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The Book of Five Rings
by: Musashi Miyamoto

List Price: £13.99

Off The Bookshelf's Price: £10.49

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Used Price: £9.10
Third Party New Price: £6.68

Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 181
EAN: 9784770028013
ISBN: 4770028016
Label: Kodansha Europe
Manufacturer: Kodansha Europe
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 160
Publication Date: April 01, 2002
Publisher: Kodansha Europe
Studio: Kodansha Europe
Sales Rank: 101069

Related Items:

The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi

The Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master

The Life-Giving Sword: Secret Teachings from the House of Shogun

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Old Wisdom with New Lessons
The Book of Five Rings (Go Rin No Sho) "IS" a great book, if you take time to properly absorb and understand ALL of its teachings. It's not a very long book and so would be easy to read a few times over so that you get a proper flavour of the important message being presented.

A better and easier to digest version (IMHO) of this small book is "Samurai Strategies: 42 Martial Secrets" by by Boye De Lafayette Mente, who very cleverly summarises this book into 42 easy to digest and understand and apply chapters.

The ideas in this book are NOT dangerous to anyone in the least, IF you balance and apply ALL of the lessons within it - that's the idea that the great undefeated warrior Musashi was trying to put across. The life ... Read More:

Rating:

- Investigate Before Buying
This book is interesting and insightful, even enlightening perhaps.
But it is important to know what you are getting before paying for it.
It is not really a book for beginners (I consider myself a beginner in the Martial arts). It contains no pictures besides Musashi's beautiful rendition of a bird on a bamboo cane (he was a superb artist as well as Samurai). The instructions in here will, I believe, take years of interpreting. I think they're cheifly useful after you have learnt a Martial Art (in my case a Kung Fu pattern) and wish to deviate from/develop your fighting skills.
Musashi's two sword style is appropriate not just for Sword work, but also hand-to-hand combat, simply because (exceptions aside) we all have two arms/hands. ... Read More:

Rating:

- dont listen to the guy who gave it a low score
this book is not about technique, it is his opinions on how the go beond the technique,, its about THE WAY in martial arts (but not just martial arts), its about how to gain the phycological and physical edge USING YOUR OWN TALENT AND EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!!, its about developing as a person, its about the phycological edge you should gain in any confontation, he tells you WHAT instruments you use (eyes, posture ect) to gain the these edges on your apponent,, but not HOW to use them because HIS ideas will not apply to everyone as everyone does a diffent art and even people from the same art fight diffently and are all of on a different path, he stresses everyone should learn their own way. this book gives musashi's opinions on other martial arts and how techniques ... Read More:

Rating:

- Why did he bother to write this ?
Useless, completely impractical book that serves absolutely no purpose. A waste of your time to read. Of no interest to those in martial arts, as it shows no techniques. It simply focusses on some ... well lets just say some curious philosophy.

Rating:

- An Awseome Insight
This is a fantastic book. You are recieving a lesson in "the way" from a man who has spent his entire life trying to follow and discover the way. He is not just talking about these things in an abstract mannor he has lived through countless battles and proven his beliefs time and time again. Read this book, then read it again and carry on reading it and taking something new from it each time. The lessons which can be learned are endless.
Listen to the words of a truly great swordsman offering his final lessons to his students for after he is gone.

Books : The Book of Five Rings