The Lone Samurai Read online

  FINDING HIS STRENGTH

  When Musashi climbed the Kama Slope at age sixteen, he embarked on the homeless, ascetic life of a shugyosha, a life that he would continue in one form or another until his final years. His belongings were few: the clothes on his back, perhaps a small sewing kit, a bamboo canteen, at the most a very small amount of pocket money, an ink stick and writing brush, and, of course, his sword.7 As he walked over the stony mountain paths, he wore a pair of straw sandals that would quite often need repairing or replacing. If he was lucky, he might find a straw hat for his head. There was unlikely to be anywhere to stop for food when he was hungry, or a pleasant place to lie down when he was tired. For those who believed in folktales, the dark mountains were filled with foxes and tanuki (a sort of badger), both experts at bewitching the unsuspecting. For those who did not believe such tales, there was still the very real danger of bandits.

  In the spring of 1599, Musashi walked through the mountains and into the neighboring province of Tajima. Here he had a match with a swordsman by the name of Akiyama, whom he defeated. Nothing is known of where the match took place or of Akiyama’s lineage, and, in The Book of Five Rings, this opponent is simply described as “strong.” But the memory of this fight must have been an intense one for the sixteen-year-old Musashi. Of all of his more than sixty matches to come, he seems to have remembered this one perhaps most clearly as he reviewed his life some forty years later, alone in the Reigan Cave.

  As Musashi walked on alone, large groups of warriors were beginning to gather slowly around Sekigahara, a large plain to the north and east of Tajima. In October of the following year, a battle would be fought there that would settle both Japan’s course for the next three-and-a-half centuries and the direction of Musashi’s life.

  For several decades, two men had been directing the reunification of a Japan badly splintered by the ineffectual Ashikaga shogunate. Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) had emerged from a small fief in the middle of nowhere to nearly succeed in unifying the country with his ruthless and creative military genius, and had been stopped only when he was assassinated by one of his own generals, Akechi Mitsuhide. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98), another of Nobunaga’s generals, quickly squelched the rebellion and had brought the country to the verge of total unification and control when he too passed away, possibly from a brain tumor. Before he died, Hideyoshi appointed a board of five tairo, or chief ministers, to govern the country until his son Hideyori reached majority, hoping that in this way the Toyotomi clan would continue to rule the country. Now, one of those tairo, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), was bringing those hopes to naught.

  Due to a complicated balance of ever-shifting loyalties, Japan in the year 1600 was essentially divided into two camps: those generals and daimyo who favored the more-or-less incumbent Toyotomi clan (largely from Kansai and western Japan), considered the Western forces; and those who were betting on the increasing strength of the forces of Ieyasu (mainly from Kanto and the eastern part of the country), the Eastern forces. There were several battles in different locations, but the main battle took place at Sekigahara on the misty morning of 21 October 1600. It is uncertain how many troops eventually engaged in the fighting, but the initial balance was approximately even, at about eighty thousand men on each side. By the time the battle was over, sometime during the Hour of the Sheep (from one to three P.M.), the Tokugawa armies had routed the Toyotomi, helped in part by the perfidy of some of the generals on the losing side. The casualties were in the tens of thousands. Many of the defeated who had not been killed in the battle itself were hunted down in the rain and mud and slaughtered in the days and weeks to follow. Some, however, were able to escape to fight another day. Musashi, although still only in his teens, was one of these.

  The Battle of Sekigahara was a shugyosha’s dream. Along with the life of ascetic self-discipline he put himself through, he would welcome the chance to join in a battle—this was referred to as “borrowing the battlefield”—to prove his mettle. For an unemployed warrior, fighting in battle gave him a chance to be noticed for his skills and, if he excelled, to be taken on as a martial arts instructor under the patronage of the lord whose forces he had joined. Thus he might become a samurai in the true meaning of the word, “one who serves.”

  So Musashi now traveled on toward Sekigahara, eventually joining up with the forces of the Shinmen clan. This clan was under the command of Ukita Hideie, who had been one of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s favorites; he had been chosen to be one of the five tairo by the dying Hideyoshi and was a mainstay of the Western forces. Hideie’s father, Naoie, had conquered Bizen, Mimasaka, and Bitchu and established Okayama Castle a generation earlier, and the Ukita was considered one of the most powerful clans in the area. With his mother’s connection to the Shinmen, it is not surprising that Musashi would have cast his lot with that clan, but it may also be that Hideyoshi’s dreamlike rise to power from peasant status inspired Musashi to join that great man’s side. Musashi had been six years old when Hideyoshi had destroyed the powerful Hojo clan, and seven when Hideyoshi conquered the great city of Odawara. Two years later, Hideyoshi had begun his invasion of Korea. These stories were the talk of the nation, and the young Musashi would have listened to them as any child would, dreaming of what he would do when he grew up.

  All sources indicate that Musashi fought with extraordinary valor at Sekigahara, despite his youth. One typical account, from the Musashi yuko gamei, states: “Musashi’s achievements stood out from the crowd, and were known by the soldiers in all camps.”

  According to the Kokura Hibun monument erected in 1654: “Musashi’s valor and great fame could not be overstated, even if the oceans had mouths or the valleys had tongues.”

  If we look to Musashi’s own comments about the battle, however, we will be disappointed, for he alludes to it only once, in a note to Hosokawa Tadatoshi written decades later, and then only in the broadest terms: “I have participated in over six battles since my youth.”8

  In the end, the Western forces lost the battle. Ukita Hideie was condemned to death by Ieyasu, but his sentence was commuted to permanent exile on an island off the Izu Peninsula. He eventually shaved his head and became a monk, living to the great old age of ninety. Other commanders were not so lucky: many lost their fiefs and their families and, of course, many lost their lives. The battle had been one of the most definitive in Japan’s history, marking its course for the next two hundred and fifty years. And much as it defined the Yagyu clan, who had fought for the Tokugawa, as permanent members of the establishment, it would also define Musashi—who had fought on the losing side—as an outsider for the rest of his life. The Tokugawa hegemony was now evident everywhere and marked the future of the battle’s participants well beyond the grave. Even the composers of the Kokura Hibun, erected in faraway Kyushu nine years after Musashi’s death, needed to be circumspect in their language. They did not, for example, mention on which side he had fought, and they even felt compelled to describe the actions of the Western forces as an “insurrection of the Taiko Toyotomi’s favorite retainer, Ishida Jibunosuke.”

  After the battle, seventeen-year-old Musashi was once again on his own. He had lost his gamble at war and had nearly lost his life. But he had gained the pride of having served the Shinmen, the Ukita, and even the late hero Hideyoshi. He had also gained experience in a protracted battle. He would think about this experience for the rest of his life and record many of these thoughts in his final statements in The Book of Five Rings.

  It is interesting to note that Musashi’s father, Munisai, also participated in these conflicts, but in Kyushu and for the Eastern forces.9 For unknown reasons, he had previously resigned from the Shinmen clan and gone to Nakatsu in Buzen to serve Kuroda Yoshitaka (Josui), receiving an annual stipend of two hundred koku.10 As part of Ieyasu’s forces in the southwest, the Kuroda attacked Tomiki Castle in Bungo, and Munisai would have seen action there. It was in Kyushu that Munisai met the important Hosokawa vassal, Nagaoka Sado no kami Okinaga
, and became his instructor in the martial arts. This relationship would play a critical role in Musashi’s career.

  Like most of the survivors on the losing side of the Battle of Sekigahara, Musashi spent a number of years after the war keeping a low profile, doing his best to keep body and soul together. He spent some time secluded in the mountains, but also did a lot of traveling, no doubt meeting other shugyosha on the road and testing his skills. What would soon become apparent, however, was that his self-discipline and training during this time must have been rigorous and intense. In 1604, at age twenty-one, he would walk into Kyoto and bring to ruin one of the most respected schools of swordsmanship of that time.

  KYOTO AND MATCHES WITH THE MASTERS

  The Yoshioka clan had been well-known residents of Kyoto for generations. The earliest Yoshioka Kenpo, whose personal name was Naomoto, was a master of black and tea-colored dyed goods in the Shijo area of the capital. It was in the constant rolling back and forth of the dyeing implements that he was enlightened one day to the special style of sword handling for which his school would become famous. The name “Kenpo,” which became the hereditary title of the head of the family, connotes a man who adheres to righteousness, and his dyeing methods and prices were said to be just and proper.

  It was this Naomoto who attracted the attention of the twelfth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshiharu, with his great feats in battle, and who thus became the first Yoshioka instructor to that house. The second generation was his younger brother, Naomitsu, who also took the name Kenpo and became a martial arts instructor to the Ashikaga clan. It was Naomitsu who was instructor to the “Swordsman Shogun” Yoshiteru, who also employed Tsukahara Bokuden and Kamiizumi Ise no kami Nobutsuna, founder of the Shinkage-ryu. And it was Naomitsu who opened the Heihosho, or Place of the Martial Arts, in the Imadegawa section of Kyoto. Naomitsu’s son, Naokata, became the third generation and instructor to the fifteenth and final Ashikaga shogun, Yoshiaki.

  Finally, there were Naokata’s sons, Seijuro and Denshichiro. The family annals, the Yoshioka-den, remarks of them:

  Here, then, the Yoshioka brothers. They gained fame in the style of the martial arts, and were unprecedented in past or present in the mysteries of the arts. The elder brother, Seijuro, and his younger brother, Denshichiro, were the so-called Kenpo Brothers. It was from the time of the Kenpo Brothers that the art was daily renewed, becoming more prosperous day by day and transcending the art of former generations.

  Seijuro, in particular, was considered to be an excellent swordsman. He had become the fourth-generation head of the Yoshioka clan, but the Ashikaga shogunate was now defunct and the clan enjoyed no special standing. One of his methods of training was to go out late at night to a forest on the outskirts of Kyoto and, as a spiritual discipline, exercise the practice of “fixing the vision” (shikan; 止観). This was originally a practice of Esoteric Buddhism in which, in contrast to the Zen practice of filling the mind with Emptiness, the practitioner was to concentrate on a single object of worship and, so, sweep away any other extemporaneous thoughts. Seijuro was said to have reached such a level of concentration that, when he focused his thought on a single bird on a treetop in the forest, hundreds of birds would fly up to the treetops at once. It was this Seijuro, the almost transcendentally skilled scion of the respected Yoshioka clan of Kyoto, that the twenty-one-year-old self-taught Musashi challenged to a duel.

  Musashi’s decision to challenge Seijuro was not random. By defeating Seijuro, he would not only show the whole world what he could do but also demonstrate a thing or two to his father, Munisai, who was still teaching martial arts in Kyushu.

  A generation earlier, Munisai’s talent had come to the attention of the Ashikaga shogun, who had called him to Kyoto for a “comparison of techniques” with the shogun’s own instructor, Yoshioka Naokata. The Kokura Hibun gives this brief description: “With a limit of three matches, Yoshioka had the advantage once and Shinmen won twice. At this point Shinmen Munisai was awarded the designation of a martial artist ‘with no equal under the sun.’”

  One can imagine that Seijuro would have been quick to accept this challenge, regardless of the fact that Musashi seemed to have no experience, no status, and probably little skill. With this fight, Seijiro planned to ensure that the residual spot on his family’s name would be eradicated forever.

  The place for the match was to be outside the capital, at the moor adjacent to the Rendaiji temple. Seijuro was armed with a real sword, while Musashi carried the weapon that would become one of his trademarks—the bokuto, or wooden sword. The Kokura Hibun describes the fight:

  Musashi and Seijuro fought with the power of dragon and tiger at the Rendaiji Moor11 outside of Kyoto, but with one blow from Musashi’s wooden sword, Seijuro collapsed and fell unconscious. This match had been promised beforehand to conclude with a single blow, so Seijuro barely escaped with his life. His disciples carried him away on a plank and nursed him back to health. He eventually abandoned the martial arts and became a Buddhist priest.

  The unproven youth from the countryside had beaten the head of the Yoshioka family so thoroughly that the humiliated man withdrew from his famous clan’s profession and took the tonsure.

  No doubt Musashi beat Seijuro with unexpected skill, but he had also used psychology in arriving late enough that the proud man, anxious to clear away this small embarrassment from his family’s name, became agitated with anger and expectation. Musashi had broken Seijuro’s famed concentration before the fight ever began, and so secured his victory beforehand. No birds flew up to the treetops at this match.

  The Yoshioka, however, were duty-bound to regain the family honor. Hadn’t Seijuro’s defeat been a simple fluke? Could the respected Yoshioka school, for generations instructors to the shogunate in the capital, lose its reputation—and thus its future—to a nameless, uncouth ronin from a farming village? To let the debacle end at this juncture would be unimaginable. And so a second match was arranged, this time pitting Musashi against Seijuro’s younger brother, Denshichiro.

  Denshichiro had a reputation as a very strong man and was, after all, one of the Kenpo Brothers. He carried a wooden sword over five feet long and sharpened at the end, a weapon that would have required considerable strength to handle at all, let alone with any skill. The bout was to be held at a location outside the capital, and a time was set. It would be astonishingly short. Musashi, having studied the Yoshioka character and gauged Denshichiro’s temperament, showed up late once more, with the desired effect. When Denshichiro made an aggressive and angry attack, Musashi dodged the blow, wrested the sword from his opponent, and stabbed him through. According to a number of records, “Denshichiro fell where he had stood, and died.”

  The match was over in a matter of seconds, and the astonished disciples who had come to watch their teacher make quick work of the upstart Musashi could do nothing but carry Denshichiro’s lifeless body back to Kyoto. The fourth generation of the Yoshioka Kenpo had come to a devastating end.

  It is not difficult to guess what happened next. Stories of revenge, or adauchi, have always occupied an important place in Japanese history, which is not surprising given the crucial role that honor plays in traditional Japanese culture. Whether the damage to one’s honor was egregious or subtle, the wounded party was expected to take revenge. And in a society where news spread like ripples from a stone thrown into a still pond, there was no escape: the dishonored party was absolutely bound to action. Not to act would mean perpetual disgrace.

  This was the situation in which the remnants of the Yoshioka clan, their disciples and students, found themselves: they had an inescapable obligation to act, regardless of how tragic the consequences might be.

  And so yet another match was arranged with Musashi, this time against Seijuro’s son, Matashichiro, now considered the fifth-generation Kenpo. But the match was only a ruse—a fact that seems to have been known to everyone, including Musashi. Matashichiro was just a symbol of the clan’s honor. The real plan was fo
r battle.

  The place was again to be on the outskirts of Kyoto, at the famous spreading pine at the Ichijoji temple.12 To make sure that there was no chance of suffering another defeat, the Yoshioka brought more than a hundred men, armed with everything from swords and spears to bows and arrows.

  Meanwhile, Musashi’s reputation had skyrocketed, and he had taken on some very eager students himself. Just before the match, a number of these students learned of the Yoshioka family’s plans, warned their teacher, and offered to accompany him to the bout. Musashi, however, knew that involving students in an adauchi would be considered the same as enrolling them in a battle, something strictly prohibited by the authorities. The Yoshioka clan was essentially finished and so perhaps had no other recourse. But Musashi had his life ahead of him, and had somehow gained a confidence and an inner strength far beyond that of ordinary men. His students were forbidden to walk with him into the trap set by the Yoshioka.

  Earlier in the year, when he fought Seijuro and Denshichiro, Musashi had put his opponents at a psychological disadvantage by causing the men to wait and thus lose their mental equilibrium. This time he reversed his strategy and started off early. On his way, he passed by a shrine to Hachiman, the god of war, and stopped for a moment to pray for victory. But as he walked up to the altar and was about to shake the gong’s cord to get the god’s attention, he suddenly realized that, in ordinary times, he had never put faith in the gods and buddhas. To do so now would be wrong. Chagrined, he released the cord and backed away. Why would the gods listen to him now, when he had never relied on them before? In truth, was he to rely on the gods or on himself? Dripping with sweat from embarrassment, he bowed to the shrine in thanks for the revelation and hurried on.

  This incident made a deep impression on Musashi—and when writing The Book of Five Rings nearly forty years later, he made it clear that the principles of swordsmanship must be understood as though the student himself had discovered them. This was a major departure from other sword styles of Musashi’s time. Of the great number of styles that arose in about the mid-sixteenth century, many of their progenitors let it be known that they had learned those styles not on their own, but through divine revelation. Tsukahara Bokuden of the Shinto-ryu, for example, received a “divine decree” at Kashima Shrine; and Ito Ittosai, the founder of the Itto-ryu, had his style revealed to him after seven days and seven nights of seclusion at the Grand Shrine at Mishima. The list goes on: the eyes of Okuyama Kyugasai of the Shinkage-ryu were opened by the gracious deity of Mikawa Okuyama; Jion of the Nen-ryu was enlightened to the secrets of his styles at Kurama Temple in Kyoto; Hayashizaki Jinsuke, founder of iai-do, discovered his new Way at Dewa Tateoka Hayashizaki Shrine; and Fukui Hei’emon had the principles of the Shindo Munen-ryu revealed to him by the Izuna Gongen in Shinshu.