Musashi An historical fiction written by Eiji Yoshikawa in 1971 Reviewed edition by Yoshikawa from 1995 An hardback has 970 pages ISBN 4-7700-1957-2 Click to rate this book from worst 1 2 3 4 5 to best.
	If you ever came into contact with Asian martial arts, you probably know the name of Miyamoto Musashi, a legendary swordsman and author of the Book Of Five Rings, a book famous almost as much as Sun Tzu's Ancient Art Of War. Eiji Yoshikawa's book narrates the life of Musashi beginning at the Battle Of Sekigahara, describing his struggle to attain perfection through the mastery of swordsmanship.

First of all, I must admit I'm probably far from unbiased as far as reviewing this book goes. I like samurai stories and I like martial arts (don't tell me those ninjas can't jump up five meters for real :-). With this in mind, you probably won't be surprised to learn I like Eiji Yoshikawa's book too.

I will not try to review the martial arts stuff within the book. I know little about swordsmanship and although the philosophical side of the story does resonate with many things I've come to accept, I cannot really say whether these are thoughts Musashi would have in his time or just something the modern martial artists have invented and would like to present as a tradition.

Putting the swordsmanship stuff aside, the book still presents a decent story (perhaps a bit weird by European standards, but that makes it the more interesting). I cannot really judge how accurate the setting is as far as history is concerned, but I trust it is not too much off the mark. What feels slightly annoying is the number of chance meetings the story stands on, and several discontinuities in the plot, but this is to be expected given the book was not originally written as a single volume.

Rated as good by Ceres on 1999-01-01

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