War chronicles
Sengoku
Campaigns, commanders, and ordinary soldiers through the Shinchō Kōki, Kōyō Gunkan, Zōhyō Monogatari, and records associated with Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Enter Sengoku →Read the record, then read the history
Beyond the legend lies the text.
A source-led guide to Japan’s warring states, ninjutsu, and sword traditions—built around short passages from surviving works and the context needed to understand them.
Three reading rooms
Start with a tradition
Each category is a shelf of primary-source series. New works can be added without changing the way the site is organized.
Manuals of secrecy
Ninjutsu
What the early-modern manuals actually teach: judgment, intelligence, infiltration, restraint, tools, and the moral problem of secret methods.
Enter Ninjutsu →Strategy and the sword
Swordsmanship
Close readings from Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings and Yagyū Munenori’s Heihō Kadensho.
Enter Swordsmanship →New readings
Latest articles
The translator
Complete works, read with restraint
Shiki Tsushima translates and edits classical Japanese texts for modern readers. The books offer complete translations; this site takes a different form. It selects small passages, creates new translations specifically for the web, and asks what each passage can—and cannot—support.