Ebook: The Real Musashi II: The Bukoden (The Real Musashi: Origins of a Legend)

The Bukoden is one of the earliest records on Miyamoto Musashi still in existence. It was completed in 1755 by Toyoda Masanaga, senior retainer to the Nagaoka, a clan closely involved in the events of Musashi's later life. Masanaga's work ranks with the Bushû denraiki as one of the most reliable records of Musashi's life and exploits outside those from the hand of the master swordsman himself. Now, for the first time in two-and-a-half centuries, Masanaga's insight into this enigmatic and solitary swordsman is available to the English reader. It throws a new and refreshing light on many aspects of especially Musashi's later life—his adoption of Iori, his return to Kyushu in 1634, and of course the gestation of his great work on the philosophy and art of Japanese swordsmanship, the Book of Five Rings.