Читать книгу Traditions. Essays on the Japanese Martial Arts and Ways онлайн

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“Click . . . Click, click.” Between the pincers of his chopsticks three flies were crushed with a speed that did not seem real.

A long stillness filled the air of the nomiya. Finally, there were three more clicks. It was the sound of the ronin carefully snapping their swords back into their scabbards. They finished their own meals with the politest of silences. The swordsman, the son of a Harima Province constable and known as Miyamoto Musashi, continued to slurp his cold noodles.

The famous story of Musashi and the three ronin is, disappointingly, more a legend than anything like a documented event. Like many of the other stories of his life, it may not ever have happened. But if it did, it is a good example of what martial artists have always respected as one of the aims of the budo. What Musashi understood in the threat of the ronin at the nomiya was the distinction between two kinds of attacks that martial artists (as well as the rest of the population, for that matter) should always be aware of. This distinction might be more aptly demonstrated in a contemporary setting.