a book of five rings by miyamoto musashi

“ I consciously chose to use the neutral “they” instead of “he”, and looked for words that wouldn’t exclude the many non-male participants in history. This is something I wouldn’t have noticed this if Hatchard hadn’t pointed it our herself Additional information is added so the audience of another culture understands the text the same way as the audience of the original.Īnother little touch is the use of “they” instead of “he”. However, the audience of another culture might not automatically know what the author is referring to. This occurs when the author of the original text assumes their audience already knows something. As such the publishers hired Hatchard to translate with accessibility in mind and instructed her to translate it so no footnotes were needed.Īdding information to a translation (often to avoid footnotes) is a very common technique. So that anyone might follow his teachings, no matter what their background may be. The introduction explains how Miyamoto Musashi always intended his works to be accessible to everyone. This book also includes a really interesting introduction about this new translation. Each chapter focuses on the various ways and arts, and how one should thinks about and approach the methods outlined in each scroll. The book is separated into five chapters, The Scroll of Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Expanse. The pages themselves are double thick, which I thought was a little odd at first but quickly got used to them. This edition comes to £19.99/$24.95 but the binding is so nicely done with thick red hardback and really nice paper. There are a few English translations of Musashi’s work and in 2020 Amber Books published a brand new translation by Maisy Hatchard.īefore I even get to the translation I need to talk about the beautiful binding of this new edition!!! Loot at it! His work has also inspired numerous films, novels, and games. These teachings are still studied today by a range of martial artists and his writings are considered an important part of Japanese history. His teachings are influential because they can even be applied to aspects of everyday life, not just martial arts. The majority of his work talks about how to swordfight, but it also talks about mindset. They are the records of his own beliefs and practices related to martial arts and combat that he passed onto his own students. The scrolls of Five Rings was written by the sword master and samurai Miyamoto Musashi around 1643.

I’ve been meaning to read and review this book for a while and I finally got around to it!

A book of five rings by miyamoto musashi