The biggest swordsman in Japan
What Miyamoto Musashi has to teach us about being content with ourselves
Active during the Tokugawa Era, Japan’s most renowned samurai and swordsman fought over sixty duels in his lifetime and never lost a single bout. He was so skilled that he won his last duel with a wooden sword he had whittled out of an oar. He went on to found his own school of swordsmanship that employed a two-sword style unheard of in Japan. The very embodiment of the warrior poet, he became a man of the brush as well as the sword. In addition to sculpting and painting, the sword saint produced two essential books on the way of the warrior: a text on swordsmanship and strategy, The Book of Five Rings, and 21 tenets to living the solitary life of a warrior, The Dokkodo (Way of Walking Alone). He was the peerless Miyamoto Musashi.
What was the key to his success? It’s a debate that continues to this day.
Some claim it was his unorthodox style of swordsmanship. Others think it was his willingness to think outside the rigid box of traditional combat and adopt two swords. Others still are convinced that it was his disciplined lifestyle and unrelenting devotion to mastery over his chosen vocation.
Then there are those who believe that Musashi was a fraud. Critics claim he exaggerated his wins and covered up his losses, that he cheated and ambushed other duellists. After all, how could a samurai from a relatively minor prefecture hope to compete against the esteemed families who had passed on time-honored secret techniques for generations? If he was as great as later writers claimed, then why had he never secured a permanent position? Why didn’t he persist as an instructor to the lords the way his contemporaries did? These critics will tell you that he must have been found out and asked to resign so as to spare all parties involved from disgrace, Musashi could avoid being publicly shamed while his lord could avoid the reputation of having been duped.
The passion with which this debate has raged throughout history has been partially captured in Eiji Yoshikawa’s classic novel, Musashi. While the author paints a vivid and moving picture of an ascetic, nearly mystic swordsman and his world of friends and enemies living in early Edo Period Japan, Yoshikawa ultimately does not address the one clear contributor to Musashi’s fighting prowess:
He was a giant.
Miyamoto Musashi stood 5’10” tall in an era when the average Japanese man was between 4’11’’ to 5’3’’.
In a time before weight classes, that meant he was over half a foot taller than the average opponent. To give you an idea of what that’s like, Mike Tyson, former heavyweight champion of the world, is Musashi’s height, while the late artist, Prince, is 5’2” (I was unable to find any recognizable male celebrities at 4’11”).
You might think that’s not such a big deal since they were fighting with swords and spears. Quite the opposite. A modern heavyweight prizefighter of Musashi’s height and frame such as Mike Tyson would fight at over 210 pounds, while the 5’3” MMA fighter Demetrius Johnson is a flyweight weighing only 135 pounds. Despite what you see in the movies, a 135-pound man is going to have a much harder time reaching—let alone cutting through—a 210-pound man than the other way around.
A 5’10” frame can also wield a much longer and heavier sword than 5’3” can. When it comes to less orthodox weapons, 75 extra pounds is also more likely to knock a spear out of the smaller man’s control, or win a tug of war involving chained weapons, or just plain grapple smaller men to the ground if they manage to close the distance. Perhaps that’s why Musashi turned up to his last duel with a wooden sword the length of an oar. He knew that size and strength mattered way more than sharpness and proceeded to prove it by splitting the skull of his opponent with one blow.
Musashi’s size might also explain why more swordsmen didn’t adopt his two-sword style. Since many samurai began their training as early as 3 years old, those who did develop physiques capable of wielding two swords at once were likely too accustomed to fighting with a single sword to switch. Meanwhile, Musashi was physically developed enough to kill an adult opponent at 13. One can only imagine the kind of strength he had developed from that point onwards.
Couple his formidable size with a dueling system that didn’t account for things like weight classes, weapon choices, or even timing (Musashi was notorious for showing up hours late to his bouts in order to gain a psychological edge), and you can see how someone like the massive Musashi could exploit it to turn his physical advantages into a legend bordering on the supernatural. Indeed, Musashi is worshipped in parts of Japan as a Kensei, or sword saint.
This is not to detract from Musashi’s abilities as a fighter or warrior. I don’t believe the more vitriolic haters who claim that he had no skill. His books are clearly the works of a strategic mind that has meditated deeply on how to emerge victorious from life and death struggles and tested those theories in the field. To maintain that he was purely a charlatan belittles the martial arts. But it can’t be denied that as much as we like to drill into the minds of white belts that technique and intelligence beat size and strength, there really isn’t an answer for someone who has all of the above.
So what should those of us who aren’t blessed with the natural gifts that matter most in our chosen pursuits do? Rather than be disheartened by the truth of Musashi’s success, I believe it should give us hope.
Musashi shared the same dream that countless young swordsmen of his time had: to become the best. Unlike the vast majority of them, he had the size and smarts to actually achieve them. But even after he established himself as a peerless warrior, he still had to play the political game to secure positive recommendations and career advancement. Here, Musashi’s gruff manners and long years of solitary training may have cost him. He simply wasn’t as polished or well-spoken as his fellow samurai.
You can take this as proof that there will always be someone better than you, because nobody can be the best at everything. But what is even more inspiring for me is the fact that Musashi didn’t allow this to affect him. He chose a solitary path and stuck to it. Once he had gotten far enough in the way of the sword, he attacked art, calligraphy, and Buddhism with similar gusto.
Doing things for one’s own development was so important to Musashi that he made precept 7 of his Dokkodo, “Never be jealous.” Perhaps this is because Musashi understood how much his own legend was due to factors totally outside his control. Being a life-and-death warrior, he was a believer in not wasting effort. And he understood that jealousy was the ultimate waste of time obsessing over things we can never know:
You don’t know what natural talents or advantages someone else had to put them further along the path than you are, nor do you know what they had to give up or sacrifice to get there. What matters is where you are going, and when you’re ready, what example you will set for those you leave behind.
Good analysis. This issue of size is seldom noted. If you look at some of the photos of old Taiji fighters, they were also larger than the people around them. A visit to the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, VA will confirm this too. The uniforms on display show that the great American warriors were astonishingly tiny. Any of us would win in a fight with them just because of our sheer size differences. All that being said, Musashi certainly lived the idea of poet, author, painter, warrior, and philosopher. Whatever the musings of scholars obsessed with the "real" story (and why can't the received story be real?), he still is an exemplar for the rest of us.
Every single article you've published is thoughtful and beautifully written. Keep up the great work!