Reading the Book of Five Rings · 11
Why Does Musashi Separate Striking from Hitting?
In the Water Scroll, a blade may reach an opponent with great force and still fail to count as a true strike. Musashi separates accidental or hurried contact from an action formed with intention.
A fresh translation of today’s passage
Striking and hitting.
Striking and hitting are two different things. The mind of striking is to form the intention in advance and strike decisively, whatever kind of strike it may be.
Hitting has the sense of simply running into something. Even if the contact is so powerful that the opponent dies at once, it is still hitting.
Striking is striking with understanding. This must be examined.
Original text
一、打と當るといふ事。
打といふ事、あたるといふ事、二つ也。打つといふ心は何れの打にも思ひ設けて慥に打也。
あたるは行きあたる程の心にて強くあたり、忽ち敵の死ぬる程にても、是はあたる也。
打つといふは心得て打つといふ所也。吟味すべし。
Three terms carry the distinction
- Striking (utsu, 打つ)
An action whose intention has been formed before the blade is delivered. - Hitting (ataru, 當る)
Reaching or colliding with something. Musashi allows that such contact may be extremely forceful. - With understanding (kokoroete, 心得て)
Knowing what one is doing. The word turns the discussion from impact to comprehension. - Form in advance (omoi-mōkete, 思ひ設けて)
To prepare or establish the intention beforehand. It does not necessarily mean a long pause or a rigid plan. - Examine (ginmi, 吟味)
To investigate carefully through practice and reflection. The passage ends with work for the learner, not a complete recipe.
A fatal result is not enough
The most arresting sentence grants the greatest imaginable result to hitting. Contact may be so strong that the opponent dies immediately. Musashi still refuses to rename it a strike.
Outcome therefore cannot be his only test. If success alone settled the vocabulary, fatal contact would be the clearest strike. By keeping it under “hitting,” he directs attention to how the action was made.
This is not a denial that effects matter in combat. A missed deliberate strike is not magically superior to useful contact. The paragraph makes a narrower point: damage does not reveal the whole quality of an action.
The difference begins before contact
Musashi places “forming the intention” on the side of striking. The decisive difference occurs before the weapon reaches its object. A strike has been taken up as an action; a hit may be no more than arrival.
“In advance” should not be confused with prolonged calculation. Elsewhere in the Water Scroll, Musashi repeatedly values freedom from stiffness and delay. The phrase can describe a mind already committed to what it is doing, even when the movement is fast.
Nor does the wording require one fixed motion. He says that the principle applies to any strike. The physical path may vary while the distinction remains: did the practitioner knowingly make the strike, or did the weapon merely run into its destination?
Power does not repair an unformed action
Hitting is described with a verb of going and meeting. Its image is collision. More force can enlarge the consequence of that collision, but force alone cannot supply the missing understanding.
This guards practice against an easy error. A student may judge every exercise by the sound of impact, the movement of a target, or the depth of a cut. Those signs record something real, yet they can reward momentum that the student does not control.
A lucky collision can produce a dramatic result. It cannot by itself be repeated, adjusted, or explained. By separating the terms, Musashi gives the learner a reason to inspect the action even after an apparent success.
“Decisively” describes certainty, not brute force
The text uses a word translated here as “decisively” or “surely.” In the sentence, it belongs beside prepared intention. Reading it only as muscular power would collapse the distinction, because Musashi has already allowed hitting to be very powerful.
The certainty is in performing the intended act. The practitioner is not surprised to discover that the blade has arrived. Direction, timing, and purpose belong together before contact.
That still leaves many technical questions unanswered. The excerpt does not specify posture, grip, distance, target, or footwork. Certainty is not a substitute for those matters; it is the quality with which an appropriate technique is carried out.
The Water Scroll builds actions out of named differences
This short entry stands among many distinctions in the Water Scroll. Musashi discusses holding the long sword, moving the feet, five approaches, thrusting, slapping, and several ways of receiving or displacing an opposing blade.
The names are not decorative. They separate actions that can look similar from outside. A blade touches, a body moves, and a result follows, but the school asks what kind of act occurred.
“Striking” and “hitting” is a particularly sharp example because the visible outcome may tempt the observer to ignore the difference. Musashi makes the internal preparation part of the technique.
Why the heading repeats ordinary verbs
Both Japanese verbs are common, and their everyday senses overlap. Musashi does not introduce an exotic secret term. He narrows familiar language so that it can serve instruction.
The heading announces a comparison rather than a command. The passage then defines one term through prepared intention and the other through arrival. Finally, it repeats that striking is done with understanding.
This structure matters. The distinction is stated, tested against the extreme case of a fatal hit, and restated from the learner’s side. The last instruction—examine it—acknowledges that verbal definitions will not make the bodily difference automatic.
Practice needs a test beyond the target
A target can tell a practitioner where the weapon landed. It cannot alone tell whether attention, timing, and movement were organized before impact. The passage asks practice to preserve both kinds of evidence.
One test concerns result: did the blade reach the intended place with the intended effect? Another concerns formation: was the movement knowingly made, or did uncontrolled motion happen to arrive? Neither question makes the other unnecessary.
This also changes how failure can be read. A poor result may expose an error in distance or timing. An impressive result may conceal an error in how the action began. Success remains subject to examination.
What the passage does not authorize
It does not provide a general definition of every use of utsu and ataru in Japanese. Musashi is making an instructional distinction within this school and this scroll.
It does not say that intention alone makes good swordsmanship. The movement must still reach its purpose under physical conditions.
It does not identify a particular duel or episode from Musashi’s life. No opponent, date, or setting is named here.
It does not permit a reader to reconstruct a complete striking method from four lines. Musashi himself ends by asking for examination, which implies embodied training beyond the page.
The action must be known before it is admired
Musashi’s distinction resists judging technique backward from spectacle. A powerful impact, even a fatal one, may be only “hitting.” The external result cannot certify the internal order of the action.
A strike begins when the practitioner forms what is to be done and carries it out with understanding. That requirement makes practice more demanding after success, not only after failure.
The practical question is therefore not merely, “Did it land?” It is, “What action did I actually make?” In four lines, the Water Scroll turns contact from an answer into evidence that still requires interpretation.
Source
Miyamoto Musashi, Gorin no Sho (五輪書, Book of Five Rings), Water Scroll, “Striking and Hitting” (打と當るといふ事). The Japanese was checked against the Kyōzaisha edition published in 1939, printed page 29, preserved in the National Diet Library collection and available as a scan on Wikimedia Commons. Punctuation and editorial line breaks have been regularized.