COUNTERSTROKE AT SOLTSY - Strategy & Tactics Press

The Early Years
In 1584, Miyamoto Musashi was born into a minor
branch of the samurai nobility. He was orphaned
at an early age and brought up by his uncle, a priest
and samurai. Little is known of his early years, but
Musashi himself has written he fought his first duel
when he was only 13 years old. Since he was the son
of a low ranked samurai, it is probable his uncle had
schooled him in kendo (or kenjutsu), sword-fighting
technique.
The duel is mentioned in the Introduction to
Musashi’s book on strategy and life, The Book of the
Five Rings, his great legacy to Japan. In it he sets out
the story of his life and the philosophy of his warrior
code: the way of the sword. The book was written
by Musashi late in life, as a series of letters to one
of his students, but was not compiled until long after
his death when his students collated the stories of his
duels and preserved his philosophy.
Musashi was an exceptional warrior who combined
the great natural abilities of a prodigy with thorough
training. His skill, courage and focused ruthlessness
made him a formidable warrior with his chosen weapon,
the sword. At 16 he fought and won another single-handed,
mortal-combat duel against a samurai. As
the samurai class lived and trained constantly for just
such professional duels, those two victories at such a
young age marked Musashi as having the potential to
be as a legendary swordsman. And such legends were
common in Japan. For example, there was Tsukahara
Bokuden who, a century before, had traveled the land
as a wandering ronin. The ronin were unattached samurai
without mentors or allegiances to specific lords.
They sometimes sought employment as teachers of
martial skills or mercenaries.
Soon after his second duel, Musashi began his own
pilgrimage as a ronin in search of enlightenment. For
the next three years his life was solely focused on developing
his martial skills and seeking enlightenment
through the way of the sword. His dedication was such
that he did not wash, was unkempt and wandered Japan
in poverty until he joined in the fight for the Shogunate
as a samurai in the pay of Hideyori, the son of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Japan in the Age of the Warlords
For many centuries Japan had been a land of constant
warfare among local warlords. Changing alliances,
assassination and a web of intrigue prevented
any single family or alliance of families from gaining
dominance. Each warlord feared if a rival, or even an
ally, became too powerful, his own power and position
would be lost. Between 1573 and 1582, the Shogun
Oda Nobunaga almost succeeded in uniting the
country before he too was assassinated. His successor,
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, continued consolidating the
gains made and in the end succeeded. With Hideyo-
Spear fighting in the mountains from the Wars of the
Nambokucho period.
shi’s death in 1598, new wars of succession broke out,
ending with the defeat and death of Hideyoshi’s son
Hideyori at the decisive battle of Seki ga Hara in 1603.
Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun. He ushered in the
era of his Tokugawa clan, which maintained control
of the country well into the 19th century. Musashi, age
19, fought at Sekigahara on Hideyori’s side, and barely
escaped with his life from the merciless slaughter
that took place afterward.
The Tokugawas influenced every part of Japanese
society. They established rules of behaviour that affected
education, law and government, creating a rigid
structure of four classes: samurai (including the ruling
elite), farmers, artisans and merchants. Under the
Tokugawa dynasty’s laws, only a samurai could wear
the long sword.
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