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The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi

by William Scott Wilson

Kodansha $187

At Kumamoto in Kyushu, looking out at the Ariake-kai (the Sea of Dawn),  William Scott Wilson ponders: 'What, really, do we do with our lives?' He's been to the tomb of Musashi Miyamoto, Japan's greatest samurai, who ended his 61 years in meditation in the nearby Reigan Cave some 360 years ago.

Modern Japanese has the phrase 'Musashi-like' - high praise for someone's character.

Miyamoto, who prevailed in some 60 bouts armed with mainly a wooden sword, killed his first opponent at the age of 13, and his last at 29. Later, those who  challenged his skill conceded only their respect, rather than their lives.

'Musashi's valour and great fame could not be overstated, even if the oceans had mouths or the valleys had tongues,' says the inscription on a monument erected at Kokura Hinbun in 1654, 10 years after his death.

In The Lone Samurai, Wilson works his way through the oceans and valleys of legend surrounding  Miyamoto to glean the scant facts about the wandering warrior. But rather than discard conflicting and contradictory tales, he examines why they continue to be told.

Drawn to  Miyamoto after translating The Book of Five Rings for the  Japanese publishing house Kodansha, Wilson says he was impressed by the warrior's insights on strategy, Zen Buddhism and how to live.

The Book of Five Rings expounds  Miyamoto's 'way', and Wilson compares it with Sun Tzu's

The Art of War, Yagyu Munenori's The Life-Giving Sword, which draws on Zen and Confucianism, and the Hsinhsinming, the basic principles of Zen from a Taoist perspective. Wilson tests  the samurai's claim to

have had no teacher, examining his contemporaries in feudal Japan, and concludes that his 'way' was, indeed, unique.

Miyamoto believed that, by releasing the mind through practice, training and the absence of prejudice, a person can 'know the way of victory with certainty'. That meant knowing yourself and your weapons so thoroughly as to almost be unaware of any action.

Psychiatrist Oliver Sacks wrote recently in the New Yorker about the incredibly high speeds at which the brain is capable of operating - such  as the pilot of a hi-tech fighter jet who must execute multiple complex actions that allow no time for thought, or comic Robin Williams in  full flight.

True to his teaching to 'touch upon all of the arts; know the ways of all occupations; [and] know the advantages and disadvantages of everything',  Miyamoto was  an  artist,  who also designed the town at Akagi on Honshu, and made gardens, notably at the temples of Enakuin and Honshoji.

Mostly fanciful stories about  Miyamoto abounded in his lifetime and later. He is celebrated in kabuki and noh drama, manga cartoon books and literature, film and television.  Wilson also points to the Samurai Trilogy, by  Hiroshi Inagaki, released in 1954-56 and available on DVD with subtitles.  Miyamoto is played by Toshiro Mifune. The first - The Legend of Musashi - won an Oscar for best foreign film.

Last year,  Japanese television ran a 52-week series on  Miyamoto, each episode followed by travel information for related locations. Wilson gives his own travel tips, and Kyoto becomes all the more interesting because of them.

'It is difficult to imagine another character from either history or literature who has so captured the imagination of a people,' Wilson writes. 'There is something at the heart of his story that has commanded the attention of the Japanese people and others who have heard it.'



The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi