Miyamoto Musashi's The Book of Five Rings: A modern-day interpretation of a strategy classic

by Leo Gough

Overview

Written circa 1645, "The Book of Five Rings" is considered a classic treaty on military strategy, much like Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". The author was a samurai warrior called Miyamoto Musashi and he wrote the text on his expert teachings of kenjutsu (the art of the sword) and the martial arts in general. Here, Musashi's text is interpreted for the modern day world and offers 52 simple - yet powerful - and proven techniques to help deal with conflict and can be applied to business, career and home life. Leo Gough's interpretation of Musashi's work illustrates the timeless nature of his insights by bringing them to life through modern case studies. This brilliant interpretation of "The Book of Five Rings" is an entertaining accompaniment to one of the most famous books on military strategy ever written.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781907755873
Publisher:	Infinite Ideas Ltd
Publication date:	01/31/2010
Series:	Infinite Success
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	120
File size:	835 KB

About the Author

Leo Gough is an experienced investment writer’ a financial journalist and a dedicated private investor. He is the author of several books, including: The Financial Times Guide to Business Numeracy, How the Stock Market Really Works, Going Offshore and Asia Meltdown. He is also the UK editor of Taipan, a newsletter on direct equity investment in emerging markets.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Go to the capital 2. Be honest with yourself 3. Keep on learning 4. Broaden your knowledge 5. Don’t waste time 6. Be well organised but adaptable 7. When to change tactics 8. Choosing your position within the venue 9. Become the enemy 10. When you can’t see the wood for the trees 11. Timing 12. Influencing moods 13. Set the agenda 14. Using the gaze 15. Research your opponent’s situation 16. Be calm and alert 17. Don’t ignore the details 18. Don’t have a favourite way of doing things 19. Success isn’t always deserved 20. Using your intuition 21. Act when the time is right 22. Unbalance your opponent 23. Speed is not always a virtue 24. Get out of deadlock immediately 25. Recognising collapse 26. Timing in the void 27. There’s nothing new under the sun 28. Make them show their hand 29. We few, we happy few 30. Know the times 31. Why are you in business? 32. Be a better manager 33. Selecting the right people 34. Seeing through deception 35. Timing the market 36. The trouble with short-termism 37. Notice small changes 38. Attacking by overwhelming 39. Let yourself flow 40. Doing the unexpected 41. Becoming a fact of life 42. Remember your aims and objectives 43. Don’t have tunnel vision 44. Wealth conquers all? 45. Coping with the suboptimal 46. Playing dumb 47. On having no teacher 48. When to confront 49. Coping with difference 50. Visualisation 51. David and goliath 52. Master the essence Index

Preface

Alone in a cave one dark night in 1643, Miyamoto Musashi, an ageing, ill Japanese samurai sat down to write a distil- lation of what he had learned from a lifetime of intense combat. Within a few weeks he was dead, probably from cancer. Musashi is one of Japan’s heroes, a ‘Sword Saint’ who is regarded as the epitome of a successful warrior, one who has mastered his body, mind and spirit. His work, e Book of Five Rings, is widely read today, espe- cially by successful business people, both in Japan and the West. But how can the ideas of a medieval samurai have any relevance to the challenges we face today in the modern world? Surprisingly perhaps, Musashi has much to teach us. As a master of conflict, his intention was to pass on the essence of how to defeat opponents that is, as he emphasised, applicable in any walk of life. Conflict isn’t the whole of life, but it is an important part of it. If you always run away from confrontation or try to insulate your life against opposition, you are unlikely to achieve very much. Whatever and who- ever you are, there will be times when you will have to fight and win. Musashi, a supreme duellist, can show you how. Today, most of us won’t have to encounter as much physical violence as the medieval samurai did. Some might say this in an improvement. Nevertheless, all of us are engaged in a constant struggle for life, and in many if not most of our encounters with others, we must negotiate. Ne- gotiation is, in many ways, the modern equivalent of samurai combat. Even friendly negotiation – and most negotiation is reasonably friendly – requires a similar approach to combat. You need to know what you want and you need to be able to get it. Of course, the most productive negotiations do not require one side to destroy the other – if you want to have a productive ongoing relationship, it is generally best to create win– win situations. But you still have to use a warrior-like approach to reach a good settlement. Negotiation is not done only in business; everyone, whatever they do, has to negotiate, not only over money and benefits, but also over almost any arrangement involving another person. In this, Musashi has much to teach us. Western interest in Musashi increased considerably in the 1970s and 1980s, when Japanese business seemed to be taking over the world. American executives, discovering that their Japanese counterparts read Musashi regularly, were eager to discover his secrets. e approach is so very different to what we are used to that it is difficult, at first, to take it seriously. As you study Musashi more deeply, however, you come to see that he believed, correctly, that his approach was universal, and could be applied to any human activity. Musashi fought his first duel at the age of 13, and had won 60 fights by the time he was 29. His philosophy, though, is not intended for the single-minded, murderous loner, or for the fans of martial arts heroes like Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme. He was also a superb painter, weapon smith and sculptor, and many of his works still survive. He believed that it was glorious to excel, and that anyone could learn how. His teaching is a practical, unglamorous, realistic approach to how real people can defeat the opponents they face in their careers, their business and their personal lives. Read it and reap!