Novel
Musashi
宮本武蔵
Eiji Yoshikawa · 1939
Synopsis
In the aftermath of the battle of Sekigahara, a young man from the defeated side, Shinmen Takezō, flees the authorities, turns violent and lives in the mountains more like a beast than a man, according to the Asian Review of Books. The monk Takuan pulls him out of this life and keeps him shut away with books; Takezō comes out of it under the name Miyamoto Musashi, determined to devote himself to the sword, and travels across Japan in the early days of the shogunate, caught up in rivalries and love affairs, in search of what makes a true man.
Context
The novel appeared in the Asahi Shimbun from 1935 to 1939, and the first complete edition as a single set came only in 1971. Its hero is a real swordsman of the seventeenth century. The English translation by Charles S. Terry, published by Kodansha International in 1981, was abridged; Alexander Bennett began a complete version in 2026 with Tuttle, whose first volume runs to about five hundred pages. In France, the novel appeared in two volumes from Balland in 1983.
Who it is for
A long novel in several volumes, made up of short chapters written for the newspaper, for those who like tales of the sword and of apprenticeship.
Prizes and reception
Sold in some one hundred and twenty million copies, it gave rise to a film trilogy and to the manga Vagabond.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.