Child of Vengeance

David Kirk on his quest to find the real Musashi Miyamoto

            In Fukuoka prefecture, upon the westernmost island of the Japanese ‘mainland’ Kyushu, stands a dojo hall where men and women practice an art four hundred years old: that of swordfighting. In this particular dojo they study the techniques of Ni Ten Ichi Ryu – the Way of the Two Heavens as One – unique in that it prescribes wielding a sword in either hand, the methods and secrets of which have been passed down through generations, leading all the way back to its progenitor the samurai Musashi Miyamoto.

            It is an art entirely useless in the modern world, but still they practice; because it is an art, because it is Musashi. A kind of ancient and obstinate jazz almost, unloved and irrelevant to most youth today but hammered out in smoky basements on ill tuned pianos nevertheless by the devout that refuse to let it die.

            Perhaps I am being too harsh (on both samurai and jazz): reverence for and interest in their history is more pronounced in Japan than in the west. Musashi himself has a kind of place in the Japanese cultural pantheon similar to the one Robin Hood has in ours, both being roguish legendary warriors. As we know of feats of archery and the Sheriff of Nottingham, so the Japanese know of the man who walked masterless in a time of clan and Lord, who killed sixty men in duels as he sought enlightenment and who wrote a philosophical treatise (The Book of Five Rings) in his dying months that is still studied to this day.

            However Musashi is infinitely more quantifiable than Robin Hood, as we have his writings, his school, his legacy. Though it is sometimes difficult to separate definite objective truth about him from apocryphal elements added through the embellishment/creation of stories over the centuries, at the very least we know some of the way the man thought and felt. Thus the author that chooses to write about him has a broad outline he has to adhere to.

What appealed to me about Musashi was his sense of pragmatism. The classical Japanese culture of the nobles and the samurai was one sodden with ritual, pomp and forced adulation, castle halls ringing with the didactic praise of Lord and Lady by thousands. Sword schools promised unrivalled ability with the blade only through blood oaths and secret rituals. Any outsider unlucky enough to catch sight of such rituals would be killed. Musashi, by contrast, lived in the woods and evoked self-sufficiency as paramount. He said: ‘Here’s how I do it, try it a hundred times. It might not work for you as it does for me. If so, tweak it.’

Yet despite these traits that I admire it is hard for me to see Musashi as a ‘good’ man. In his supposed quest for enlightenment he likely killed much more than ‘only’ the sixty men he formally duelled. In his old age Musashi himself made cryptic remarks about his temperament before the age of thirty being questionable, though states no outright regret or apology. Certainly it seems clear he had an innate predisposition towards violence, or ‘savagery’ if you will, but you cannot portray him as a thoughtless psychopath because that would be patently untrue (as well as making a terrible protagonist).

The instinctive response to this, to me at least, was to assume that he was merely a product of his times and culture. Then you dig deeper and you start to wonder. You remember that he lived in a realm of where two lifestyles were taught. One where monks gently brushed spiders out of their path, refusing to harm even insects, such was the sanctity of life to them. And conversely the samurai preached death, both of their enemies and themselves. Maybe Musashi followed this creed, you think, but then you remember that he renounced the traditional ways of samurai when he chose to wander masterless.

Who was at ‘fault’ here? The society, or the man? Neither? Both?

Exploring this objectively became the main challenge of Child of Vengeance, as well as the planned subsequent novels. Where first I perhaps wanted simply to tell the details of his swordfights, I found the scope of it growing. Examining both internally and externally; though Child of Vengeance remained a story largely told from Musashi’s perspective, the sequel Hours of the Dog (hopefully coming in 2014, 90,000 words in and still only half done...) is far more holistic in nature.

But even so, the protagonist in both books ultimately remains ‘my’ Musashi. It is not a definite biography because there can be no such thing in the English language; the language of the samurai and modern English are so wildly different that the act of simple translation becomes sort of a guessing game, so vague and full of allusions is ancient Japanese. What I know as ‘fact’ could very well be erroneous.

The realization of this is somewhat liberating, as rather than worrying about sticking to some non-existent dogma, you take what he did and run with it, make it work for you  – maybe a little like how Musashi taught the sword. I hope that if I do not always present him flatteringly, I at least present him fairly on his quest for meaning.

After all, the man still has disciples who are really, really good with swords; these are generally not the kinds of people you want to go around pissing off.

David Kirk explores the life and story of Musashi in his debut novel, CHILD OF VENGEANCE, out now.