancestors, and the powers of nature, Shinto is reminiscent of the ancient domestic (or private) religions of the Indo-European peoples.[27] Shinto emphasizes ritual, the attachment to ancestry and lineage, the cherishing of tradition and familial ties, a careful dedication to the memory of forebears, and the sacredness of sites, shrines, and objects significant throughout the Japanese land.
Without diving into the philosophical and psychological tenets of bushido, it should suffice to say that it was the remarkable product of centuries of confluence between these often contrasting and contradictory intellectual and religious streams, which is reflected in the richness of Musashi’s esoteric passages. The bushi was called upon to carry himself constantly atop the near-impossible balance between what Max Weber termed the ethics of principle and the ethics of responsibility.[28] On top of that complexity, comes another complicating factor to be computed into any understanding of the samurai of Musashi’s world: The fact that Musashi lived before, during, and after the revolutionary establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, and the dawn of the Edo period.
After centuries of being the aristocratic protagonists of some of the bloodiest pages in Japanese war history, the samurai of the early 1600s were, by virtue of their own successful service to their lords, turned into living relics of a past that the protagonists of the new era, the bureaucrats, eagerly wished to put well behind them. By the same token, the accomplished warrior nobles with a glorious record of sacrifice and upheaval became a type of second-tier leisure class, forced to find a new lifestyle in an environment where peace and wealth turned into defining values. It was the golden age of the ronin; a frustrating time marked by a kind of “identity crisis” for many masterless warriors, who only in cases like that of Musashi found a path to self-assertion and fame beyond the gloomy prospects that the new era afforded them.
The No-Nonsense Attitude of Musashi: Reminiscent of the Western Tradition?
Musashi was a straight shooter in a society in which so much depended on saving face. Popular culture depicts Edo-period Japan[29] as a rite-obsessed, highly self-aware country in which political scheming is the supreme trade. But Musashi’s advice and attitude come across similarly to a Napoleon or a Patton: as the strategic logic of an annihilator.
Clearly, Musashi was as much a man of his time and place as even the most visionary among us “moderns” is. However, there is something about the cocktail of factors and ingredients that surround and constitute his life that helps him to transcend his context. Having participated in roughly sixty bouts and duels, and about six major battles, reaching top-level mastery of his abilities at the age of thirty, Musashi was certainly not speaking from an over-intellectualized standpoint when he wrote Gorin-no-sho. His approach to combat, and to warfare overall, although not that of a commander general, appears to differ greatly from the “win without fighting” approach of a Sun Tzu.[30]
His teachings are straightforward precisely because his perspective is tactical and based on sound personal-combat techniques, which require flexibility but maximum lethal efficacy at the same time. Of course, he adamantly stresses the psychological component[31] of combat (deception, demoralization, disruption) at all levels, that is so widely discussed among analysts of the so-called Eastern strategic tradition. Like the Hagakure, the Book of Five Rings is a true gem when it comes to discussing the psyche of the ideal warrior[32] on and off the fighting ground, and the cognitive pressures that haunt the mind of the inexperienced.
Nevertheless, Musashi advocates for crushing the enemy, each and every time—no holds barred. Victory is the only acceptable outcome, on all levels of warfare. One can say the pitfall here is that he doesn’t ever assume the statesman’s position,[33] and while that may be true to a certain extent, there is reason to assume that Musashi was writing for the foot soldier, the cavalry chief, the daimyo (warlord or feudal lord), and the Shogun himself. He was searching for an essential disposition that could be adopted by the warfighter, something every echelon could find relatable.
Perhaps it isn’t strategic thought what determines a Way of war. In trying to define an “Eastern” strategic tradition, the Chinese classics on statecraft are usually cited as an archetypal yardstick to measure a rich and colorful tradition, filled with diverse directions. The encirclement strategies, the indirect approach, the primacy of deception and the manipulation of morale; the absences of a search for decisive battles or of a notion of the center of gravity—many such traits are foisted upon the strategic cultures of that side of the world. The ages-old Chinese cultural radiance throughout all of East Asia[34] helps to justify this theorizing tendency, but Musashi’s approach proves such theories incorrect. He was, after all, always an outsider, and an exception or rarity among his peers. Regardless, his legacy is not a fringe influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, determining whether or not the Book of Five Rings could actually be one of the defining works that serves as the historian’s window into the strategic culture and expansion strategy of the Japanese Empire during the run-up to World War II, would be an illuminating research project of its own.[35]
When examining the argument in reverse, in other words, when defining a “Western” strategic tradition, we seem to encounter the same wealth and diversity of thought that makes definition so evasive. There is no one way to seriously label the Western approach to strategic thinking entirely from the writings of Clausewitz, or Machiavelli, or Liddell Hart—each one original in their own right. Even the fascinating take on the subject provided by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson[36] lends credit to a multiplicity of factors—and strategic thought hardly makes top of the list. Hanson mentions traits like inventiveness, civic values, a tradition of dissent, rationalism, and the unparalleled exchange of knowledge, when it comes to not only trying to explain why the West has dominated the battlefields of history, but also when trying to come up with a unified concept of a Western way of war in the first place.
The Eastern tradition thesis, itself a subset of the “East versus West” question or problem within strategic theory, is either rendered sterile by works like those of Musashi, or turns out to be untraceable solely from the heights of the intellectual levels of the world of strategy and military studies. That is not to say, however, that the issue is now resolved and/or the question finally discarded or dismissed—far from it. But an armchair general’s look at the Gorin-no-sho is sure to find striking similarities between Musashi’s direct, offensive, annihilator approach to strategy (if we’re allowed to use his words in a modern sense) and the classic portrayal of the mindset behind the Western military tradition. And this, for obvious geographic and cultural reasons, breaks away from the assumptions of an “East vs. West” distinction.
Conclusion
Musashi’s message is universally relatable because of its eclectic nature, collected after mounting many years of experience and study. One can claim, only half-jokingly, that if Nietzsche had known about Musashi, the German thinker would have showcased the samurai hero’s profile as an example of the Übermensch. His personal process was alchemical and therefore universal. It is, and has been in the past, tempting to selectively extrapolate some desired virtues of the author’s life legend in order to feed ideological notions or socio-political doctrines such as bushido. The problem with any easy, “pop icon” approach to Musashi and his teachings is not only that one can end up uncritically accepting a propagandistic spin on an ex post facto narrative about the man’s historical and cultural milieu[37]—one can also end up collectivizing and dogmatizing an ageless set of truths from the warrior tradition that is destined for the individual only, thus superimposing a romanticized context on the actual text.
Musashi’s most famous writing is best read phenomenologically. In it, the author conveys a unitary, essential meaning behind all the analytical levels of warfare. He shows the fighter that the nature of victory, no matter the instance, is essentially the result of a projection of the successful outcome from the fight against oneself. Five Rings is a worthwhile read to anyone interested in combat strategy because, ultimately, combat equals strategy.
David Guenni is a doctoral candidate at Missouri State University’s Graduate Department of Defense & Strategic Studies. Raised and educated in Venezuela, his main research interest focuses on the power that the organized extreme Left holds over defense and security changes taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Works referenced
Bennett, Alexander. “Introduction – Miyamoto Musashi: The Man, the Myth and the Manuscripts.” In The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works, 1st ed., 224. Rutland, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing, 2018.
Bowdish, Randall G. “Military Strategy: Theory and Concepts.” Doctoral, University of Nebraska, 2013. Political Science Department — Theses, Dissertations, and Student Scholarship (Paper 26). http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/poliscitheses/26.
Chappell, David W. “Buddhist Perspectives on Weapons of Mass Destruction.” In Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, 1st ed., 533. The Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics 11. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2004. www.cambridge.org/9780521545266.
Evola, Julius. “Metafísica de la guerra.” Il Conciliatore. March 15, 1969, Spanish translation edition.
Friday, Karl F. “Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition.” The History Teacher, Society for History Education, 27, no. 3 (May 1994): 339–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/494774?origin=JSTOR-pdf.
Fustel de Coulanges, Numa Denis. La ciudad antigua. 1st ed. Historia 15. Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Universales, 2004. www.empresario.com.co/graficasmodernas.
Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. 1st ed. Military History. New York, NY, USA: Anchor Books, 2002. www.anchorbooks.com.
Harmon, Christopher C. “On Strategic Thinking: Patterns in Modern History.” Specialized web journal. Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy (blog), March 14, 2012. https://www.classicsofstrategy.com/2012/03/on-strategic-thinking.html.
Henry Kissinger. On China. 2nd ed. History. New York, NY, USA: Penguin Books, 2012.
Hiroshi, Inagaki. Chushingura (The Loyal 47 Ronin). Digital, Action, Drama, History. Amazon, 1962. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055850/.
Inazo, Nitobe. Bushido, the Soul of Japan. 13th EDITION (1908). Project Gutenberg, 2004. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12096.
Miyamoto, Musashi. “The Book of Five Rings.” In The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works, translated by Alexander Bennett, 1st ed., 224. Rutland, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing, 2018.
Miyamoto Musashi: The Lone Samurai. YouTube, Biography. Biographics, 2018. https://youtu.be/UNLx326JQzE.
Sun, Tzu. The Art of War. Imprint 1910. Military Science. Project Gutenberg, 2005. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17405.
Three Initiates, 1862-1932. The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece. Occultism; Hermetism. Project Gutenberg, 2004. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14209.
Turnbull, Stephen. Tokugawa Ieyasu – Leadership, Strategy, Conflict. 1st ed. Command 24. Long Island City, NY, USA: Osprey Publishing, 2012. www.ospreypublishing.com.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. Análisis de sistemas-mundo Una introducción. (Reprint). México D.F., México: Siglo XXI Editora Iberoamericana, 2005.
Wate, John. Samurai Sword: The Making of a Legend. Prime Video (streaming online video), Documentary, Sports. Amazon, 2006. https://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Sword-Making-John-Wate/dp/B078G244CP?language=en_US.
Weber, Max. El político y el científico. 2nd ed. El Libro de Bolsillo. Humanidades 71. Madrid, España: Alianza Editorial, 1969.
Yamamoto, Tsunetomo. Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai. Translated by Alexander Bennett. 1st ed. Rutland, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing, 2014.
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NOTES
[1] This is not to say that Musashi pioneered the combat employment of two swords simultaneously, by the way. I will clarify this point in another section. His school’s name is sometimes designated interchangeably as “Two Swords as One” and/or “Two Heavens as One.” However, the first, less-spectacular name was the designation he used earlier in his teaching career; the latter name was the one he preferred later on, which carries a more mythical image of the mastery and the power of both sword-armed hands coming down upon one’s foe as a single force of nature. The naming confusion arises from an issue pertaining to the incomplete rewrite of the original manuscripts that made the Book.
[2] My core reference for this article is Dr. Alexander Bennett’s translation of Gorin-no-sho. It is a relatively recent accomplishment by one of the most celebrated Western authorities in the Japanese martial arts and martial arts philosophy, as well as budo in general. With the cited work, he demonstrated not only the depth of his research into Musashi but also the usefulness of translating and illustrating (!) from the perspective of a martial artist and modern-day swordsman. The highlight of his English translation of the entire works of Miyamoto Musashi, and other accompanying documents, is the personal combat experience brought into the thoroughly annotated pages and introduction, the dominion of the Japanese language, and the proper cultural contextualization done for each aspect deemed to be appreciated by the Western reader.
[3] Immanuel Wallerstein, Análisis de sistemas-mundo: Una introducción, (reprint) (México D.F., México: Siglo XXI Editora Iberoamericana, 2005).
[4] Alexander Bennett, “Introduction – Miyamoto Musashi: The Man, the Myth and the Manuscripts,” in The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works, 1st ed. (Rutland, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing, 2018), 20.
[5] Nitobe Inazo, Bushido, the Soul of Japan, 13th EDITION (1908) (Project Gutenberg, 2004), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12096.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Miyamoto Musashi: The Lone Samurai, YouTube, Biography (Biographics, 2018), https://youtu.be/UNLx326JQzE.
[8] “The Complete Musashi,” 21.
[9] There are many different translations of this term out there, arising not only from the different readings of the Japanese ideogram that denotes it, according to context, but also from each one of the book’s various Western translators, who differ in background, specialization, and familiarity with this or that aspect of the culture. Others have written: void, emptiness, heaven, nothingness, etc.
[10] Musashi Miyamoto, “The Book of Five Rings,” in The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works, trans. Alexander Bennett, 1st ed. (Rutland, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing, 2018), 64.
[11] Miyamoto, 94.
[12] Musashi’s emphatic message of letting go of preferences, predilections, or fixations again points to a Buddhist sensitivity against attachment, and a proclivity towards balance/equilibrium.
[13] “The origins of strategy are found in the sword. It is through the virtue of the sword that the world is governed and the warrior disciplines himself. One who embodies the virtue of the sword will single-handedly be able to defeat ten adversaries.” (Miyamoto, “The Complete Musashi,” 77.) Naturally, my interpretation of this passage and of the aphorism or “article” that contains it (the Earth Scroll’s 6th article, found in pages 76-77 of Bennett’s translation) is just one possible take on the statement. I would encourage the reader to judge for himself. In any case, Musashi was giving a subject-matter-expert justification of the conventional usage of the Japanese words for (combat) “strategy” and “swordsmanship.” The ideographical explanation blends with the etymological one and points to the meaning and logic of both activities being one and the same in origin.
[14] To whom the schooling of the style of fighting with two-swords-at-once can initially be accredited to, but is often mistakenly attributed to Musashi – who continued and perfected such a style with his own school. See: Bennett, “The Complete Musashi.”
[15] John Wate, Samurai Sword: The Making of a Legend, Prime Video (streaming online video), Documentary, Sports (Amazon, 2006), https://www.amazon.com/Samurai-Sword-Making-John-Wate/dp/B078G244CP?language=en_US.
[16] Stephen Turnbull, Tokugawa Ieyasu – Leadership, Strategy, Conflict, 1st ed., Command 24 (Long Island City, NY, USA: Osprey Publishing, 2012), www.ospreypublishing.com.
[17] The successful application of such principles appears to us as paradox. This was a fundamental tension within the samurai psyche: the habit of “lingering” (being always ready to respond to threats at a moment’s notice, even after clear victory in battle was achieved!) had to coexist with the “no mind” ability (emptying the mind of clutter and paralyzing thought, for precisely the same reason that constant awareness was desired). A rich, fascinating discussion of this purposeful duality can be found in: Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai, trans. Alexander Bennett, 1st ed. (Rutland, Vermont, USA: Tuttle Publishing, 2014).
[18] Christopher C. Harmon, “On Strategic Thinking: Patterns in Modern History,” Specialized web journal, Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy(blog), March 14, 2012, https://www.classicsofstrategy.com/2012/03/on-strategic-thinking.html.
[19] Yamamoto, Hagakure, 26.
[20] Three Initiates, 1862-1932, The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, Occultism; Hermetism (Project Gutenberg, 2004), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14209.
[21] “Metafísica de la guerra,” Il Conciliatore, March 15, 1969, Spanish translation edition.
[22] Miyamoto Musashi: The Lone Samurai.
[23] Inazo, Bushido.
[24] Turnbull, Tokugawa.
[25] David W. Chappell, “Buddhist Perspectives on Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee, 1st ed., The Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics 11 (New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 533, www.cambridge.org/9780521545266.
[26] Inazo, Bushido.
[27] I have yet to find a better-written, more captivating exploration of this subject than in Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, La ciudad antigua, 1st ed., Historia 15 (Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Universales, 2004), www.empresario.com.co/graficasmodernas.
[28] El político y el científico, 2nd ed., El Libro de Bolsillo. Humanidades 71 (Madrid, España: Alianza Editorial, 1969).
[29] Inagaki Hiroshi, Chushingura (The Loyal 47 Ronin), Digital, Action, Drama, History (Amazon, 1962), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055850/.
[30] Tzu Sun, The Art of War, Imprint 1910, Military Science (Project Gutenberg, 2005), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17405.
[31] Randall G. Bowdish, “Military Strategy: Theory and Concepts” (Doctoral, Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska, 2013), Political Science Department –Theses, Dissertations, and Student Scholarship (Paper 26), http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/poliscitheses/26.
[32] In fact, there is a great deal of discussion about how a fight is won first in the mind, where everything actually takes place, and then in the physical plain of existence. It takes us back to the hermetic principle of mentalism, in: Three Initiates, 1862-1932, The Kybalion.
[33] Harmon, “On Strategic Thinking: Patterns in Modern History.”
[34] For a clear example of such an argumentation see: Henry Kissinger, On China, 2nd ed., History (New York, NY, USA: Penguin Books, 2012).
[35] Dr. Patrick Garrity, the Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy project coordinator, along with Rebecca Burgess, the project’s chief editor, who both contributed greatly to the shaping and improvement of this article, each suggested that such a hypothesis could be a valuable item to think about.
[36] Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, 1st ed., Military History (New York, NY, USA: Anchor Books, 2002), www.anchorbooks.com.
[37] Karl F. Friday, “Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition,” The History Teacher, Society for History Education, 27, no. 3 (May 1994): 339–49, http://www.jstor.org/stable/494774?origin=JSTOR-pdf.