SWORDDUELING.COM

Japanese katana can have exquistite handguards or tsubas. Auction catalogues of the most beautiful specimens shows the amazing craftsmanship of their creation, when one uses chisels to “paint metal”. These videos which show a modern recreation of a missing tsuba to pair the existant wakazaki tsuba are fascinating.

The Hagakure, a handbook of conduct from the twilight days of the Samurai caste, sometimes gets taken too seriously. My favorite passage is this account of a bloody brawl’s aftermath:

Gorobei’s wounds were numerous. Although he stopped the bleeding, he died on account of drinking some water. Dohaku’s wife suffered some severed fingers. Dohaku’s wound was a severed neck bone, and since only his throat remained intact, his head hung down in front. Now boosting his head up with his own hands, Dohaku went off to the surgeon ’s.

The surgeon’s treatment was like this: First he rubbed a mixture of pine resin and oil on Dohaku’s jaw and bound it in cloth. He then attached a rope to the top of his head and tied it to a beam, sewed the open wound shut, and buried his body in rice so that he would not be able to move.

Dohaku never lost consciousness nor did he change from his everyday attitude, nor did he even drink ginseng. It is said that only on the third day when there was a hemorrhage did he use a little medicinal stimulant. In the end the bones mended, and he recovered without incident.

Wow!! Next time I sprain a finger sparring, you won’t hear a peep out of me.

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I already knew a good deal about Musashi from Kenji Tokitsu’s book and Takehito Inoue’s stupendously amazing manga Vagabond (which is literally like the best comic ever – the art, the pacing, the characters, the action, etc.)

However, Lives of Master Swordsmen has a surprising amount of detail about his later life, much of it extremely illuminating.

LOVE
For example, when Musashi was around 50, he 50 began a long-term relationship with the courtesan Kumoi, which prompted the following poem:

When in love
Avoid love epistles and amorous letters
Avoid poems expressing love to your beloved
In their place, devote all your strength
To accumulating and saving money.

MONEY
In light of the above advice it should be no surprise that Musashi was very thrifty. However, when he finally accepted employment with a lord, as part of his hiring requirements, he demanded a small salary. How unusual.

MUNENORI
I had always assumed that Musashi and Yagyu Munenori never came into real contact and thus could not duel one another. In fact, plans for a match against Munenori were twice shelved seemingly due to Musashi. Perhaps he didn’t want to make enemies with the shogunate.

BATTLE
Musashi’s military record is clouded and the traditional recountings of his achievements in the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) and the Battles of Winter and Summer in 1614/1615 are scant and vague. Although he was praised for his achievement, they aren’t listed out, but just described in hyperbolic, non-specific terms, unlike others. Perhaps this is due to fighting on the wrong side.
He also fought in the Shimabara rebellion, caused by tyrannical taxes on the peasants and a nascent Christian faith binding them together into 30,000 men, women and children, who were ultimately annihilated. Daimyo Matsukura, the lord over the district, was beheaded for causing the rebellion.

THE ROOT OF IT ALL
Late in life at 54, on a day when he was confined to bed, his lord Tadatoshi died. A friend paid him a visit. Staring at the sun, Musashi suddenly parted his hair and said, “Look at this. Look at the eczema scars that I still have from my infancy. I can’t shave my sakayaki (forehead to crown) the way all samurai did. I can’t wear a topknot.”

Is that the key to Musashi? Anti-authoritarian form childhood, spurred on by a ruthless single father towards strength, and predisposed against all strictures because superficial scars from a baby. & so Musashi dressed unclean and unkempt, as a way to say – I am fine as I am, able to cut down all you fancy samurai, so you proper people can go to hell.

Over 100 duels, 13 with steel swords. He served on the battlefield 37 times without receiving any injuries more serious than minor arrow wounds. The number of men he is recounted as defeating number 212.

Re his Technique, the Hitotsu-Tachi – One Stroke Then Death
“A sword can be divided into three spheres. The first is time of the heavens; the second is the advantage of the earth; the third is combination of the earth and the heaens. This is the secret of hitotsu-tachi.”

Re the Hitotsu-Tachi (this advice makes no sense to me except that one should mind the ma/distance and just avoid strokes like the “moon in the water” instead of blocking so that one can attack at that moment.
“…a swordsman must first position himself directly opposite his opponent’s sword. He can place his sword either aloft before him or at his side; the only essential point is that he must look unprotected, provoking the opponent to a conventional attack. If the opponent’s sword is more than one inch away from his body, the swordsman should not parry his attack. When the sword is only a half inch away, however, the swordsman should take one step forward and slay his opponent. The essential factor is the ability to distinguish the narrow margin which separates and inch from a half inch. Because man is my nature a coward, he will almost always try to dodge an attacking sword. He may be able to resist a space of an inch but half an inch indubitably causes a response. Since your opponent expects a defensive posture. A dodge at even one inch, your lightning fast attack takes him completely off guard. The attack at this final point entails that after deal the hitotsu-tachi the swordsman must touch his opponent’s body.” – Masaki Masahide (1727)

Here is a story about the preliminaries to a duel that is very interesting due to the psychological manipulation involved.

Bokuden was once challenged to a dul with steel swords by a swordsman who wielded two swords so skillfully that he had never lost a match. Before accepting the challenge Bokuden amassed every shred of informnation that was available about his opponent. He sent a letter objecting to his opponent’s style saying that wielding a swrod skillfully with the left hand as well as with the right was unfair. Since this thinking was totally illogical and unreasonable, the challenger become angry and sent back a letter saying, “If you think my using a sword with my left hand is unfair, renounce the match.” Before accepting the challenge, Bokuden sent another ten letters on the same subject to hisopponent. By the day of the duel, the challenger was firmly convinced that his left hand would strike the victorious blow. Assured that Bokuden would be paying strict attention to the second sword, the challenger stepped up to the famous swordsman. But in a flash, Bokuden slashed the opponent’s arm and the duel was over.

Two other googlable stories about Bokuden involve being saved by monkeys & Bokuden on the ferry.

He has a book of 98 poems called Bokuden Hyakushu and if anybody knows where to get it in English or even in Japanese, I’d like to know.

The gem, mirror and sword are the three sacred symbols of Japan.

The origin of the warrior goes back to the divine age of antiquity when the central ruler of heaven, the Great Goddess Lighting the Sky, made a pact with her august descendant Ninigi-no-Mikoto, saying, “Let the emperor use artful subtlety like the curve of the sacred gem to govern the earthly administration; use clarity like the sacred mirror to oversee the mountains and rivers, seas and plains; and wield the sacred sword to pacify the earth and benefit the populace.”

The sacred gem symbolizes flexibility and accommodation. The government of the earth should be carried out with the warm, rich quality of humaneness represented by this object. Artful subtlety is expressed by its rounded curvature; the path is not a single fixed straight line but adopts what is suitable to the time, in accord with the context. So it is a way of adapting to the time.

The sacred mirror symbolizes honesty. A mirror doesn’t retain anything but reflects everything impartially, so right and wrong and good and bad features all show. Virtue is to respond sensitively to those features. This is the basis of honesty. For a mirror the essential feature is clarity. When the essence of mind is clear, compassion and decisiveness are therein. If observed with honest intelligence clear as a mirror, there will be no one corrupt at court and no savant neglected in the countryside. With the operation of government honest, and good communication between superior and subordinates, all people will find their places.

The sacred sword symbolizes decisiveness. It implies the imperative to take the side of absolute firmness and freedom from greed to destroy the internal mental enemies selfishness and treachery and execute the external bandits crime and violence, being straightforward and uncorrupted in body and mind and government affairs as well, imbued with the commanding presence to overawe the world.

- Izawa Nagahide