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Onikusari
4th June 2000, 20:17
Has anyone read "Zen And The Way of The Sword Arming the Samurai Psyche" by Winston L. King? Is it worth the time to read it?

Rob K.


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"In truth, lies. In lies, truth."

Rennis
5th June 2000, 05:57
I've read this book and I don't really recommend it outside of as an example on how the Zen and the martial arts bit can get carried too far. As history, it is pretty well known at this point that Zen wasn't the huge influence on swordsmanship, warriors, etc, that people had once made it out to be. Zen was only a big deal among the really high ranking members of the warrior class and that probably had more to do with the fact that Zen monks were the guys with the contacts in China and could get all the cool Chinese stuff that was so popular among the elite. Zen was part of a package deal of Chinese culture as dealt through Zen monks and its actual religious influence wasn't all that great. The warrior class needed something to supply them with a means of status, while still separating themselves from the court culture which they probably both didn't want completely and wouldn't be allowed to totally fit into anyways. What the Zen monks had to offer filled the warriors needs to a great extant, but it wasn't all that widely spread, nor was it of a huge religious value to the average warrior (note all the Buddhist stuff still floating around in the older ryuha. Very little Zen there). However the author somehow seemes to have ignored all that when researching this book.

I believe it was Karl Friday who pointed out that in this entire book, there is not one single Japanese source used. Everything is from works in English (even including one of Dale Kirby's books) or translations and the author seems to be VERY influenced by D.T. Suzuki's works on Zen. Looked at from this view, I can see how the author came up with what he did, but his conclusions (from what I remember, I read this book maybe 4 years ago so I may be a bit foggy here) seem basically to be saying that Zen was THE major influence on the Japanese warrior up through and including WWII. He backs this up very well with the narrow range of resources he used, but that range is just too narrow, especially when he talks about swordsmanship and the like. Basically this book reminds me more of the views of Zen and the martial arts that are seen in Black Belt magazine (although obviously of a much higher level) than those I have seen from both practitioners of the martial arts here in Japan and from Japanese historians.

For what its worth,
Rennis Buchner

[This message has been edited by Rennis (edited 06-04-2000).]