A Samurai: Miyamoto Musashi


Miyamoto Musashi was born in 1584 lived until 1645.

Miyamoto Musashi was an infamous swordsman, philosopher, and tactician. And a ronin a samurai with no master.

Miyamoto Musashi was an infamous writer and wrote the Book of 5 rings. An exceptionally brilliant book that is very popular in East Asia. It even has application in the modern business world.

He also has the status of kensei a sword saint of Japan.

Miyamoto Musashi is known as Niten Doraku among Buddhists.

His faith can be summed up in the following quote: ‘Respect Buddha and the gods without counting on their help.’


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Culture of Japan: Matsuo Basho

Image
Matsuo Basho is a poet that has a great level of notoriety among the Japanese people. As a matter of fact, I have not yet met a Japanese person whom does not know of him and many can recite his work. He was a poet in the Edo era a transformative time that would see Japan separated from the outside world due to the period of isolation. Born 1644 and died 1694 in between he left a legacy of poetic work that inspires poets the world over. He is largely heralded as the father of Haiku. A Haiku is a poem that uses 5 syllables on the first line and 7 syllables on the second finishing with 5 lines on the final third line. The Haiku is often structured around nature and/or the human experience. The Matsuo family was of samurai descent, but Basho preferred the finer arts and developed several schools of writing in Japan. In 1793 Basho was deified by the Shinto bureaucracy and for a time criticising his work was literally blasphemy. The Shinto process of deification is part of the ance...
Read more

Culture of Japan: The Worlds First Novel

Image
The First novel is largely renowned for being wrote by a Japanese woman in the Heian era of Japan. The Heian culture was heavily influenced by China and was a patriarchal society. Nonetheless despite this patriarchy it was a time when Female writers flourished and had a massive effect on literature. In fact, as the Heian period ended in the face of the Samurai warrior class ever-growing domination. The literature remained. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, she is a Novelist from the Heian period. She is often regarded as the world’s first Novelist. It was written sometime around the year 1000. It was a total of 1100 pages. Murasaki Shikibu was a member of the Heian Elite born into a rich family she was permitted by her father to learn Chinese. It was a trans-formative time period that would see Chinese script no longer being the dominant mode of literature production. The invention of Kana was innovated by a Japanese Monk known as Kukai some years prior to this Female icon...
Read more