The best book I read over the summer was the Japanese novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa. It was originally published as a serial between 1935-1939, at 984 pages long. It follows the Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi and his adventures at the beginning of the 17th century, the start of the Tokugawa era in Japan, when Tokugawa Ieyasu created the shoganate. Based on the life of the real person Myiamoto Musashi, he is considered one of the greatest swordsmen ever. In this era, Japan became isolationist and internally peaceful. Marital skills became less practical and more of an art form.
The hero of the book, Musashi, starts as an aimless bandit and criminal. The story is about his journey to become Japan’s greatest swordsman, as well as an enlightened thinker, who lives his life according to the code of the samurai. He invents a new fighting style. He faces several challenges including fighting opponents, who are more interested in partying and having fun than training. Although they are part of what were the most prestigious Japanese schools of swordsmanship, they stand no chance against Musashi, despite their boasts and disparagement of Musashi’s skill. Their lack of skill shows the poor state that the art of the sword is in. The epic final scene is the fight with his archenemy Sasaki Kojiro, a gifted but evil and proud swordsman. Unlike many of Musashi’s other opponents, Sasaki is a good swordsman and presents a real challenge.
Overall, it was a pretty good book. It skilfully combined the fighting scenes, the exploration of philosophical and spiritual themes to make an engaging and epic story. In particular, the importance of Buddhism in Musashi’s focus on perfecting his life and his swordsmanship. He also comes into conflict with people from his former village, who act as foils to him. The one issue I had with the story is that Musashi starts life as a gifted swordsman, who is able to defeat any enemy, but the author could have better explained how Musashi became that good. The most unrealistic part of the book was when Musashi fought 60 samurai in a battle and managed to defeat all of them, even though they had muskets. It is the climax of the first part of the story. Even though this book is part of a genre where characters regularly perform unbelievable feats, one person defeating an overwhelming number of swordsmen is too difficult to believe. In the end, however, it was a very good book, and I would highly recommend it. It contains useful advice on hard work and practice for people today, especially in an age where people struggle to focus, as the main character Musashi is focused on training and always improving himself but also applying that art to other parts of his life.
Freshman Aleksandr Otus is a contributing writer. His email is aotus@fandm.edu.