Two long swords, a wooden oar, a whacky Samurai, a perfect winning record and how to never loose; The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi

HBS Rating: Expands your knowledge

Who should read?

• Eastern culture, History lovers
• Eastern philosophy
• Those who get a kick out of being (or wanting to be) a Samurai
• Those wishing to get some more insight into how and why the Japanese are the way they are
• Martial art lovers or practitioners
• Those wondering why its sports in the west, and martial arts in the east
• Those looking to acquire some

The samurai that invented two sword fighting and never lost a battle.  Is it possible never to lose? And if so how? It took Musashi the better part of his life to figure out the answer to this question, all you have to do is read his centuries old book.

Imagine picking a life-or-death swords dual with a person notorious for never loosing a single fight.  Frightening.  And imagine that person is now calmly standing in front of you holding not one, but two Samurai swords.  As history and statistics prove, your end is near.  Very near.

 Miyamoto Musashi, the Samurai’s Samurai, has never lost a swords dual.  And he started young.  First kill believed to have taken place at the early age of 13.  Weapon: wooden practice sword.  Victim: an arrogant prince at whose castle the young Miyamoto was trained.  This kill was the first, but by no means the last.

From that moment forward, Miyamoto was challenged to a dual by all the periods’ hot shots, and their family members, who felt obliged to revenge their blood .  This started a kind of an endless chain reaction, as the more Miyamoto chopped to pieces, the lengthier the queue to fight him became.

All these victories got our hero thinking (oh, I forgot to mention a key fact, all of this is true.  M. Musashi was a real person) why is it that I always win, and all the others loose?  The more he tried to solve this question, the further Musashi drifted away from the mainstream.  He was reduced to rags and began living in a cave, spending his days and nights trying to resolve this bothering question: why is it that I always win?

An interesting question no doubt, as most of us, are usually focused on “why did I loose”, “why did this happen to me”, “how was I struck by such bad luck” and “what does the world have against me”..   Few of us actually go through the experience of always winning, to the point that we are becoming suspicious of the fact that we do.

Having said that, we all win sometimes, but we rarely spend the time thinking why.  We take it for granted that we were better than the other guy, that we deserved to win as much as our competition deserved to loose.  And on we continue to the next challenge, hoping we are on a winning streak.  If we ended up loosing.. Well then we would go into deep thoughts, analysis and improvement processes to ensure this loss will not return.  But if we win, do we spend the time thinking why?

Probably one of the keys for Musashi’s success was his ability to think out of the box.  Here was a product of a very strict feudal society, trained to become a Samurai and live a very certain life.  But as the challenges he faced proved, all of the training he went through, did not limit his ability to freely act and end up on top.

An example.. Well into his life, when his possessions included the torn clothes he wore and an empty rice bowl, Musashi was challenged to yet another dual by yet another revengeful prince.  The time and place were set to early morning on a certain beach front.  Musashi, so we are told, slept at a cheap inn, woke up late, screamed for a bowl of water to wash his face, and ended up drinking the same water he used to get cleaned.

Off he went to the beach front, armed by nothing but a knife.  After scavenging the shore for a while, he found an old wooden ore.  He then started shaving pieces of the wood off with his knife, sculpturing into a semi-sword looking object.

The prince on the other hand, was sailing to the beach front with his fancy boat.  He was than lowered into a smaller boat and sailed by his servants towards the shore.  The shallow water did not allow the boat to make it all the way, so the price servants had to jump into the water and to carry the prince, with his heavy armor from boat to land.  While all of this carrying and lifting was taking place, our friend Musashi saw the opportunity he was waiting for. 

He grabbed his wooden ore, raced towards the prince (now resting on the shoulders of his servants as they are transporting him to the shore) and with one single strike, cracked his opponents head open. End of fight (count lost by now).

So why did he win?  It took Musashi most of his life to come up with an answer.  But luckily enough for us this enlightened man did not keep the answer to himself.  He wrote it in the now famous book: The Book Of Five Rings.

Its interesting to read in the perspective of time.  Musashi lived in a feudal society.  We live in a hyper technology, capitalist business oriented and led society.  Yet a win is a win, and a lose is a lose. So the ground rules Musashi lays out, are not dissimilar to  those one may find in any top selling business book. 

Recommended for those interested at winning, based on ancient knowledge; good for a medium length flight with time to spend in a terminal for thought and contemplation.