Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era

by Eiji Yoshikawa

“Instead of wanting to be like this or that, make yourself into a silent, immovable giant. That’s what the mountain is. Don’t waste your time trying to impress people. If you become the sort of man people can respect, they’ll respect you, without your doing anything.”

penurious

Good word

The Way of the Sword, as he had come to see it, must have specific objectives: to establish order, to protect and refine the spirit. The Way had to be one men could cherish as they did their lives, until their dying day. If such a Way existed, could it not be employed to bring peace to the world and happiness to all?

You’ve let your status go to your heads. After a bit of training, you begin congratulating yourselves on being masters of the ‘invincible Ittō Style.’ You’re too self-satisfied.” “Wait, sir,” Hyōsuke protested in a trembling voice. “That’s not fair. Not all of us are lazy and arrogant. We don’t all neglect our studies.” “Shut up!” Tadaaki glared at him fiercely. “Laxness on the part of students is a reflection of laxness on the part of the teacher. I’m confessing my own shame now, passing judgment on myself.

“Wars, like the typhoon we had, pass. The land as a whole is unchanged, but we must never forget the debt we owe to the white bones under the ground.”

“Bowing’s not really necessary, if you keep the memory alive in your heart.”

stentorian,

Good word

Yet as Takuan listened, the music struck him as having genuine feeling, albeit of the artless sort often expressed in poems by non-poets. He thought, too, that he could recognize the emotion the player was attempting to wring from his instrument. It was remorse, from the first off-key note to the last—a wailing cry of repentance.

“One’s self is the basis of everything. Every action is a manifestation of the self. A person who doesn’t know himself can do nothing for others.”

invective.

Good word

“If you can bear up under hardship, you can experience a pleasure greater than the pain,” Musashi said solemnly. “Day and night, hour by hour, people are buffeted by waves of pain and pleasure, one after the other. If they try to experience only pleasure, they cease to be truly alive. Then the pleasure evaporates.”

“Yes. Living in that back alley, among poor and honest people, is good training—part of my education. It’s not time wasted.”

An easy existence imposed restrictions; he could not submit to them.

indolence,

Good word

Enemies were teachers in disguise.

To be taught by danger to be alert even when asleep, to learn from enemies at all times, to use the sword as a means of letting people live; governing the realm, achieving enlightenment, sharing one’s joys in life with others—they were all inherent in the Way of the Sword.

The warrior’s instinct was not to be confused with animal instinct. Like a visceral reaction, it came from a combination of wisdom and discipline. It was an ultimate reasoning that went beyond reason, the ability to make the right move in a split second without going through the actual process of thinking.

You have to learn to concentrate so completely that you don’t even hear people talking or cicadas singing.

bruited

Good word

churlish

Good word

“A samurai’s wife must not weep and go to pieces when he goes off to war. Laugh for me, Otsū. Send me away with a smile. This may be your husband’s last departure.”