Japan's sword saint reportedly won his most famous duel with a carved oar
Miyamoto Musashi claimed 62 duels without a loss and fought with two blades at once. For his most celebrated match he is said to have turned up late, carrying a wooden sword whittled from a boat oar. Near death, he distilled his method into The Book of Five Rings.
Much of Musashi's early life is hard to pin down. He wrote that he was born in Miyamoto village in Harima Province, and an early biography gives 1583, though one historian places his birth in a village of the same name in Mimasaka. His father, Shinmen Munisai, was a respected master of the sword and the jutte. According to one historian, Musashi never married, never cut his hair and never took a bath, perhaps partly because of childhood eczema, or, as another story goes, because he refused to be caught unarmed.
By his own account he won his first duel at 12 or 13, against a swordsman of the Kashima Shintō school, and another at 16. At 21 in Kyoto he defeated several pupils of a famous fencing school. Around 1600 his loyalties were long assumed to lie with the Western Army at Sekigahara, since his clan served the Ukita, but recent research using Kuroda clan records suggests he and his father fought for the East. Whether he fought at Sekigahara itself or at Ishigakihara on Kyushu is still debated.
His duel with Sasaki Kojirō on Ganryu Island, arranged through the lord Hosokawa Tadaoki, drew crowds of spectators. Kojirō, who favoured an unusually long nodachi blade, lost his temper waiting. Musashi, calm, ended the fight quickly with his improvised wooden weapon. He also studied zazen at Myōshin-ji in 1611 and taught his techniques to the Tokugawa general Mizuno Katsunari, alongside whom he is believed to have fought in later campaigns.
In his final years he wrote two works and passed both to his chief student, Terao Magonojō, seven days before his death on 13 June 1645. The Book of Five Rings lays out the practical side of his Niten Ichi-ryū style; the short Path of Aloneness gives the philosophy behind it in brief aphorisms. A training hall in Okayama Prefecture bears his name.
Source: Miyamoto Musashi
