Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The hills around the hamlet of Miyamoto stretched for miles and miles.
They straddled the width the island of Honshu,
running all the way from Cape Kyoka, on the Sea of Japan,
to the port of Akashi on the Inland Sea.
Among them one could feel safe and secure from the terrible events in the world beyond.
Only the odd passing army,
bound for yet another battlefield, yet another siege,
would occasionally disturb the quiet,
and remind the rural populace, simple hard working people,
that the country was still at war.
Shinmen Musashi no Kami Fujiwara Genshin was born in the spring
1584 in the village of Miyamoto, some 20 miles northwest of great castle town of Himeji.
The boy was of noble birth.
His mother, Omasa, who had died in childbirth,
was the daughter of Shinmen Munesada, once a minor local chieftain.
He had been the Lord of Takayama castle, which stood on a steep
and rugged hill overlooking Miyamoto village. His father Muni was a warrior
by descent, who had married Omasa not long after he had entered the service of the Shinmen clan.
During this many years in their service Muni had grown into a great warrior
He was an accomplished practitioner of the art of Jujutsu,
he was highly adept with the sword,
practicing a style of swordsmanship
developed by his ancestors called the Tori-ryu.
Yet his real talent lay in the art of fighting with the jitte,
an iron rod with a fork-like extension
by which one could parry an attack with the sword or lance.
In his thirties, at the height of his powers,
Muni had been invited to the capital kyoto by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki.
In the shogun's presence he had duelled with the great Yoshioka Matasaburo Naokata,
It had been a close duel.
But Muni emerged as victor by winning two of the three bouts.
And while he had failed to gain an outright victory,
it had been enough to establish his name
as Heihosha Without Equal in Japan,
a title sanctioned by none other than the shogun himself.
The young Musashi learned fast, yet he had an exceedingly stubborn nature,
and from an early age the boy's relationship with his father was a troubled one.
When they did meet,
usually over the practice of some Tori-ryu technique,
the boy would often talk back, criticizing his father,
instead of showing him the respect he demand.
On one such occasion
Muni took a knife threw it and his son.
But Musashi dodged the weapon,
causing the blade to pierce the pillar against which he had been leaning.
Enraged, Muni evicted his son from his house.
Traveling southward, Musashi crossed the Kamasaka Pass, into the province of Harima.
He travelled to the small village of Hirafuku,
to find his loving stepmother, Yoshiko,
who had raised Musash,i but had since divorced Muni.
He soon learned she had remarried.
She was now living with a member of her own clan, a man by the name of Tasumi Masahisa,
who wanted nothing to do with Muni's offspring.
At a loss what to do, Yoshiko entrusted the care of Musashi to her brother Dorin.
Though once a warrior
Dorin had long since renounced the world,
becoming a Buddhist monk and dedicating himself to the life
of study and meditation.
He ran a small buddhist temple called Shorenan,
set among a bamboo grove on the edge of the village.
Musashi was to spend the rest of his youth at the Shorenan,
an experience had a seminal influence on his development as a swordsman,
an artist, and man of letters.
More than anything else, however,
the young the such use process by a passion for the martial arts.
To take out his anger towards his father
the boy spent hours in the woods striking out with all his strength
against the stern trunks of the mighty pine trees,
then dashing through the undergrowth s if pursued by the old man's wrath.
At times is must have felt he were both seeking and fleeing from his hated father.
For making do with whatever weapon he could find
he was still practicing the very skills and techniques he had learned from his father,
albeit partly in play.
it was during this time that Musashi fought his first duel.
A passing warrior by the name of Arima Kihei had put up a sign along the Sayo river,
challenging any local swordsman.
Though still only twelve years old,
Musashi rose to the challenge, and wrote his name in bold letters
under the swordsman's notice.
Expecting an easy win Kihei accepted. Yet when the day came,
Musashi killed the warrior with a succession of blows from his bokuto.
By the time he approached adulthood, Musashi began to realize
he still had much to learn.
for all its faults his father was a warrior of unquestionable talent,
a man who established his own school able to make a living by sword.
Thus, at the age of 16, Musashi left Hirafuku,
and set out along the Sanyodo, the Old high road skirting the northern shore of the Inland Sea
to the beautiful straights Shimonoseki.
There he hired a boat to ferry him across the water to the port of Kokura,
from where he continued on foot to Nakatsu, the castle town where his father now lived.
For Muni had meanwhile entered the service of Kuroda Yoshitaka,
the master of Nakatsu castle, and an ally to Tokugawa Ieyasu.
By by the time Musashi arrived in Nakatsu
the Kuroda were engaged in a vast campaign to subdue the rest of the island of Kyushu.
That campaign coincided with
Ieyasu's campaign against the western Provinces,
that would culminated in the Battle of Sekigahara.
It was during Yoshitaka's campaign that Musashi first saw action,
fighting alongside his father Muni. The campaign was a huge success.
Within less than a month Yoshitaka had brought two complete provinces under his control.
Musashi and his father, too, had escaped unscathed.
Yet feeling t he onset of old age, Muni retired from active duty. He moved yet again,
this time to the nearby port of Kitsuki, where he lived in large samurai mansion overlooking Morie Bay.
And spending his last days perfecting his Tori school of swordsmanship.
Musashi, too, had made up his mind.The campaign had wetted his appetite.
He wanted more. He still had to prove something to his father, as well as to himself.
His aim in life was to become a warrior, a swordsman,
a true master of his art.
To do this he needed to make a mark.
He must defeat other great swordsmen.
And building on that reputation,
go on to found his own school of swordsmanship.