Book Bearings
Book of Five Rings
- 124 pages · about 2 hours
- First published 1642
- 237 editions
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1 About this book
The Book of Five Rings is a short treatise on swordsmanship and strategy written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi between 1643 and 1645, near the end of his life. It has five parts, named after the elements of Buddhist tradition. Earth sets out his view of the way of strategy; Water describes his own school and its techniques; Fire deals with combat, timing and reading an opponent; Wind looks critically at the other schools of his day; and the brief Book of the Void closes on what cannot be taught directly. Musashi insists throughout on plain, practical skill over display. The book is still used by his school of swordsmanship, and people in business and other fields have taken it up as a guide to strategy.
- Biography
- Military art and science
- Military Science
- Taoism
- Japan
- Philosophy
- History
- Management
2 What to expect
A short manual of swordsmanship and strategy by a seventeenth-century Japanese duelist, in five brief books named after the elements. Much of it is practical instruction on stance, timing and handling an opponent, written tersely and with the repeated advice to practice and work things out for oneself. It is blunt and unsentimental about the purpose of fighting, and how much it says about business or life depends on the translation and its commentary.
Good for readers who want: samurai philosophy, a classic of strategy, and a very short read.
3 About Miyamoto Musashi
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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