Military Classics

In English, the Art of War usually stands alone. In East Asia it rarely did. For most of the last millennium it was read as one book among seven.

Under Emperor Shenzong of the Northern Song, the court fixed a syllabus for military study: the Liu Tao, San Lüe, Sima Fa, Sunzi, Wuzi, Wei Liaozi, and the Questions and Replies between Tang Taizong and Li Weigong. These are the Seven Military Classics. Works of very different date and character were bound together into a single curriculum.

They are not variations on one theme. The Sunzi is a compressed set of principles. The Liu Tao is a long dialogue ranging from statecraft to river crossings and night marches. The Sima Fa treats war as an extension of ritual order. The Wei Liaozi descends into military law and camp regulations. The Questions and Replies is a critical discussion of the earlier military books themselves.

Reception in Japan

The seven were part of samurai education. Printings were undertaken at Fushimi at the direction of Tokugawa Ieyasu in the Keichō era, and Japanese woodblock editions appeared repeatedly through the Edo period. Hayashi Razan, Yamaga Sokō, and others produced commentaries and lectures.

Japanese reading of the seven was not simply an echo of Chinese practice. Which work a school emphasized, and which sentences were quoted, differed. Those differences become visible only in the original wording.

Passages, not summaries

These are heavily quoted books. “Know the enemy and know yourself.” “The tiger scroll.” The better known a phrase is, the more likely its position in the source has been forgotten.

This category does not begin from summaries. Each article takes a short passage, translates it afresh, and asks what the passage does and does not support. The original text and the translation are kept separate.

What the canon leaves out

The seven are not the whole of East Asian military writing. The Tōsenkyō, composed in Japan, sits outside the list entirely. The canon itself was a Song-dynasty decision, and worth treating as one.