Miyamoto Musashi — The Master Who Never Met His Time

The Bell Rope

"Looking back after I turned thirty, I saw that I had not won because I had mastered the art of fighting."

A man of sixty wrote this at the start of his own book.

From the age of thirteen to twenty-eight or twenty-nine, he fought more than sixty matches and never lost. Right after writing that, he begins to search for the reason he won. Was it a gift he was born with? Was it that he never strayed from the laws of heaven? Or was it that the other schools were simply not good enough?

Is he being humble, or is he bragging? The reader cannot tell.

The writer was Miyamoto Musashi. The book is called The Book of Five Rings.

Even the year and the place he was born differ from source to source. But a later account, written down from what people remembered, records that he did not get along with his father.

His father was a fighting man too, but little Musashi looked down on his way of doing things and was always running it down. His angry father threw a small knife at him. Musashi turned his face away, and the knife stuck in the pillar behind him. His father's anger did not cool. At nine, Musashi left home and moved to the hut of his mother's brother, a monk in Harima, it is said.

His first win came four years later, when he was thirteen.

According to the same account, a swordsman named Arima Kihei, of the Shinto school, came to the beach in Harima. He set up a fenced ring and put up a notice board decorated with gold. Anyone who wishes may have a match with me.

On his way home from his handwriting lesson, the boy saw it. He took his brush and smeared ink all over the board. Then he wrote on it that Miyamoto Bennosuke, who lived at such-and-such a place, would fight tomorrow. And he went back to the hut, they say. Bennosuke was Musashi's name as a child.

In the evening, Kihei's messenger arrived. As you wish. We will fight tomorrow.

The monk, his uncle, was shocked. It was only a child's prank, he said, and he begged Kihei to forgive it. He went to Kihei's inn to say he was sorry.

Kihei's answer was this, it is said. With ink still smeared on his board, he could not hold up his head. Tomorrow, in front of everyone, the uncle should simply say it was a child's prank. That would be enough.

The next day, when his uncle tried to lead him there, the boy said he was going to a lot of trouble for nothing. Then he stuck one short sword in his belt, pulled a pole about two meters (six or seven feet) long out of the firewood under the porch, and walked off with it as a walking stick, it is said.

A crowd as big as a mountain had gathered around the fence. His uncle was in the middle of telling Kihei he was sorry, it was only a child.

The boy pushed open the gate of the fence and called out, they say:

"Are you Kihei? Come, let's fight."

He ran at him and struck with the pole. Kihei drew his sword and slashed back. They traded blows for a while. Then the boy threw down the pole, dove into the man's chest, grabbed him, lifted him over his head, and threw him down head first. Then he hit him with the pole fourteen or fifteen times. Kihei died on the spot, it is said.

It is also written that the boy thought this at the time: if you throw away your life and step in to strike, there is no enemy you cannot beat.

Musashi himself wrote only one line about that day in The Book of Five Rings. He beat a swordsman named Arima Kihei. That is all.

At sixteen, he beat a strong swordsman named Akiyama in Tajima. At twenty-one, he went up to Kyoto and met swordsmen from all over the country and fought many matches, and there was not one he failed to win. So the book goes on.

In Kyoto, his opponent was the Yoshioka, a famous family of swordsmen. According to a later biography, the heir, Seijuro, fought with a real blade and Musashi with a wooden sword, and Musashi knocked him down with one blow. Seijuro came to, but perhaps because he felt his honor was ruined, he gave up fighting and shaved his head. His younger brother Denshichiro is also said to have lost his life in a later match.

The students who were left set up Seijuro's son, Matashichiro, and planned to kill Musashi with dozens of men, the biography goes on. The place was the Hanging Pine at Ichijoji, on the edge of Kyoto.

Musashi's own students heard this and asked to go with him. He refused, it is said. If you bring a crowd, you have formed a gang. The authorities strictly forbid that.

Until now, he had won by showing up late for the appointment. This time, he would get there first.

While the roosters were still crowing, Musashi set out alone, they say.

On the way, there was a shrine to the god Hachiman.

A waniguchi hung before the shrine. It is a flat bell, something like a big gong, that visitors ring by shaking its rope.

According to the story, Musashi took hold of that rope. He was about to ring it. That was the moment.

No Boat, Thank You

The bell did not ring.

Suddenly, it is said, he remembered. He respected the gods and the Buddha, but he did not depend on them. Had he not always sworn that?

And yet, when his own life was at stake, he had reached out to them for help.

What a pitiful heart. As he came down from the front of the shrine, shame rose in him, and sweat ran down to his heels, they say.

He was waiting at the Hanging Pine when Matashichiro's party arrived. Musashi called out in a loud voice, it is said:

"Well, Matashichiro. I have been waiting for you."

He cut straight into the crowd, took just one arrow in his sleeve, broke through the enemy, and pulled out, they say.

The winner was Miyamoto Musashi.

But what is passed down as something he told people later is not a story about winning.

"It is hard to keep your mind the same when it really matters. I almost asked the gods for help."

That is what he is said to have told people. What remained as the words of a man who never lost was the story of his own mind nearly losing.

Eight years passed. In 1612, Musashi was twenty-nine.

His next opponent was Sasaki Kojiro, who called his style Ganryu. He was a well-known swordsman who was said to be in the service of the Hosokawa family, a lord's house, at Kokura in Kyushu.

According to a biography, Musashi came to Kokura and turned to Nagaoka Sado, a senior retainer of the Hosokawa. Sado had learned the sword from Musashi's father. Sado spoke to the lord, Tadaoki, and the match with Kojiro was allowed. The place was a small island floating in the sea, Funashima. Today it is called Ganryu Island.

But on the night before the match, Musashi disappeared.

They looked all over town and could not find him. He had heard how good Kojiro was, and now he was scared and had run away, people said to one another, it is said.

Musashi was across the sea in Shimonoseki, at the house of a shipping agent. From there he sent a letter to Sado.

Tomorrow, you say, I will be taken to the island in your boat. I am grateful for your thoughtfulness.

But this time, Kojiro and I are enemies. Kojiro will be taken over in Lord Tadaoki's boat, and I in yours. I wonder if that would be right toward your lord. After writing that, he pressed the point once more:

"I must decline the boat, again and again."

Tomorrow morning I will cross in my own boat. It will cause no trouble at all.

On the very night he was rumored to have run away, Musashi was writing a polite letter about how boats ought to be arranged.

The next morning, even after the sun was high, Musashi did not get up, it is said.

The innkeeper worried and told him the time, but he did not move. When a messenger came from Kokura, he only answered that he would be there soon.

Then, at last, he got up, washed his hands, and ate. He asked the innkeeper for a boat oar and carved it into a large wooden sword. While he was doing it, a second messenger came to say he should hurry, they say.

On the island, Kojiro had grown tired of waiting. According to a later biography, Kojiro drew his sword and threw the scabbard into the water. Musashi laughed and said, it is said:

"Kojiro, you have lost. A man who means to win does not throw away his scabbard."

The angry Kojiro struck straight at him. Musashi's wooden sword hit Kojiro's head. Kojiro's blade may have brushed the knot of Musashi's headband, and the cloth fell away in two pieces, it is said.

Beside the fallen Kojiro, Musashi dropped his wooden sword and put his hand to the man's mouth and nose, bringing his face close. For a while, they say, he checked whether Kojiro was still breathing. Then he bowed to the official watcher far away, jumped into the boat, and went back to Shimonoseki.

Kojiro's life did not come back.

Later, some people criticized him for it. The match was over, they said, and he did not even finish the man off, but ran home in a hurry. Musashi laughed and answered, it is said:

"That man and I fought only to compare our skill with the sword. Why would I hate him and stab him dead after I had won?"

And he went on. If that man had come back to life, it would have been a blessing. Sadly, he died by my hand. It is truly a pity.

The sixty-odd matches, The Book of Five Rings says, were all before he was twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

Did the man who never lost go on to serve some house?

Twenty-eight years later, at fifty-seven, Musashi would write this to an official of a certain lord:

"Not once have I served any house as a retainer."