Combat Strategy in 35 Articles

What Musashi called his first written account of his two-sword method, set down in 1641 at the order of his lord, Hosokawa Tadatoshi.

by Miyamoto Musashi20 passages held

Japanese, the original language

Original title: 兵法三十五箇條
First published: 1641(aged 57)
Original language: Japanese

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Overview

Hosokawa Tadatoshi, lord of Kumamoto and himself licensed in the Yagyū Shinkage style taught to the shoguns, ordered Miyamoto Musashi to put his method on paper, and in the second month of 1641 Musashi did — for the first time, he says in the opening note, after years of training. The result is a working manual in short articles: how to grip the sword, carry the body, place the feet, rest the eyes, judge the distance and take the moment to strike. Its argument is that a swordsman should learn to wield the long sword in one hand and hold it in a living grip, since a hand that stiffens to guard or block has already lost; and that one discipline governs a single body and a whole domain, with the mind as general and the limbs as its retainers. It stops where writing gives out. The last article, on the many principles returning to one emptiness, tells the reader to work it out alone, and the closing note leaves the finer points of technique to oral teaching. Tadatoshi died about a month after he received it. When Musashi began the Five Rings in 1643 he reworked much of this material into it, and Uozumi Takashi, a historian of the martial arts, reads the articles as the ground the later book was built on. Others have doubted that Musashi wrote them, since the Five Rings also claims to be his first writing. In 1645 a copy passed to Terao Nobuyuki, younger brother of Terao Magonojō, and the version Nobuyuki later handed to his own pupils runs to thirty-nine articles.

Key concepts

What is a dead hand, and what makes a hand living?

A dead hand is one that has stopped meaning to cut: while it holds a guard, receives a blow or stops a blade, it forgets the cut and sets. A living hand stays loose and never fixed, so the sword can meet anything and still cut. The grip closes in the last fingers, the wrist is left unbound, the elbow neither locked straight nor bent too far.

What is the stance with no stance?

Ukō mukō, having a guard without a guard: wherever the sword is held, that is a stance, but the intention to hold a stance is what fixes sword and body. So the fighter keeps no thought of guarding and lets the sword answer the opponent from wherever it is. High, middle, low and side positions still exist, each with three variations, but none of them is a place to rest.

What is ito-kane, the thread and measure?

A measuring line kept in the mind at all times. Held against each opponent, it shows where they are strong and weak, straight and crooked, taut and slack, and so reveals their mind. The measure is one's own mind made straight, and with it a person can judge the round and the square, the long and the short. It is the standing instrument, as against reading the mood of a single moment.

What are i no kokoro and shin no kokoro?

Two layers of the mind: i, the surface intent that reaches toward the opponent, and shin, the heart beneath it. Ordinarily the fighter releases the surface and holds the depths back, keeping the one light and the other heavy. At the moment of a sure strike the balance reverses: the heart is released and the intent held back. Which to keep and which to let go depends on the moment.

Why does the last article, on one emptiness, say almost nothing?

Because what it names will not go into writing. Its subject is the many principles returning to one emptiness, and the article says only that this is hard to set down, so the reader must work it out alone. The closing note then leaves the finer points to oral teaching. The book ends by marking the place where instruction hands over to the student's own practice.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Living Hand

Why has a hand that stops to guard already lost? Grip, carriage, footing and gaze are all taught toward one condition: a body that never settles into a fixed position.

A hand that forgets to cut while it holds a guard, receives a blow or stops a blade is what Musashi calls a dead hand; a living one stays loose and ready to meet and cut. The same fault is hunted in the feet, which must never leap, float or stamp in place, and in the stance: a guard is only where the sword happens to be, and the thought of holding one is what fixes the body. The closing note leaves the finer points to oral teaching, and the last article leaves the rest for the reader to work out alone.

posture
movement
body mechanics
embodied skill
embodied action
embodiment
coordination
technique
control
tacit knowledge

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The Mind as General

What governs a body in a fight, and does the same thing govern a domain? One discipline serves both, the articles answer, with the mind in command and the limbs as its retainers.

The mind, Musashi writes, should be like water, which can be a single drop or the open sea: neither narrowed nor strained, neither scheming nor afraid. He splits it in two, the surface intent kept light and the deeper heart kept heavy, and reverses the balance at the moment of a sure strike. Against an opponent the mind becomes the general and treats the enemy as its own troops, leaving him no freedom to plan. Even quality shows in this: the lowest strategy looks fast and showy, the highest neither strong nor weak, large, straight and quiet.

attention
timing
adaptability
initiative
perception
judgment
strategy
martial strategy
self-command
intention
mastery
discipline
aesthetics
practice
training
combat
combat strategy
action
martial arts

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Within this work

passages held: 20
distinct concepts: 40
by passages held, corpus-wide: #780

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “attention” and “martial arts”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 5 concepts, joined by 10 pairings. 29 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
attention	martial arts	6
adaptability	martial arts	5
adaptability	attention	4
adaptability	timing	4
attention	timing	4
initiative	martial arts	4
martial arts	timing	4
initiative	timing	3
adaptability	initiative	2
attention	initiative	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1641 Combat Strategy in 35 Articles (兵法三十五箇條) you are here JA
1642 The Five-Direction Sword Pathways (二天一流兵法序論)
Classical Chinese, not Japanese, sets this apart from the treatises under Musashi's name; Uozumi dates it between 1642 and 1643, after the Thirty-Five Articles and before the Five Rings.
JA
1645 The Book of Five Rings (五輪書)
The longest of Musashi's writings and the one the world reads him by, composed over the last two years of his life and never finished to a fair copy.
JA
1645 The Path Walked Alone (獨行道)
A list rather than a treatise: one sheet of personal precepts, dated the same day the Five Rings passed to Terao Magonojō.
JA

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