Why is The Book of Five Rings is an essential read?

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Originally published at: Why is The Book of Five Rings is an essential read? | Boing Boing

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@dnealy Your title has an extra “is” in there.

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Oops.

Typo. I fix.

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It’s an example of how to use grammar in a manner in which your foe will underestimate you.

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Well, it is a good read, food for thought, and hall-of-fame-grade literature.
Just don’t read it as a self-help book that will fix all your problems; life doesn’t work like that.

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Yeah, in the 1980s you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a yuppie reading that book and claiming it was the reason Japan was going to dominate the future.

Me, I recall reading a borrowed copy when I was in the Army out of boredom. Much more interesting was a novel based on Musashi’s life, but it was so long ago I don’t remember the title nor the author.

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Possibly Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa?

Edit: mispeling

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Yeah, that’s the one. An author who tried to make Japan great again, and killed himself when his coup attempt failed. I found the tale would have been a good template for Star Wars, with Luke Skywalker as the wild youth who learned to master himself and thus beat Vader who was stuck chasing raw power. But Lucas and Kasdan went a different route that we all now know.

Actually, the timeline is muddled, because I didn’t read the book until 1987, after the Five Rings hype had died down and years after Return of the Jedi.

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