Translated and edited by Shiki Tsushima
Complete English translations and source collections for readers who want to continue beyond the short passages discussed on this site.
The phrase is used in a specific sense.
Abridgements have their uses. But when a passage is lifted out on its own, what came before it and after it disappears. “Wind, forest, fire, mountain” is famous as four words; in the original it is four comparative clauses on a flag. A complete translation exists so that the surroundings survive.
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War chronicles
A battle record, a house chronicle, and the talk of foot soldiers — the same period written from very different positions. The Sengoku articles read single passages from these works.
Ōta Gyūichi’s record of Oda Nobunaga’s life, translated in full from the preface scroll through Book 15. Okehazama, Nagashino, and Honnō-ji are all here — but so are hundreds of entries on stipends, castle works, and road building. It is a life of Nobunaga and an administrative record at the same time.
View on AmazonThe chronicle of the Takeda house under Shingen and Katsuyori, translated across all fifty-nine chapters with commentary. Battles are only part of it: there are also duties of a commander, assessments of retainers, military law, and castle construction. The “wind, forest, fire, mountain” banner and the “people are the castle” verse both sit inside this book.
View on AmazonTwo scrolls in which foot soldiers and camp servants speak about their own duties. The spearman, the gunner, the groom, the porter — each gives advice in plain speech. Hunger, load-tying, and how to retreat all appear. The view from here is nothing like the view from a commander’s chronicle.
View on AmazonKawasumi Taikōki, Tenshō-ki, and Taikō-sama Gunki no Uchi in one volume, with commentary. Few figures have been overwritten by later storytelling as thoroughly as Hideyoshi. Reading three near-contemporary sources side by side makes it easier to see where the old material ends and the additions begin.
View on AmazonManuals of secrecy
These are not catalogues of tricks. Who may use a technique, and for what, comes first — the tools come later. The ninjutsu articles read them in that order.
The largest of the three great ninjutsu manuals, translated in full. The National Archives of Japan records it as the work of Fujibayashi Yasutake in twenty-two volumes plus one military-secret volume. The sequence runs from the right heart, to what a commander must know, to open and hidden methods, to weather and timing, and only then to implements. The diagrams come late.
View on AmazonTwo of the three manuals, translated with supplementary notes. The Shōninki survives in three scrolls under the name of Natori Masazumi and contains the seven disguises and the six established implements. The Ninpiden is a four-scroll manuscript, heavier on things done with the hands — how to lash a ladder, for instance. Both are shorter than the Bansenshūkai, and correspondingly more concrete.
View on AmazonAll three manuals translated and gathered into a single volume, with notes. Read together, the differences show. What one manual explains at length, another disposes of in a line — and the reverse. Reading only one of them, it is easy to mistake that manual’s emphasis for ninjutsu as a whole.
View on AmazonSeiko Fujita, called the last ninja, on Kōga-ryū ninjutsu and modern espionage, with commentary that refers back to the older manuals. Because this material is modern, it works differently from an Edo-period manuscript. Which parts are inherited tradition and which belong to his own century has to be kept separate as you read.
View on AmazonStrategy and the sword
Sword texts are quoted as self-help, but in the originals the famous phrases sit inside technical explanation. The swordsmanship articles put them back in that position.
Miyamoto Musashi’s Gorin no Sho, translated with commentary and notes. Five scrolls: Earth sets out the scope of the way, Water covers stance and cutting, Fire treats the phases of a fight, Wind assesses other schools, and a short Void scroll closes the work. “Observing eye strong, seeing eye weak” and “the void” both belong to that sequence. Reading the famous lines first is the surest way to misread them.
View on AmazonYagyū Munenori on the swordsmanship of the Yagyū Shinkage school, translated with commentary. The upper scroll is named “the killing sword,” the lower “the life-giving sword,” and a scroll on “no sword” closes the work. Why a sword that kills should be called a sword that gives life is not explained until the final page. Quote the titles as slogans and that paradox is lost.
View on AmazonThe canon of seven
Seven works fixed as the military curriculum by the Northern Song court. The military classics articles read them one passage at a time.
All seven works in one volume: the Liu Tao, San Lüe, Sima Fa, Sunzi, Wuzi, Wei Liaozi, and the Questions and Replies between Tang Taizong and Li Weigong. The Sunzi is usually read alone in English; here it appears where it was actually read for a thousand years, beside six books of very different character—dialogue, ritual, military law, and criticism of the military books themselves.
View on AmazonEvery work listed here is also read on this site, one passage at a time. Each article gives the original text, a translation written fresh for that article, notes on individual terms, and a closing section on what the passage does not establish. The books follow the same principles.
If you want to see whether the translation reads well to you, start with the articles: Sengoku, Ninjutsu, Swordsmanship, or Military Classics.
Most of these works are also published in Japanese. See the Japanese book list.