MUSASHI

Miyamoto Musashi is the most famous swordsman in the world. He is said to have fought more than sixty duels to the death and never lost. He is the hero of novels, films, manga, and video games, and his *Book of Five Rings* is read by martial artists and business leaders alike.

But much of what the world knows about him was invented in the 1930s — including the faithful woman who waits for him in nearly every retelling. The novelist who created her said so himself.

This book tells the real story, from beginning to end. A boy from a fighting family who won his first duel at thirteen. A young man who made his name by destroying Kyoto's most famous family of swordsmen — and killed a twelve-year-old boy to do it. The duel on the island of Ganryūjima, and how its most famous details were added a century and a half later. Then the long, quiet years the legend skips: a swordsman who could not find a lord to serve, who planned towns and gardens, raised two adopted sons, and lost one of them. A last war, at Shimabara, in which he was knocked off his feet by a stone thrown from the castle walls. And finally, at nearly sixty, a home in Kumamoto, a cave in the mountains, and the book he wrote there as he was dying.

Told as a narrative history from beginning to end, with a cast of characters, a map, and a travel guide to the places you can still visit today, this book says plainly what the records show, what historians still debate, and which famous stories are only legends.

Inside, you'll find:

- The birthplace two villages still claim, and the first duel at thirteen
- The battle of Sekigahara — and why Musashi may not have been there at all
- The feud with the Yoshioka, and the hardest story in his life to tell
- The duel at Ganryūjima, and what the oldest record actually says
- The undefeated swordsman who could not find a job in peacetime
- Two adopted sons: one who rose to the top, and one who followed his lord in death
- The cave of Reigandō and the writing of *The Book of Five Rings*
- How a 1930s newspaper novel created the Musashi the world knows
- A guide to visiting the places in this story today, from Kyoto to the island of the duel and the cave in Kumamoto

If you want the legend of the wandering sage and his faithful Otsū, this is not your book. If you want the real story of the swordsman behind it — harder, stranger, and just as remarkable — turn the page and meet the real Musashi.