Hiroaki SatoReseñas

I don't know that I have the energy to write a review like this book *deserves* -- but I'm stunned no one has reviewed it! Just gobsmacked. This is a ~600 page survey of Japanese poetry from (I think) the oldest things there are to the work of poets born well into the 20th century. It feels pretty comprehensive, and it runs from things that are so ... I don't know, elemental ... they're hard to connect with, through loads of haiku, hokku, renga, tanka and so on, loads of which are wonderfully evocative of the natural world, to ... well, very modern stuff. You *won't* love everything presented here, but you *will* come away enriched, thrilled anew with poetry's possibilities, and curious about a culture where poetry seems ... ah, I dunno, *important*? I ordered my copy used, and to my irritation I got a copy with a broken spine, that has chunks of pages falling out. Normally I'd unload a book like that, but this one is so good I'm going to keep it (and probably replace it with a better copy). Get it!

(from cover)

Long considered a classic of tactical wisdom, The Sword and the Mind is an extraordinary synthesis of the ideas and experiences of three swordsmen: Hidetsua, muneyousho and Munenori. During their lifetime in the 16th and 17th Centuries they witnessed historic events which transformed Japan from a feudal state at war to a stable and powerful shogunate. On its simplest level The Sword and the Mind is an illuminating guide to swordmanship maneuvers including self-defense. But on a deeper level this work is the three warriors' legacy to the modern reader, a profound philosophical and psychological guide to the most fundamental elements of strategy.

'The real McCoy from which every Zen-and-the-art-of-anything takes off. It demonstrates how the courage and mindfulness of the warrior can become stages on the path to enlightenment, and how an activity as potentially bloody as sword plan can be a humane, exacting art.'--San Francisco Chronicle

Includes a translation of Heiho Kadensho (Family-Transmitted Book on Swordsmanship), and selections from Takuan's Fudochi Shinmyo Roku (Divine Record of Immovable Wisdom), and Taia Ki (On the T'aia). Basic reference for historical information on Shinkageryu.

Contents

Notes and Acknowledgments
(Takuan's calligraphy)
Chronology of Japanese History
Chronology of Yagyu-Related Events
Introduction
Heiho Kaden Sho: Family-Transmitted Book on Swordsmanship
Volume One: Shoe-Offering Bridge
Volume Two: The Death-Dealing Blade
Volume Three: The Life-Giving Sword
Fkudochi Shinmyo Rokku: Divine Record of Immovable Wisdom
Taia Ki: On teh T'ai-a
Brief Annotated Bibliography
Glossary

from dust jacket

Over the decades the reputatuion of the samurai has grown to mythical proportions, owing to such films as Akiro Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo as well al stories such as James Clavell's Shogun; in the eighties, the seventeenth century treatise on marital arts, A Book of Five Rings (A Book of Five Elements) became the bible of Wall streeters who looked to samurai strategy for success in business. Although the picture of a superhuman, sword-wielding fighting machine has some basis in truth, this swashbuckling image is only part of the samurai story. In Legends of the Samurai, Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legenedary warriors.

Through his masterful translation of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments accompanied by insightful commentary, Hiroaki Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power. For this purpose, Sato has chosen to translate, wherever possible, writings closest in time to the actual event. His translations are testament to his mastery of the language for they flow with lively ease that one might not expect from accounts, many of which are ancient.

Legends of the Saurai covers legends from mythological times to teh early eighteenth century. Through this book Sato describes men accomplished in martial arts, warrior-commanders in battle, and samurai's own views of themselves. It ends with a famous modern retelling of a mass disembowelment in the mid-seventeenth century.

Hiroaki Sato has published two dozen books, sixteen of which are translations of Japanese poetry into English. His translation of the ancient Japanese teatise on swordsmanship, The Sword and the Mind, is available from The Overlook Press. He is a frequent lecturer on Japanese poetry ands past president of the Heiku Society of America. In 1982, he, along witgh Bkurton Watson, won the P.E.N. translation prize fro From the Cokuntry of Eight Islands: An anthology of Japanese Poetry.

Contents

Acknowledgments and Notes
Introduction
Chronology
Genealogy of the Minamoto Clan
Part One: Samurai Prowess
Yamato Takeru: Loser as Hero (Fourth century A.D.)
Yorozu: 'I Wanted to Show My Bravery!'
Otomo no Yakamochi: To Die by Our Sovereign's Side (Poem written in 749)
Minamoto no Mitsuru and taira no Yoshifumi: The Duel (Mid-10th century)
Fujiwara no Yasumasa and Hakamadare: Presence of Mind
Muroaka no Goro and Hakamadare: To Know When to be Alert
Taira no Koremochi, a.k.a. General Yogo: 'Did You Bring His Head?'
Kanetada and Koremochi: Meaning of REvenge
Tachibana no Norimitsu: 'What Splendid Swordsmanship!' with a description of the same man as viewed by Sei Shonagon, author of the Pilow Book
Sakanoue no Haruzumi: A Warrior's Shame
Minamoto no Raiko: Aleert and Penetrating
Guardian Kings and the Oxcart: a Comic Interlude, with an account of the origin of Haniwa
Minamoto no Yorinobu: 'Lert Your Little Kid be stabbed to death!'
Raiko and Others: Tales of Archery
Taira no Munetsune: The Silent One
Taira no Sadatsuna: When Not to Risk Your Life
Part Two: Battles Joined
Minamoto no Yoshiie: 'The Samurai of the Greatest Bravery Under Heaven'
Minamoto no Yoshitsune: A Hero Hounded
Kusunoki Masashige: A Guerilla of Unflinching Loyalty
Ko no Moronao: 'When a Samurai Falls in Love'
Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin: Two Warlords
Oda Nobunaga: The Warlord and Poetry
Part Three: The Way of the Warrrior
Hojo Soun: 'Lord Soun's Twenty-one Articles'
Miyamoto Musashi: Gorin no Sho (Book of Five Elements)
Arai Hakuseki: 'My Father
Yamamoto Tsunetomo: Hagakure (Hidden in Leaves)
The Forty-Seven Samurai: An Eyewitness Account, with Arguments
'Memorandum of Okado Denpachiro'
Arguments
Hayashi Nobuatsu
Sato Naokata
An Anonymous Samurai
Asami Ysusada
Dazai Skhundai
Hokoi Yayu
Part Four: A Modern Retelling
'The Abe Family' by Mori Ogai
Bibliography
Index of Important Figures
Maps:
Twelfth century
Seventeenth century
Ilustrations:
Cover: Kusunoki Masashige
Hakamadare and Yasumasa
Haniwa
Yoshiie Exchanging Renga with Sadato
Oda Nobunaga
Miyamoto Musashi
Abe Yaichiemon and his Sons

The start of this book is quite funny: it's like listening to a drunk who attempts to explain quantum theory but goes into how, actually, Niels Bohr's pants were of green colour and not beige as was written in Science, and...

I'll let you see what I mean:

Women themselves couldn’t help thinking their life depended on their face and figure, let alone their getup, “in a world where men spent half a year to learn to scrutinize their own clothes, hair styles, and swords, but also the way they walked, just to go to pleasure quarters,” or so observed the historian Kodama Kōta in The Genroku Age (Genroku jidai). For that matter, what is given as “young boy” above is wakashu, a catamite, the object of male love; a great deal of care and money was spent on such young men to make them prettier, more enchanting. There were, in addition, kabukimono, date-otoko, yakko, yarō, etc.—many among them rowdy, tough men who galivanted while outlandishly decked out, often provoking quarrels and fights. Some of these figures later became the subjects of kabuki plays and one-man storytelling (kōdan). Among them, for example, was Banzui-in Chōbē, said to have beat up Mizuno Jūrōzaemon, a hatamoto with a stipend of 3,000 koku, who, in retaliation, entrapped Chōbē and killed him. The point of the story is that Chōbē, knowing what was up, went to Jūrōzaemon’s house as invited.

In spite of this way of writing, the book does provide some interesting insight into feudal Japan where the samurai were an important aspect.

It's interesting to hear of how much powers some rulers had and how they wielded it:

What won Tsunayoshi notoriety was a series of prohibitions that he started introducing not long after he became shogun, the “Pitying the Sentient Edicts” (Shōrui awaremi no rei). Dazai Shundai, who famously asserted that shogun were Japan’s “kings” (ō), wrote in An Unofficial Record on Three Kings (San’nō gaiki): After the King [Tsunayoshi] lost his Crown Prince, his harem did not produce any other child, so he tried many other ways seeking an heir, to no avail.

Then the monk Ryūkō stepped forward and said, Sire, you have few heirs as a retribution for having killed living things in your previous life. If you want an heir, the best thing to do would be to love creatures and not to kill them. If Your Majesty truly wants an heir, I think you must forbid the killing of living things. At the same time, because you were born in the year of hi-no-e inu, and inu belongs to dogs, you had best love dogs. The King agreed to this, and the Queen Dowager also heard Ryūkō. The King approved of this and forbad the killing of living things.

I dig the use of honorifics in there:

One thing that may startle, and amuse, the modern reader is the certificate of receipt given at the Nakano kennel ground. Used in each reference to each dog—mother and puppies—is the honorific prefix o, in addition to the sex and the color of each: e.g., “white-black-mottled boy, the honored dog” (shirokuro-shibori-danshi-o-inu).

All of the tidbits above point to two facts:

1. This book contains a lot more than its title lets one initially believe and is more than sprawling, in mainly a bad way.
2. The Japanese original may make more sense in a cultural way than this English translation does.

It's interesting to read an analysis of how a person could have its head cut off by sword or allow death to enter by cutting one's own stomach by sword:

As the accounts cited above, especially Asakichi’s Report, may suggest, Asano Naganori did not really “cut his stomach,” the literal meaning of seppuku. In fact, years before the Genroku era seppuku had become ritualized. Instead of a man ripping his own belly with a short sword, then stabbing his own neck to hasten death, the condemned would be provided with a kaishaku, “second,” ready to strike with his sword drawn, who, the moment he picked up the short sword on the ceremonial sanbō placed before him, would behead him and show the head to the kenshi, witness, marshal, or censor.

As A. B. Mitford put it: “The assistant second brings a dirk upon a tray, and, having placed it in front of the principal, withdraws to one side: when the principal leans his head forward, his chief second strikes off his head, which is immediately shown to the censor, who identifies it, and tells the master of the palace that he is satisfied, and thanks him for all his trouble.”

I was happy to see that this book included tidbits of how homosexual love turned out back in the day:

Homosexual love, called shudō, “the way of young men,” nanshoku, “male amour,” to give a few terms for the similar propensity, was prevalent. “The shogun and daimyo loved maegami no koshō, ‘pages with forelocks,’ hatamoto kept ko-zōritori, ‘little slipper carriers’; in the inner gardens of the Buddhist law were chigo koshō, ‘young acolytes,’ there were yarō in Miyakawa-chō of Kyoto, Negi-chō of Edo, and Dōtonbori of Osaka,” wrote the historian Kodama. And, of course, open homosexual love did not start or end in the Genroku era. Jesuits who went to Japan and stayed there to observe the country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marveled at it; so did Shin Yu-han, a Korean who accompanied his country’s large-scale embassy to Japan in 1719.

Loads of blood, people being gibbeted, suicides, sex, calligraphy, and oodles of names later, and what do we have? A book that is interesting at best and a wayward mess at worst.

I have this as an ebook. Big mistake for me. This needs the physical copy to be able to dip into, refer back to and refer to endnotes.

It's a very detailed look over the evidence regarding the two incidents, as well as lots of detail giving the social, cultural and political context. Which is great - but hard work. Something to return to, reading a few pages at a time, and then mulling it over.

A great reference book to have on your (physical) bookshelf, for sure.

This isn't a Japanese history text, but it could be a great supplement to one. It's a collection of Japanese legends and histories which feature samurai, presented chronologically but also divided into three parts: tales of individual heroics and other famed acts; tales of war that do verge on relating Japanese history; and a more philosophically themed section that mostly covers events of the Tokugawa period, featuring Musashi's Book of Five Elements and the revenge story of the Forty-Seven Samurai.

The introduction is fantastic at briefly providing an overview of the different eras of Japan's history, and at establishing basic knowledge about samurai culture. I liked the presentation of the content that followed, which alternates between translations from the sources and the author's explanatory passages that establish setting and context. There are also substantial footnotes provided as aids. A straightforward translation of the sources without any of this support would have left me in the dark and much less appreciative. Hiroaki Sato uses sources that were recorded closest to the actual occurrence of events, to minimize the exaggeration in their retelling over the centuries. Even so, the earliest tales read like Greek mythology, but there is a clear progression in the objectivity with which these histories were recorded. The author/translator notes a bias whenever he feels one occurs, sometimes citing sources with opposing versions for contrast.

Thanks to this work I'm now much more familiar with the 'greats' of samurai lore. I can't seem to readily retain most of these Japanese names, but I'll be keeping this book as reference and making connections as I read other works on the subject in hopes of making the names 'stick' eventually. I was surprised how frequently deception is lauded as a tactic in these tales (particularly the faking one's death, an oft-used ploy); I would have thought that ran contrary to the samurai honour code, so it goes to show how much I've yet to understand. I was also intrigued by the strong emphasis on art forms that balances or even overshadows the rigorous martial arts training a samurai required. Poetry is closely linked to the warrior way, as explained in the introduction, and it is featured in many of the tales. The author does a great job of explaining quoted poetic nuances through his asides or in the footnotes.

The content here consists only of highlights from the selected sources, some of them very brief. You would have to look elsewhere to find the full source translations, but this is a great collection of select readings that provides a solid framework and goes a long way to introducing the legends of the samurai.

Read these in the yard.
Do it on a warm evening,
But read slowly, please.½

The art of swordsmanship from three 16th century Japanese swordsmen poets. I didn't learn this stuff when I took fencing at UNC.

Interesting self-exmination by Takamura, who supported the militarists during the war but regreted it afterwards

Cool! A friend started a Renga, and it was a blast. Wanna try one? Let me know!

A thoroughly enjoyable book for those who are interested in the history and analysis of poetry. Don't confuse this book with another by the same author, "One Hundred Frogs", that is a short collection of translations of Basho's famous poem. This is a longer work of literary theory.

This book is the best and most thorough introduction to renga that I've read. The chapters don't hang together entirely -- they seem to be a collection of essays published separately, but that's fine. The best gem of this book is the large collection of alternate translations of Basho's classic frog poem. Here's my translation:

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

an old pond,
frog-leaping :
water's sound...

Probably the best translation in English of Sakutaro's dark and difficult verse. Includes an informative introduction placing Sakutaro in the context of his time which helps to illuminate just why he is considered such an important and revolutionary poet, as well as a brief description of his life and (rather unsavory) personality. This volume also includes a small selection of Sakutaro's prose works.