Dog Brothers Public Forum

DBMA Martial Arts Forum => Martial Arts Topics => Topic started by: JAYCE on September 29, 2007, 02:13:48 PM

Title: Book of Five Rings
Post by: JAYCE on September 29, 2007, 02:13:48 PM

For anyone who has read this,The Book of Five Rings, do you feel any of the strategies in it are applicable to your stick fighting since Miyamoto Musashi was adept with two swords?

Title: Re: Book of Five Rings
Post by: maija on September 29, 2007, 04:01:01 PM

I've read this book more times than I can remember. It's very smart. The "way of strategy" does not seem to have changed much in the last 500 or so years and Musashi's ideas are still applicable today to zero-sum games.
He was known for wielding 2 long swords, but IMHO, directly relating the techniques he describes to double stick, or whatever, would be vastly underestimating the concepts that make up most of the book. As he says, if you "know the ways of men", the weapons become secondary.
I bet Musashi could do more damage with a plastic spoon than most people wielding a stick ... if plastic spoons had been invented in the 16th century.. :lol: