A Book of Five Rings

Japan during Musashi's lifetime

Miyamoto Musashi was born in 1584, in a Japan struggling to recover from

more than four centuries of internal strife. The traditional rule of the emperors

had been overthrown in the twelfth century, and although each successive

emperor remained the figurehead of Japan, his powers were very much

reduced. Since that time, Japan had seen almost continuous civil war between

the provincial lords, warrior monks and brigands, all fighting each other for

land and power. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the lords, called

daimyo, built huge stone castles to protect themselves and their lords and

castle towns outside the walls began to grow up. These wars naturally restricted

the growth of trade and impoverished the whole country.

In 1573, however, one man, Oda Nobunga, came to the fore in Japan. He

became the Shogun, or military dictator, and for nine years succeeded in

gaining control of almost the whole of the country. When Nobunga was

assassinated in 1582, a commoner took over the government. Toyotomi

Hideyoshi continued the work of unifying Japan which Nobunaga had begun,

ruthlessly putting down any traces of insurrection. He revived the old gulf

between the warriors of Japan - the samurai - and the commoners by introducing

restrictions on the wearing of swords. "Hideyoshi's sword-hunt", as it

was known, meant that only samurai were allowed to wear two swords, the

short one which everyone could wear and the long one which distinguished the

samurai from the rest of the population.

Although Hideyoshi did much to settle Japan and increase trade with the

outside world, by the time of his death in 1598 internal disturbances still had

not been completely eliminated. The real isolation and unification of Japan

began with the inauguration of the great Tokugawa rule. In 1603 Tokugawa

Ieyasu, a former associate of both Hideyoshi and Nobunaga, formally became

Shogun of Japan, after defeating Hideyoshi's son Hideyori at the battle of Seki ga Hara.

Ieyasu established his government at Edo, present-day Tokyo, where he had

a huge castle. His was a stable, peaceful government beginning a period of

Japanese history which was to last until the Imperial Restoration of 1868, for

although Ieyasu himself died in 1616 members of his family succeeded each

other and the title Shogun became virtually a hereditary one for the

Tokugawas.

Ieyasu was determined to ensure his and his family's dictatorship. To this

end, he paid lip-service to the emperor in Kyoto, who remained the titular head

of Japan, while curtailing his duties and involvement in the government. The

real threat to Ieyasu's position could only come from the lords, and he

effectively decreased their opportunities for revolt by devising schemes

whereby all lords had to live in Edo for alternate years and by placing great

restrictions on travelling. He allotted land in exchange for oaths of allegiance,

and gave the provincial castles around Edo to members of his own family. He

also employed a network of secret police and assassins.

The Tokugawa period marks a great change in the social history of Japan.

The bureaucracy of the Tokugawas was all-pervading. Not only were

education, law, government and class controlled, but even the costume and

behavior of each class. The traditional class consciousness of Japan hardened

into a rigid class structure. There were basically four classes of person: samurai,

farmers, artisans and merchants. The samurai were the highest - in esteem if not

in wealth - and included the lords, senior government officials, warriors, and

minor officials and foot soldiers. Next in the hierarchy came the farmers, not

because they were well thought of but because they provided the essential rice

crops. Their lot was a rather unhappy one, as they were forced to give most of

their crops to the lords and were not allowed to leave their farms. Then came

the artisans and craftsmen, and last of all the merchants, who, though looked

down upon, eventually rose to prominence because of the vast wealth they

accumulated. Few people were outside this rigid hierarchy.

Musashi belonged to the samurai class. We find the origins of the samurai

class in the Kondei ("Stalwart Youth") system established in 792 AD, whereby

the Japanese army - which had until then constituted mainly of spear-wielding

foot soldiers - was revived by stiffening the ranks with permanent training

officers recruited from among the young sons of the high families. These

officers were mounted, wore armour, and used the bow and sword. In 782 the

emperor Kammu started building Kyoto, and in Kyoto he built a training hall

which exists to this day called the Butokuden, meaning "Hall of the virtues of

war". Within a few years of this revival the fierce Ainu, the aboriginal

inhabitants of Japan who had until then confounded the army's attempts to

move them from their wild lodgings, were driven far off to the northern island,

Hokkaido.

When the great provincial armies were gradually disbanded under Hideyoshi

and Ieyasu, many out-of-work samurai roamed the country redundant in an era

of peace. Musashi was one such samurai, a "ronin" or "wave man". There were

still samurai retainers to the Tokugawas and provincial lords, but their numbers

were few. The hordes of redundant samurai found themselves living in a society

which was completely based on the old chivalry, but at the same time they were

apart from a society in which there was no place for men at arms. They became

an inverted class, keeping the old chivalry alive by devotion to military arts

with the fervour only the Japanese possess. This was the time of the flowering

of Kendo.

Kendo, the Way of the sword, had always been synonymous with nobility in

Japan. Since the founding of the samurai class in the eighth century, the

military arts had become the highest form of study, inspired by the teachings of

Zen and the feeling of Shinto. Schools of Kendo born in the early Muromachi

period - approximately 1390 to 1600 - were continued through the upheavals

of the formation of the peaceful Tokugawa Shogunate, and survive to this day.

The education of the sons of the Tokugawa Shoguns was by means of schooling in

the Chinese classics and fencing exercises. Where a Westerner might say "The

pen is mightier than the sword", the Japanese would say "Bunbu Ichi", or

"Pen and sword in accord". Today, prominent businessmen and political

figures in Japan still practise the old traditions of the Kendo schools, preserving

the forms of several hundred years ago.

To sum up, Musashi was a ronin at the time when the samurai were formally

considered to be the elite, but actually had no means of livelihood unless they

owned lands and castles. Many ronin put up their swords and became artisans,

but others, like Musashi, persued the ideal of the warrior searching for

enlightenment through the perilous paths of Kendo. Duels of revenge and tests

of skill were commonplace, and fencing schools multiplied. Two schools

expecially, the Itto school and the Yagyu school, were sponsored by the

Tokugawas. The Itto school provided an unbroken line of Kendo teachers, and

the Yagyu school eventually became the secret police of the Tokugawa

bureaucracy.

Next section: Kendo

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