A fascinating glimpse of a central figure in traditional Japanese culture.
From the translator of his famed treatise on swordsmanship, The Book of Five Rings, the first English-language biography of a legendary Japanese fighter, teacher, artist, and author.
Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) first attracted notice at age 13, when he required only a staff to defeat a wandering swordsman whose arrogance offended him. His reputation grew as he vanquished a number of famous samurai, wielding a wooden sword against his opponents’ steel. Wilson describes several of these duels, emphasizing Musashi’s use of ploys—such as arriving late at the field of combat in ragged clothing. All in all, Musashi fought 60 formal duels and served in six military campaigns. Around the age of 30, he apparently decided that he no longer needed to kill his rivals to establish his mastery; in later matches he often led his opponent around the arena until it became clear that no attack could touch him. Solicited to join the courts of several powerful rulers, Musashi insisted on remaining unattached. He would stay at a sponsor’s home as a guest, offering advice but rejecting formal allegiance. At the same time, he developed his skill as an artist in the difficult suibokuga style, which offers no chance to modify or correct brushstrokes. The author includes several drawings he signed with the name Niten, most showing figures from Zen mythology, often with birds; they are considered masterpieces of suibokuga. Wilson, a veteran translator and a longtime student of Japanese language and literature, shows clearly the influence of Zen on Musashi’s thinking, art, and writing. Appendices document Musashi's role as a Robin Hood–like folk hero in Japanese literature and film. Excellent notes and glossary provide context for the swordsman’s life.
A fascinating glimpse of a central figure in traditional Japanese culture.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 4-7700-2942-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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