Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

An accessible, thorough English translation of the eighteenth-century Japanese text that delves into the samurai mind

Living and dying with bravery and honor is at the heart of Hagakure, a series of texts written by an eighteenth-century samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo. It is a window into the samurai mind, illuminating the concept of bushido--the Way of the Warrior--which dictated how samurai were expected to behave, conduct themselves, live, and die. While Hagakure was for many years a secret text known only to the warrior vassals of the Nabeshima clan to which the author belonged, it later came to be recognized as a classic exposition of samurai thought.

The original Hagakure consists of over 1,300 short texts that Tsunetomo dictated to a younger samurai over a seven-year period. William Scott Wilson has selected and translated here three hundred of the most representative of those texts to create an accessible distillation of this guide for samurai. No other translator has so thoroughly and eruditely rendered this text into English.

For this edition, Wilson has added a new introduction that casts Hagakure in a different light than ever before. Tsunetomo refers to bushido as the Way of death, a description that has held a morbid fascination for readers over the years. But in Tsunetomo's time, bushido was a nuanced concept that related heavily to the Zen concept of muga, the death of the ego. Wilson's revised introduction gives the historical and philosophical background for that more metaphorical reading of Hagakure, and through this lens, the classic takes on a fresh and nuanced appeal.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781590309858
ISBN 10	1590309855
Title	Hagakure
Author	Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Condition	Unavailable
Binding type	Hardback
Publisher	Shambhala Publications Inc
Year published	2012-05-15
Number of pages	200
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable