Eiji Yoshikawa is probably the most highly regarded 20th century author of Japanese historical fiction. His work includes, in addition to Musashi, Taiko (which I have also read twice, separated by 30 or so years) which follows the life of one of the three great unifiers of feudal Japan. Musashi proves it does. In a society where the strongest warriors are kings, Musashi--arguably the strongest samurai that has ever lived--walks through the world as a beggar. He doesn't take advantage of his skills to wine and whore, neither to make money and fame. Instead he's focused and pure. His sole goal is to walk the path of the sword with all his heart until the very end, to face the strongest and become the most powerful samurai in Japan, to beat the game and find out what's waiting for him on the other side. Apart from Musashi himself, all the other characters in the book are fairly one-dimensional and as a consequence, the story does not really seem to progress or unravel after the first few chapters (the meetings with Sasaki Kojirō are probably an exception to this).

Up next for review will either be The Tower of Fools by Andrzej Sapkowski or Book 4 in The Dark Tower series by Stephen King; Wizard and Glass, depending on which one I finish first.

This novel contains examples of:

Artistic License – History: The novel plays this trope quite a lot, but one of the most egregious is at the very end. During the final duel between Musashi and Kojirō it's implied that Kojirō survived, whereas in history he did not. Here, Yoshikawa is doing something comparable. In the face of a moment all too “Modern” – Japan’s militarization leading up to World War II – he turned to the stuff of a distant past to imagine a way of recovering and celebrating lost values. If Tolkien looked to a vision of Norse mythology and a theological sense of good vs. evil, Yoshikawa looked to the way of the Samurai as a means of imagining a reinvigorated Japan. Musashi ( Japanese: 宮本武蔵, Hepburn: Miyamoto Musashi ), also listed as Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era, is a Japanese epic novel written by Eiji Yoshikawa, about the life and deeds of legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. Kōetsu: But he is. That's what's extraordinary about him. He's not content with relying on whatever natural gifts he may have. Knowing he's ordinary, he's always trying to improve himself. No one appreciates the agonizing effort he's had to make. Now that his years of training have yielded such spectacular results, everybody's talking about his 'god-given talent.' That's how men who don't try very hard comfort themselves.

Historical Villain Upgrade: No one really knows anything about Kojirō, except that he once fought with Musashi. This was a nice read about one person dedicated to one thing and, having mastered that (never lost a sword fight) moved on to more traditional Japanese pursuits. MUSASHI is the name of a legendary samurai and author of the essential martial arts book, the BOOK OF FIVE RINGS. In this graphic novel version of the samurai’s life story there is so much missing, but I can understand the author’s dilemma. Musashi lived in the 17th century where so much of the history of a single person would be solely based on word of mouth. The story is epic in scope and follows Musashi Myamoto's life from the time when he was a 17 year old punk to his final battle with Ganryu, which cemented his fame. It is a great introduction to Japanese history and has me itching to some follow up non-fiction reading on Japan. As he travels the roads and fields of Japan, Musashi takes advantage of every opportunity he can to learn. He is especially keen to gain from the experiences of those he meets who appear to have sounded the depth of a particular art, whether they be a craftsman obsessed with the creation of ceramics, a courtesan versed in the art of music, or an old woman expert in the niceties of the tea ceremony. All who have viewed some aspect of life and art with honesty and rigour can teach him something which he is able to apply to the of the way of the sword. It is this open-mindedness that allows Musashi to avoid being a slave to any one style of martial arts and only in his eagerness to learn from all of his experiences is he able to overcome his many opponents and develop from nameless vagabond to the 'sword-saint' of legend.

I first read The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, a book on the martial arts, written by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi around 1645. That booked then sparked my interest in the life of Miyamoto Musashi. After a short amount of research I found this book, which is a predominantly fictional tale about the life of the great Japanese Ronin Miyamoto Musashi written by Eiji Yoshikawa. It was originally released as a serial in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, between 1935 and 1939. Which can be felt in the pacing of this novel. Which feels chapter to chapter quite episodic. Otsu is the main female character and although she's all about Musashi and reuniting with him, she's very farm from being a bore. Whenever a scene is dedicated to her she lights the whole novel up. She's something inexplicable. In a culture where unprotected women are used, raped and killed, she strives by just being herself. A woman all heart and tenderness that gives life even to the dying master Yagyu Sekishusai. I have spent the last 9 months listening, on and off, to the audiobook of Musashi and I can safely say that I am glad that I didn't try a print version, for I am certain that it would have been a DNF for me. I don’t now Japanese literature and culture well enough, but I get the impression that, as a consequence, he also created a new genre of Japanese literature. I see all sorts of familiar tropes here, characters and themes I recognize out of Saturday morning karate movies by way of Kurosawa. In some ways, this is the blueprint for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, complete with the hero who follows the way of the sword, his chaste lover, and the old crone who’s sworn vengeance on him. Chance, as well as the characters' very different life decisions, give to the book a philosophical dimension that is revealed in its ending.

Eiji Yoshikawa does an excellent job weaving concepts of Zen and Saki (blood-thirst) as well as the ups and downs of the human experience into masterfully crafted scenes filled with great dialogue and serious action. In doing so, he also shows us what the pure feminine feels and looks like and how overpowering it is in its subtleness and beauty: Otsū. Miyamoto Musashi, which was one of several names of a very important figure in Japanese history, lived from the end of the sixteenth into the seventeenth century. He was a true renaissance man in that he was an exceptional strategist, swordsman and social philosopher who also painted, sculpted and wrote. I cannot think of a comparable figure from the West with the possible exception of Leonardo Da Vinci. He and Musashi were incredibly accomplished in a variety of areas but their emphases were clearly quite different. This is a great concept for a graphic novel that doesn't quite come together in execution for me. Granted, this may be largely because I'm pretty ignorant as to the life and history of Musashi himself, but as someone who loves graphic novels and loves history I thought this attempt to unite the two would be entertaining at worst and illuminating at best. This was originally written in serial form, and that’s a good thing early. We get a narrative payoff with enjoyable frequency throughout the first half or two-thirds. You can feel a conflict build up and then climax. There’s an episodic quality, almost as if this is a TV show. As I have already mentioned, the story's unspoken reliance on extraordinary coincidences is probably my biggest problem with Musashi as a whole. With an entire country to explore, the way our protagonist bumps into the same 4 or 5 characters dozens of times throughout the story just led to such a stale overarching sense of progress and development.Some characters also just come and go. Musashi takes on pupils, they worship him, and he seems to care for them too only to completely disregard them. His relationship with Otsu is interesting at the heart of it, but there is so much faffing about that it falls into that repetitive trap. There is also a large cast of side characters. Some are incredibly annoying and others are rather humorous or wise. This functions as an adventure story that also tells a deep moral tone. Yet it is also exciting, as the bloody violence of this time period is never far away.

The nine chapters relate the various stages in the life of Musashi, including his most famous battles. Even though I had read much about Musashi in other books and articles I still learned a lot of other information on Musashi reading this graphic novel version. Musashi was not only an undefeated swordsman, fighting sixty duels, but was also an accomplished and respected poet, garden designer, and Zen master... If you are into the martial arts this is a book that should be in your personal library, along with his “The Book of Five Rings.” A beautifully fully illustrated book. Rating: 5 Stars." Musashi written by Eji Yoshikawa in the 1930s is only loosely considered to be "historical fiction". Many of the famous characters, including Musashi himself, did indeed exist. But this is primarily a fiction novel that tells the story of Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi has been the inspiration for numerous movies and comic books from Japan to the USA, not to mention board games, heavy metal songs, video games and even a US navy Helicoptor Squadron. He studies philosophy, is taught humility, modesty, trust and how to train and teach others by a variety of other characters that he meets whilst on his journey for self-improvement and self-mastery. For those of you here for the action, similarly, there is certainly good quality swordplay and dueling, as well as moments of covert and military strategy, but these scenes are always relatively short lived and buried within the wider scope of book in general.The Dandy: Kojirō is always dressed in flashy, elegant clothing that makes him look "like a kabuki player", as Jōtarō puts it. This is in contrast with the scruffy, unkempt Musashi. At it's core, Musashi is the story of a young man from Japan who grows up to be a renowned master of the way of the sword. Over the course of the 50+ hour long story, he encounters new sword fighting techniques and learns the skills and attributes that are required and expected of an honourable Ronin. Plus the female characters are all either just pawns in the men's games, simple and shallow love interests or they are manipulative and bitter old crones - scheming against our honourable and virtuous male characters. Writing a review of this work seems a fool's errand somewhat equivalent to reviewing Gone With the Wind, so I will not attempt to do so. I am a huge fan of the old Criterion Collection samurai movies and I loved Toshiro Mifune's portrayal of Musashi, so I thought I'd give this a read. I found it VERY slow at the beginning, but I powered through. It took me as long to read this as it did to read Don Quixote….coincidentally, Musashi lived at the same time as Cervantes, so it was interesting to compare what was going on in Japan in the time of Shakespeare and Cervantes.