What a can of worms!
Mr. Yamantaka, just for the record, you are absolutely right, everybody is subject to mistakes and such, lawyers sometimes even more than other, more technical professions!
In any case, I didn't mean to say that I WILL HAVE learned to swim soon enough; I'm well aware that taking up any Art, Koryu or Gendai is a lifetime's study. What I meant to say is that will START (begin) learning kenjutsu in a few weeks (when our teacher starts up his classes again).
This is my reason behind my interest in Musashi; in that same sense I've also become interested in Yagyu Munenori and Muso Gonnosuke. It's just that these historical characters are less "difficult" than Musashi.
As for my reading on the subject, like I said, I have only been able to gather enough on Musashi for a first impression. I live in Costa Rica, thus direct research material is hard to come by. Undfortunately, the University of Costa Rica has no Japanese Culture Studies section to speak of, nor are there any schools of Hyoho Niten Ichi Ryu to go to, nor are there any Kendo clubs; and as I don't speak japanese I have to rely on qualified western experts. Obviously I consulted my teacher, as well as some old martial arts encylopedias that we have at the dojo (I didn't write the author's name down, sorry; I'll post them later). I also read the Thomas Cleary version of Go Rin No Sho, as well as the Hagakure, Ratti and Westbrooks Secrets of the Samurai and Turnbull's Samurai Sourcebook for background info.
For the Web search, I used the usual suspects- Yahoo, Lycos, Hotbot and Altavista, using "Miyamoto Musashi" ("Biography of" as well), "Ni Ten Ichi Ryu" ("Niten Ichi Ryu"), "Go Rin No Sho", "Book of Five Rings" as describers. I eliminated from my list the strictly commercial sites, as well as those that were just patently wrong, and I filtered the dojos, as those really don't have much information generally. Interestingly, a good site on Musashi can be found through the Usagi Yojimbo site (Miyamoto Usagi)! I also used
www.koryubooks.com and
www.samurai-archives.com for background info.
Some of the better sites are:
www.geocities.com/Collosseum/1705/musashi.hmtl
www.samurai.com/5rings/transintro
www.geocities.com/georgemccall/fhead.html
www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/8187/niten.htm
www.leader-values.com/leader%20values/lead7htm
And I recently found this other site, which is pretty good as it breaks down Musashi's life by years:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~musashi15...ios1/bios1.htm
As I searched, I found there are hundreds of pages that have Miyamoto Musashi in there somewhere, but not many with more in depth discussions of Musashi's life. In fact most are but a page or two, and always seem to repeat the same information, as if they're all getting it from the same source ...Oh well, as I said, just enough for a first impression.
Mr. Charlesl, you're also very much right, trollish behaviour isn't always the best way to get info, but I felt it best to get a "rise" out of some people and not the standard "party line" on Musashi; y'know the whole socratic dialectic thang, y'dig? But seriously, I felt it best to get the info I needed. I knew some people would be offended, but I hoped the more mature and knowledgeable would pay heed to my entreaty of non- offense, and rather point me in the right direction.
In fact, I regret that Mr. Hyakutake would take such personal offense at my approach, as it seems he has very direct access to resources that are quite valuable, and perhaps he could have shared them. I would rather he had pointed to me to his own web page, which is also very informative:
www.bunbun.ne.jp/~sword/Hyoho2.html
In any case, I feel (for me at least) that Musashi was very much an extremist in his pragmatism, but no less a man of and from his time (hence his artwork, which is indeed impressive and beautiful). Since the details of his life are very much sketchy, he has now become a "Robin Hood" figure through western comecialization (although I admit I am intrigued by the Malcolm X metaphor- what d'y'all think?). Like his writings, he is also now sufficiently ambiguous enough to have turned into a sort of historical Rohrshach test, where each one of us sees something different, like someone said earlier.
Speaking of historical, are there any web pages on the Niten- ki, which is, I understand, an account of his deeds, written by his students, after he died?