Flex Mentallo

I have trained in the way of strategy since my youth, and at the age of thirteen I fought a duel for the first time. My opponent was called Arima Kihei, a sword adept of the Shinto ryū, and I defeated him. At the age of sixteen I defeated a powerful adept by the name of Akiyama, who came from Tajima Province. At the age of twenty-one I went up to Kyōtō and fought duels with several adepts of the sword from famous schools, but I never lost. Miyamoto Musashi, Go Rin No Sho There is no hard evidence to prove if Musashi was present or not for the battle. According to one account, the Musashi yuko gamei, "Musashi's achievements stood out from the crowd, and were known by the soldiers in all camps." Musashi is reticent on the matter, writing only that he had "participated in over six battles since my youth".

Musashi was an expert Japanese swordsman, martial arts philosophy writer and rōnin, widely acknowledged to be the greatest of all time. He became renowned through stories of his excellent and unique double-bladed swordsmanship and undefeated record in his 60 duels - almost twice as many as anyone else in recorded history. Many stories were told of his deeds including entirely mythic battles with giants and monsters.

The Battle of Sekigahara was a decisive battle on October 21, 1600 that preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. Legend has it that the rōnin Miyamoto Musashi was present at the battle on the losing side but escaped unharmed. Musashi would have been around 16 years of age at the time.

Of course, as one who has lived much of my life in India, becoming culturally assimilated in the process (to the extent that I feel more comfortable in my own skin, more relaxed, when there than in the West), Adam's story is of special interest to me.

Coming before the king, he viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderfully favourable. He made many signs unto me, some of which I understood, and some I did not. In the end, there came one that could speak Portuguese. By him, the king demanded of me of what land I was, and what moved us to come to his land, being so far off. I showed unto him the name of our country, and that our land had long sought out the East Indies, and desired friendship with all kings and potentates in way of merchandise, having in our land diverse commodities, which these lands had not… Then he asked whether our country had wars? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and Portugals, being in peace with all other nations. Further, he asked me, in what I did believe? I said, in God, that made heaven and earth. He asked me diverse other questions of things of religions, and many other things: As what way we came to the country. Having a chart of the whole world, I showed him, through the Strait of Magellan. At which he wondered, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till mid-night. Taking a liking to Adams, the shogun appointed him as a diplomatic and trade advisor, bestowing great privileges upon him. Ultimately, Adams became his personal advisor on all things related to Western powers and civilization. He was presented with two swords representing the authority of a Samurai. The Shogun decreed that William Adams the pilot was dead and that Miura Anjin, a samurai, was born. According to the shogun, this action "freed" Adams to serve the Shogunate permanently, effectively making Adams' wife in England a widow. Soon after Adams's arrival in Japan, he became a key advisor to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. Adams directed construction for the shogun of the first Western-style ships in the country. He died in Japan at age 55.

Adams met Ieyasu in Osaka three times between May and June 1600. He was questioned by Ieyasu, then a guardian of the young son of the Taikō Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler who had just died. Adams' knowledge of ships, shipbuilding and nautical smattering of mathematics appealed to Ieyasu.

The ship was seized and the sickly crew were imprisoned at Osaka Castle on orders by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the daimyō of Edo and future shogun. The nineteen bronze cannon of the Liefde were unloaded and, according to Spanish accounts, later used at the decisive Battle of Sekigahara on 21 October 1600. The battle is depicted here in an extraordinary five panel screen (though it does not show the cannon)

In fear of the Spaniards, the remaining crews determined to leave Ecuador and sail across the Pacific. It was late November 1599 when the two ships sailed westwardly for Japan. Later during the voyage, a typhoon claimed the Hoop with all hands, in late February 1600. In April 1600, after more than nineteen months at sea, a crew of twenty-three sick and dying men (out of the 100 who started the voyage) brought the Liefde to anchor off the island of Kyūshū, Japan. Its cargo consisted of eleven chests of trade goods: coarse woolen cloth, glass beads, mirrors, and spectacles; and metal tools and weapons: nails, iron, hammers, nineteen bronze cannon; 5,000 cannonballs; 500 muskets, 300 chain-shot, and three chests filled with coats of mail.

Attracted by the Dutch trade with India, Adams, then 34 years old, shipped as pilot major with a five-ship fleet dispatched from the isle of Texel to the Far East in 1598 by a company of Rotterdam merchants . The fleet's original mission was to sail for the west coast of South America, where they would sell their cargo for silver, and to head for Japan only if the first mission failed. In that case, they were supposed to obtain silver in Japan to buy spices in the Moluccas (the Spice Islands), before heading back to Europe. The vessels, ships ranging from 75 to 250 tons and crowded with men, were driven to the coast of Guinea, West Africa where the adventurers attacked the island of Annobón for supplies. They sailed on west for the Straits of Magellan. Scattered by stress of weather and after several disasters in the South Atlantic, only three ships of the five made it through the Magellan Straits. During the voyage, Adams changed ships to the Liefde (originally named Erasmus and adorned by a wooden carving of Erasmus on her stern).The Liefde waited for the other ships at Floreana Island off the Ecuadorean coast. However, only the Hoop had arrived by the spring of 1599. The captains of both vessels, together with Adams' brother Thomas and twenty other men, lost their lives in a violent encounter with natives. The Trouw later reached Tidore (Indonesia). The crew were killed by the Portuguese in January 1601.

…I am a Kentish man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester, one mile from Chatham, where the King's ships do lie: from the age of twelve years old, I was brought up in Limehouse near London, being Apprentice twelve years to Master Nicholas Diggins; and myself have served for Master and Pilot in her Majesty's ships; and about eleven or twelve years have served the Worshipfull Company of the Barbary Merchants, until the Indish traffic from Holland began, in which Indish traffic I was desirous to make a little experience of the small knowledge which God had given me. So, in the year of our Lord 1598, I was hired for Pilot Major of a fleet of five sails, which was made ready by the Dutch Indish Company…. William Adams (24 September 1564 – 16 May 1620), known in Japanese as Miura Anjin was an English navigator who, in 1600, was the first of his nation to reach Japan during a five-ship expedition for the Dutch East India Company.

I recall reading it avidly during my two years as an art student in India between 1980 and 1982, and along with the movies of Akira Kurosawa such as Seven Samurai, it helped to form an interest in Japanese, Chinese and Korean cultures that abides to this day. So it's my starting point today for a review of a few of those interests which I hope will entertain. Clavell stated that reading a sentence in his daughter's textbook that stated that "in 1600, an Englishman went to Japan and became a samurai" inspired the novel. Beginning in feudal Japan some months before the critical Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Shōgun gives an account of the rise of the daimyō "Toranaga" (based upon the actual Tokugawa Ieyasu). Toranaga's rise to the shogunate is seen through the eyes of the English sailor John Blackthorne, called Anjin ("Pilot") by the Japanese, whose fictional heroics are loosely based on the historical exploits of William Adams.

The book later became an epic miniseries starring Richard Chamberlain and the great Toshiro Mifune as the Shogun.

Shogun Published in 1975, James Clavell's exciting novel of feudal Japan became a major best-seller, by 1990 the book had sold 15 million copies worldwide.Shōgun had great impact on westerners' knowledge of, and interest in, Japanese history and culture. It's estimated that within five years of its publication, up to 50% of all students in American college-level courses about Japan had read the novel. The author of James Clavell: A Critical Companion calls the novel "one of the most effective depictions of cross-cultural encounters ever written", and "Clavell's finest effort"

Thanks for the kind wishes, guys. Wishing the same to you and all our fellow boardies! Merry Christmas!

My pleasure - more books tomorrow!

But it is the West that so defines and hails such beauty and contribution (or such misery, somehow as if subject peoples cannot be aware of it, living, as they do, outside the West's time and space and consciousness. They are necessary fodder in some distinct way, for Western functionalist consumption. Indeed, such judgements are often of phenomenon not appropriately considered 'beautiful' or 'impoverished' in indigenous tradition, but as part of a belief system grossly violated by the severance of its attributes for Western appreciation. It is as if we (the West) are to be admired and lauded for having appreciated them, or for having felt sorry for them or for empathizing with them, or for having rescued them, almost an anxiety if they are not ordered or preserved on our terms. We will not leave them alone, not take their own positions at face value-their histories become myth, their totalities severed for our reductions. In short, their subjecthood is reinforced, reproduced; their abjection is assumed natural, timeless, and outside discourse. Their agency is denied, their views of photography and its dangers or potential threat disbelieved. James C. Faris

And lastly, no book unfortunately, but this is Joey Lawrence, who tries to bring the people he photographs into the contemporary world without loss or transgression of cultural identity.

And so you see them differently.

It is ironic that his beautiful photographs had to wait until this year to be republished after their rediscovery.