Imaginary Worlds - The Legend of Musashi

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

An entire subgenre of samurai films, shows, manga, anime and games can be traced back to one person – a real life samurai named Miyamoto Musashi. He was not the first samurai to achieve fame, but his remarkable career of undefeated duals, and his unconventional style of fighting cemented Musashi’s legacy in the popular imagination for centuries. Chie Kutsuwada and Sean Michael Wilson discuss their manga adaptation of Musashi’s Book of Five Rings. Yale professor Aaron Gerow, and Darren Ashmore and Will Reed from iCLA explain why Musashi’s life story had a character arc that was irresistible to storytellers. And Stephanie Billman and I connect the dots from Musashi samurai tales to Westerns, Westworld, and Star Wars. This episode is sponsored by Skillshare and BetterHelp. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you’re interested in advertising on Imaginary Worlds, you can contact them here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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They come in two refreshing flavors, Blackberry Yuzu and Mango Starfruit. Try them today, only at Tim's. At participating Tim's restaurants in Canada for a limited time. It's time for Tim's. You're listening to Imag in Canada for a limited time. It's time for Tim's. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky, and joining me is my producer, Stephanie Billman. Hi. Hi.

So you had an interesting experience recently where, like, you often end up watching movies with your husband, Rick, and he's often watching movies that you're not that into, and then you kind of get sucked into it. And he was watching a samurai movie from last year. And there was something about it that really fascinated you. So tell me what that was. So, um, it, the movie ended up being called, uh, it's crazy samurai 400 versus one. And the whole shtick about the movie is it's kind of the way that it's edited. It looks like it's all one long, one long take. And it's, you know, the sword fight with this one guy taking on what looks like basically 400 men. But I wasn't really paying attention, like right

at the beginning. But like, at one point, out of the corner of my eye i i look up and this this dude this man just kills a kid and i kind of look over at rick to see if there's any any reaction from him and there's none and i'm i was like excuse me um did he just kill a kid and he's like no it's musashi he's a good guy it's fine so i i was intrigued as to why my normally sane husband seemed fine with what looked like child murder to me so um that's when i was like okay let me look up what the hell musashi means and that's when i found out that he was actually a real person from history and and that kind of let me down that that rabbit hole of discovery, so to speak. Yeah.

I mean, then when you told me about it, I got really curious, too. And so you and I both talked to a lot of experts about this. Yes, we did. And I think what's so fascinating to me, and I think to you, too, is that the life story of this real samurai from like 400 years ago, Musashi became the blueprint for like the samurai genre of like films, TV shows, manga, anime, even, you know, video games. His life itself is extraordinary enough that it's kind of a movie in its own. Miyamoto Musashi was born in 1584. He died at the age of 61 in 1645. That's a long life for anyone in that time period, let alone a samurai.

In fact, Musashi was supposedly undefeated, which made him a living legend, even to this day in Japan. I spoke with Chie Katsuwara, who illustrated a manga about Musashi's life story. I'm pretty sure everybody, even if some people don't know what exactly the detail about him, but I think most of us have heard of his name. But the thing is, I've learned about him,

but not from my history textbook. So where had you heard about him? Well, he's kind of everywhere. For example, TV drama or film, or one of very famous warrior we talked about when we talk about samurai fighting or that sort of things. Musashi is the kind of lonely, faithful samurai. Sean Michael Wilson is a Scottish writer living in Japan,

and he collaborated with Chie on that manga about Musashi. He says Musashi's career as a samurai began like a classic hero's journey, with a break from his father when Musashi was still a young kid. His father threw a small knife at him because he criticized his father's martial art technique, or his teaching, actually. And his father was, of course, very annoyed about that and attacked him. Musashi ran away from home and trained with his uncle. And when he reached the age of 12, Musashi struck out on his own. In 1596, 12 years old was perhaps not quite so young as it is now.

So it wasn't perhaps all that exceptional to be striking out when you're only 12. But anyway, he did so and immediately, within the first few months, went off and fought someone much older than him and much more experienced with him and beat him easily. By that point, Musashi had turned 13. But still, how did a 13-year-old boy defeat an older, experienced samurai? Darren Ashmore teaches Japanese studies at the International College of Liberal Arts near Tokyo. He says Musashi was tall for his time, so he was able to wield a long sword, which could cut through his opponent's defenses. He was also very wily.

He would turn up late to his duels in order to unsettle and provoke his opponents into rash action, which he would then take advantage of, including a famous fight on a beach in which he timed his arrival so late that the tide was going out by the time he'd killed his opponent, giving him just enough time to jump on a boat and flee before his opponent's followers tried to mug him. He's a pragmatist, turning up late, using long swords, cheating outrageously because the only thing that matters in a duel is who is lying on the ground and who is walking away. That's interesting, especially given

that when you say cheating outrageously, because I mean, he is a hero. I mean, he's always depicted as a hero. Oh, yes. But if you look at all the other main heroes from the late Sengoku and Edo period, they're not exactly nice chaps. That laughter is from Darren's friend, Will Reed, who joined us on the call.

Will is also a professor at ICLA, and he teaches samurai culture. Will says, Musashi excelled at something that we've seen a lot of heroes do in martial arts movies. He was very clever at using his surroundings to defeat his opponents. Well, the word in Japanese, kufu, which literally means skillful means or skillful improvisation, where you're dealing with what you've got and creating an effective use of whatever happens to be handy. And in Chinese, the word is called kung fu. Musashi was also famous for fighting with two swords, one long, one short. Now, it was common for a samurai to have a second shorter sword,

but typically that second sword would be used defensively, deflecting blows or as a backup if your main sword broke. But Musashi used both swords simultaneously for fighting. And most opponents will focus on the threat they're used to. I suspect that means focusing on the longer sword, making them more susceptible to the underhanded strike. And many of these duels were immortalized in pop culture, turning his opponents, who could have been lost to history, into famous characters as well.

There is the duel with the third time round with the Yoshioka clan, where he's surrounded by 70 or 100 or whatever, you know, depending on who you're talking to. But he emerges jumping down from a cliff and then strikes, enters the tent and strikes down the boys a 13 year old boy but he's not just a child he's he is the third generation of the Yoshioka clan and he says I've killed the commander so Stephanie that's actually the scene

you watched in the movie so I mean does that you context? Does that make you feel better about the scene where you saw Musashi kill a kid? Yeah, in a way, yeah. But the actor that they hired for that movie did not look like 13. At the most, he looked like he was eight. So it probably would have helped if they got one age appropriate actor. It probably would have helped if they got one age-appropriate actor. Yeah, I guess I could see that. I mean, because, I mean, Musashi, you know, was supposedly pretty tall for his time, even presumably when he was 13 years old. So I guess, you know, that's how he was able to defeat a grown man in combat. Exactly. So if it was someone that was looked more like along those lines,

it would not have been so jarring for me. Yeah. Well, another important thing to know about Musashi is that he changes over time. He becomes less violent. Sean Michael Wilson says when Musashi was in his 30s, he decided that he wasn't going to kill people anymore. He would accept challenges and basically kind of humiliate them into defeat. Whereas when he was young, he basically just killed them. Also during this time, he became an artist. Chie says there's this one painting that Musashi did of a bird perched on top of a very skinny vertical tree branch. That painting just amazes her because it shows her how much

focus and concentration Musashi had. because it shows her how much focus and concentration Musashi had. I kind of understand that traditional ink brush drawing, which Musashi did. It's like, you know, that silence and, you know, it's right at the moment that bird touched on the very thing, lonely thing, free. Also, in his old age, he became a writer. And Stephanie, I know you got really interested in this period of his life. So like, tell me about the Book of Five Rings. So around 1643, he had basically retired for the most part from dueling and he had his own dojo and he was teaching, you know, others the style that he came to develop for for his duels and for swordsmanship

and around 1643 he retired to a cave right side like outside of komodo and began writing what ended up becoming the book of five rings um and it took him two years and it came out to be this book that sort of like has been handed out as a manual of how to teach the especially his two sword fighting style so the the rings the books refer to um the idea that there are different elements of battle so musashi always believed that there are different elements of battle that you had to to master and to pay attention to it parallels or at least he thought it paralleled, the different elements, the different physical elements in life. So there's the book of earth, the book of water, the book of fire, the book of wind, and the book of the void. The one that I found most

particularly interesting was the book of the void, because it's really very short, and it describes kind of his Zen influence of style of fighting. So you quieted your mind and you focused, which is kind of why it's called The Void. I mean, did he talk about specific battles he had? He did. He discussed, he kind of broke down like the different elements

and compared them to the battles that he did have. Yes, I mean, it's not that big of a book, to be honest with you. He knew he was close to death. He actually died in 1645 in that same cave that he went up to. And so I think it was a way to pass on his legacy to the next generation. I don't think he anticipated it still being talked about in 2021 or in the 80s, American businessmen were fueled full of Coke.

They thought it was a good idea to start looking into Japanese and Chinese philosophy because, you know, the Japanese and Chinese markets were doing so well. So for a little bit in the 80s, it actually came back onto the top 10. And it makes me think of Gordon Gekko in Greed is Good. And he's also reading the Book of Five Rings as he takes his power shake. The Book of Five Rings is really what cements Musashi into the popular imagination. Because there were other famous samurai who had great track records. And they were also immortalized into plays and poems and eventually movies hundreds of years after they died.

But most of them just faded away over time. Aaron Giroux is a professor of East Asian film literature and languages at Yale. He says the problem with these other samurai is that we don't know much about them, except they're badass fighters. But Musashi had a character arc, going from an abused child to a fierce warrior, and eventually a wise teacher, philosopher, artist, and writer. And maybe that just made much more sense for a modern Japan that was itself facing many difficulties. Not only modernizing, industrializing, globalizing, but, you know, encountering war, defeat. In that kind of history, that kind of more complex hero, one with a kind of narrative arc, was more important. The first big retelling of Musashi's story in the modern age was a novelization of The Book of Five Rings in 1935 by Eiji Yoshikawa. In fact, this novel ended up being the basis for most of the movie and manga adaptations that came later,

even though Yoshikawa added a lot of his own fictional elements to Musashi's story. And it's a very compelling story, and that's why it's been repeated so many times. But it's not innocent, especially in terms of its times. The fact that it was written only a few years before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. So the story's relationship to Japan of the time is something you have to think about a bit. In fact, after World War II, some filmmakers used Musashi, or the version of Musashi that Yoshikawa created, as a way of satirizing Japanese imperialism. So there are some versions in the late 50s or into the 1960s

which are presenting Musashi as someone who was overly concerned with his fame and fortune, and some actually almost present him as someone bordering on insanity, someone who's almost consumed by the sword. But the straightforward version of Musashi's story still remained popular. In the 50s, the Yoshikawa novel was adapted into a trilogy of films, and Musashi was played by the legendary actor Toshiro Mifune. And in the 1961 film Yojimbo, which was directed by Akira Kurosawa, Mifune played a character called the Samurai with No Name, who was basically an exaggerated version of Musashi,

with his sort of messy hair loosely strung up in a bun. Mifune dressed in the tatty, ragged robes that Musashi is often said to have worn, even though that's probably not true in itself. Again, Darren Ashmore. And throughout generations, decades of similar figures, both in classic films such as the Samurai trilogy, right down to Pokemon, in which one of the characters is based on Musashi. It's always the same, that ragged appearance with the pristine, perfect blade

that otherwise sets off this Ronin figure as the master he really is. In the 1980s and 90s, there was a new focus on youth culture, and Musashi got reinvented as a teenage samurai, mastering his craft. But Aaron says even those stories have a lot of depth. It might not necessarily be a critique of, you know, that Zen fighter, but rather it kind of makes him much more human and focuses on, you know, his real problems of growing up and trying to learn how to live in a very violent world. Samurai movies are popular around the world, and many Hollywood filmmakers borrowed tropes from these stories, or they just outright

appropriated them, without realizing how many of these samurai stories were referencing a real person who lived hundreds of years ago. After the break, the Musashi character goes to a galaxy far, far away. Voila! I won't be getting carried away and staying out till 2. That's stop-loss orders on Kraken. An easy way to plan ahead. Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss.

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24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body deodorant now. Let's get back to the legacy of Miyamoto Musashi. So Stephanie, I know that after you read about

Musashi, you started thinking about like how often you've seen him or kind of like elements of him referenced in Hollywood movies. So like which ones were you thinking about? Well, the great example, the perfect example of that is Star Wars is based on, you know, is influenced by this Kurosawa film called The Hidden Fortress, which while it was not about Musashi itself, Kurosawa is heavily influenced by Musashi. The highlight of that, I think, is in Rogue One, there's a character

named Chirrut Imwe. When I read about the Book of the Void, I immediately thought of his character because the Book of the Void talks about, you know, concentration and clearing out your mind and concentrating only on, you know, becoming basically one with your blade. And I don't know if you remember Rogue One one but there's this scene where he's actually cheer at emway is he sits he's standing there and he's closing his mind and before he goes out into this melee of fighting he goes i am one with the force the force is with me i'm one with the force is with me i'm one with the force yeah also too when i when i heard about Musashi fighting with two swords,

I mean, I immediately thought of Ahsoka. Like in the Clone Wars series, she uses two lightsabers. One's longer than the other. I am one with the force and the forces with me. I am one with the force and the forces with me. And then when the character made her live-action debut in The Mandalorian, I was watching the behind-the-scenes footage, and Dave Filoni, who directed the episode,

was saying that the whole episode was supposed to be an homage to Kurosawa films and samurai films, and I don't even know if he knows who Musashi is. No, I mean, it was common, you know, in Musashi's time for samurais to have two swords on them, but to actually use them together was practically

unheard of. And that unique two sword fighting style has become basically the Musashi signature. Even if people don't know, it started with Musashi. I also thought of John Wick because, you know, John Wick's this kind of loner who is supposed to be this total badass, but he's trying to live a peaceful life. And, you know, you just swap out guns for swords and that's much, that's pretty much not as big of a stretch. As a matter of fact, in the third movie, he actually did fight with a sword. fight with this lord yeah but also reminds me of like fistful of dollars that you know the clint eastwood western were because his character is sort of like john wick and that he's this kind of ragged uh you know scruffy loner who's actually totally undefeatable and that movie was a direct homage to yojimbo the kurosawa movie i mean literally like shot for shot but the musashi

character from yojimbo was just turned into a gunfighter. And of course, a lot of elements from Westerns got transferred to science fiction, like the Mandalorian. Or in the HBO show Westworld, Musashi is actually an android character in Shogun World, which is a separate theme park within Westworld. Aaron Giroux says the Western and the samurai genre have a lot in common. The Western hero is a master of his weapon, like the samurai. And in the mid-20th century, the Western hero and the samurai hero were often used to stand in for the nation and its core values.

One reason, like, you know, the Western hero has to ride off into the sunset, stereotypically at the end of the film, is precisely because the Western hero was never meant to live in civilization. The Western hero is supposed to be in between civilization and wilderness, defending civilization but unable to live in civilization. defending civilization but unable to live in civilization. The samurai film doesn't work that way because there's no wilderness in Japanese mythology, at least within the samurai genre. But nonetheless, the samurai hero frequently is similarly within these conflicts,

standing in between often duty to feudal values, while also having a kind of personal sense of justice. Especially some of these more rebel depictions of the samurai really bring forward this conflict. Where does justice lie? In the critique, it's not within the class. It's not within the institution. It's in the individual samurai's personal sense of justice. In the same way that the Western hero has now become more of a cliché, Darren says the character of Musashi has become kind of a meme at this point, like an idea of a famous samurai the vast majority of elements of pop culture manga anime games literature that do feature musashi in the current era tend to do so either in a form of parody or in some sort of dislocated form so musashi is a robotGi-Oh. He's more popular now as a bit harder in Pokemon in Getter Robo, in Cowboy Bebop and Ninja Resurrection, Samurai Champloo, even as a manga daio, a girls' school manga. Darren is a little frustrated by how watered down Musashi has become. There are so few people in the scope of history who are as large as their myth.

And it is important in that regard to make sure that the facts that we have can be winnowed from the greater legends because of the fact that what they have done is worth knowing for itself. I wanted to talk with somebody who worked on a manga that was not a parody or a subversive take on Musashi. And that's how I got in touch with Chie Katsuwada, who illustrated the manga adaptation of The Book of Five Rings. At first, she felt intimidated to take this assignment, because there already was a popular manga series about Musashi called Vagabond, which is from the genre of teenage Musashi stories, where he's coming of age and learning his craft. Vagabond is really, really beautifully done. I looked at it, but

I actually in a way stopped it because I didn't want to be influenced by that wonderful book too much. Well, then how did you want to portray Musashi in your illustrations for the manga? I wanted him to be wild looking, sexy in a way, charismatic man with not many words. He was said to be, he's like 180 centimeters it's about six foot tall he was said to be extremely big I think if he's in Japan now he is still tall but thinking about he is in that time a lot of people thought he was a kind of giant, strong, charismatic being. It was said that he was able to control two swords. So already it's kind of, you know, sounds like fictional.

What was your favorite part about drawing him? Eyes, maybe. I didn't put too much facial expressions on him, because that's my interpretation of him. He didn't make a big smile or look too angry or lose temper kind of person. So maybe eyes, yeah. So what was the hardest part of drawing Musashi

or working on those books? This book is not only about philosophy, but it's about how you fight. So there are a lot of fighting scenes and then I need to learn all about position and then fighting styles and things like that. So I've done it, manga always summarizing it, but it's, they have a kind of reasonable amount

of fighting scene, but this one, there are a lot. And also this one is very particular. It's a fighting style is published by Musashi himself. So there's kind of, you know, unique thing. I mean, that's why, you there's kind of, you know, unique thing. I mean, that's why, you know, I said, you know, not a lot of people might notice, but as an artist, I wanted to make it as faithful, as real as possible

to what Musashi suggested. Sean Michael Wilson, who is Chie's writing partner on that manga, says the other thing they wanted to focus on was Musashi's philosophy and how it defined him. There's a famous scene in our Musashi book where he's with a Zen priest or Zen monk. There's a snake comes and they're practicing Zen

and the snake climbs over the Buddhist priest as if he's not there. And then it comes to Musashi, it looks at him and says, uh-uh, and wanders off a different way. And so the Zen priest to Musashi looked at him and said, well, you're not quite there yet, Musashi, because the snake could detect

the kind of violence within you. And also he kind of laughed about that. The fact that he laughed about that kind of shows a kind of depth of personality and maturity, which is admirable. So Stephanie, I have a question. I mean, Musashi seems to be a pretty straightforward guy. I mean, I guess we have to take him at his word. He didn't seem like he was exaggerating things.

But at the same time, I mean, how much of his legend do you you think is true and how much of it do you think is a tall tale um because it just seems too good to be true or does that even matter i i don't think it actually matters um yes we are there's questions about which elements of his his supposed life story are true and there's not a lot of documentation from that time period to say, yes, this is definitely what happened. But he's become bigger than even his own life, I think. And he's become such a blueprint that people follow, even if they don't know it, that I think at the end of the day, does it even matter if what is said is true? Because he's created, whether people know it or not, this rich legacy of Westerns, of samurai, of, you know, anime, all these different

things came from him. You know, if it wasn't for his legend, a lot of these stories wouldn't be told. So even if it was, the legend's not always true, who cares? We still got these great stories out of it. Yeah. Well, it's funny. You've come a long way from the point where you're watching the movie with Rick and being like, that's a good guy. Yeah. No, this was a really interesting journey for me. And like it opened my eyes. So now anytime I watch anything that remotely has any kind of either two sword fighting or that archetype character of the lone person who's been through some some things but you know he still perseveres and he's got this zen-like focus when he goes into fighting

I always think of Musashi now and that's I think that's great and so at the end of the day does it really matter if that was true? I think what's true is our desire to believe in a hero who can be undefeated and yet somehow manage to seem like an underdog. Someone that we can feel good about rooting for. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Aaron Giroux, Sean Michael Wilson, Chie Katsuwada, Will Reed, and Darren Ashmore. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted a Malinsky and Imagine Worlds pod. If you really

like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover imaginary worlds. The best way to support the podcast is to donate on Patreon. At at different levels you get either a free imaginary world sticker a mug a t-shirt or a link to a dropbox account which is the full length interviews of every guest in every episode and there's so many interesting things about musashi's life that we discussed that just couldn't fit into this episode you can learn more