Distinct works erroneously combined as editions and not labeled as part of the series - Musashi Series

[Janell]

There are five books in Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi series.


I realize these may have been combined and released in one volume (omnibus), but they are also distinct works in a series of 5 books (homage to Musashi's actual Book of Five Rings). Amazon bears me out - links at the bottom of this.
Now, here are the issues:

A. book 1 of the series - Musashi: The Way of the Samurai is incorrectly designated as book #2 of the series (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...) and also somehow combined with book#3 - Musashi: The Way of the Sword (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...) as the same edition. Please separate them and label them as book 1 and book 3 of the series.

B. book 2 of the series - Musashi: The Art of War is found here (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...) and has no series designation. Please label properly as book #2.

C. book 4 of the series - Musashi: The Bushido Code is found here (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...) and also has no series designation. Please label as book 4 of the series.

D. book 5 of the series - Musashi: The Way of Life and Death is found here (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...) sans series designation. Please label as book 5 of the series.

Thanks.
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Amazon has distinct entries (and ISBNs) for each of these 5 books:
Book 1: http://www.amazon.com/Way-Samurai-Mus...
Book 2: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-War-Mus...
Book 3: http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Sword-M...
Book 4: http://www.amazon.com/Musashi-No-4-Bu...
Book 5: http://www.amazon.com/The-Life-Death-...

[Z-squared]

working on it now

the issues are a mess and are going to take some work to separate and re-combine correctly. once that's done, i can fix the series order.

[Z-squared]

Apparently the original novel was composed of 7 books with these subtitles:

earth
water
fire
wind
sky
sun & moon
perfect light

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musashi_...)

Any idea how those 7 relate to the 5-book series? Is Book 1: The Way of the Samurai composed of those 7 chapters? Or has the entire series been broken up in 5-book or 7-book chunks depending on the publishers?

[Janell]

Thanks - agreed - a hot mess, but thank you for diving right in!
Now about the relation between what I will call 'the Musashi novel' found here:(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...) and his Musashi series...

I'm totally speculating (because the descriptions on GRs could be referring to any body of work about Musashi and/or pre-modern Japan and I only own the series), but I believe they are distinct works: 1) the Musashi series and 2) the Musashi novel, and the chapter references you found are not part of the series, but are chapters in the single novel.

I also checked out Yoshikawa's Wikipedia page...and under "English translations" in the middle of the page - there's the 5 book series + a 2 additional Musashi titles published as a stand-alones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%8...

Also - compare page count. 5 books roughly 300 pages each versus the single Musashi novel at 970 pages. I would have to check out a copy of it to be absolutely sure...who knows - the publisher could have done some creative editing and shaved the page count down.

Next, the publisher's ad in the back of my copy of the series only lists 5 books (not 7) and label them collectively as the Musashi "saga". Now whether that's a marketing gimmick, or just a way to distinguish it from the single Musashi novel - I don't know. Then again...per that wiki page - the publishers between the two (Pocket Books v. Kodansha Intl) differ.


Thoughts?

[Z-squared]

That's about as far as I got, too. Well, at least the 5-book series is now fixed. I'm at a loss to combine any of the other 'Musashi' editions without more info.

[Janell]

Ha - the series is all I cared about, so I'm cool. You're a rock star! Thanks again.