No swordsman in Japanese history is so revered and celebrated as Miyamoto Musashi. In Japan alone close to a thousand works have taken Musashi as their subject, many in the form of novels, the first one appearing as far back as the turn of the eighteenth century. Even now, more than four and a half centuries after his last exploits, hardly a year passes by without the lone swordsman turning up in some newly released film or television adaptation.
Sadly, amid this veritable deluge of books, comics, films, television soaps and docudramas, little room is given to the old denki, the early biographies that were written by men who, though they may not have known Musashi alive, faithfully recorded what had been passed down to them by men who had. Given his huge popularity, many of the more human aspects of this medieval warrior have been relegated to the margins in favor of a highly polished and sanitized portrayal of his undisputed fencing skills. The resulting image is one of an invincible war-machine, a two-dimensional and hollow caricature, bereft of the personal traits that make all of us human.
It is all the more exiting, then, to return to these earliest of records and to find behind the myth a man of real flesh, who in spite of his unparalleled mastery of the sword has all the traits and idiosyncrasies to which all of us are prone.
The aim of this series is to return to these earliest of records in order to unravel some of the legend and thereby recapture the real character of this enigmatic medieval swordsman. In following this rarely trodden trail the reader will soon find that the newly gained insights into Musashi’s personality do not in the least diminish his stature but only serve to make him a more rounded character, a human being with whom we can all identify.
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