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5/5 Barnes & Noble Original title 宮本武蔵 Country Japan Publication date 1935 Originally published 1935 Page count 984 (US hardback edition) Publisher Asahi Shimbun | 4.4/5 Goodreads 5/5 eBay Cover artist N. Ōrai Published in English 1981 Genre Historical Fiction Translator Charles Sanford Terry | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Musashi (宮本武蔵, Miyamoto Musashi) is a Japanese novel written by Eiji Yoshikawa. It was serialized in 1935 in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun.
Contents
Introduction
It is a fictionalized account of the life of Miyamoto Musashi, author of The Book of Five Rings and arguably the most renowned Japanese swordsman who ever lived.
The novel has been translated into English by Charles S. Terry, with a foreword by Edwin O. Reischauer, published by Kodansha International under ISBN 4-7700-1957-2.
The long epic (over 900 pages, abridged, in the English version) comprises seven "books" detailing the exploits of Miyamoto Musashi, beginning just after the battle of Sekigahara, following his journeys and the many people who become important in his life, and leading up to his climactic duel with Sasaki Kojiro on Ganryujima (Ganryu or Funa Island). Musashi becomes famous during the course of the novel as he searches for both perfection in swordsmanship and in consciousness. Innovating Japanese swordsmanship, he invents the style of simultaneously wielding both the katana and the wakizashi, something unheard of at that time in Japanese history.
Table of contents
Chapters per book