The Yagyû Comparison Project, Part 2: The Texts Themselves

I own four English-language editions of of Heihô Kadensho.  I actually own more than that, but the others are copies or extracts of these four.  Two of them, the Satô (The Sword and the Mind) and Wilson (The Life-Giving Sword) translations, are what could be called "mainstream" translations - that is, they are either at least partially informed by, or endorsed by, members of the school, and are relatively complete, with supplementary material that will help make sense of the original and provide it further context.  They are broadly similar; Yagyû Koichi, the head of the school today, prefers Satô, while Dave Lowry and a handful of other American budô practitioners encouraged Williams to make his translation.  In other words, in quality terms there is little to choose between them, other than personal preference, and one cannot really go wrong with either.  The third was a copy that I happened to pick up at Half-Price Books that did not match either of the standard texts, and I have generally found it to be the least complete or contextual.  The fourth is Jack Hathway's Through Dragonfly Eyes, which only translates part of the original, but is the only one that is written by an actual practitioner.

Because situational awareness, and choosing the right action in the moment, rather than a pre-planned series of movements, is so important to shinkage, it is important to understand why each of the translators chose their project, and what is in each.  For instance, Satô Hiroaki, the only one of the four translators whose first language was Japanese, was clearly attempting to capture Yagyû Munenori as representing a cultural moment.  Thus, in addition to the text itself, he includes Takuan Sôhô's The Unfettered Mind, which is mostly a series of Zen epistles written to Munenori, and Munenori's drawings of basic shinkage positions and movements, and he gives a great deal of space to explaining Munenori's poetic references and wordplay in footnotes.  The HPB text treats Munenori primarily as a Zen practitioner; thus it too includes Takuan, but not the drawings, and it neglects the part of Munenori's book which deals purely with swordsmanship, the brief text known as the Shoe-Offering Bridge.  Wilson, meanwhile, wants to translate Yagyû Munenori into English; thus, he includes the drawings, and a great deal of introductory text that places Munenori in his time and place, but because he is translating Munenori, Takuan waits for another book (Wilson translated Takuan too, so this is clearly not neglect so much as deliberate choice).  Finally, Hathway writes mostly for the martial artist or practitioner, and includes his own annotations and thoughts from his own study of the text.  Because he was translating from scratch, and Hathway was at the time of his translation an ESL teacher in Japan rather than a full-time translator, Hathway's translation is partial, only including the first two parts of Munenori's book, which are much more practical, less abstruse, and less philosophical than the third part, and because it is a personal project and labor of love, it includes his own observations and thoughts on the book.

No one of them presents a complete picture; Munenori was an exceptionally complex man, a complex thinker in a complex philosophical system, who also practiced a complex school of swordsmanship.  I think of the four, I prefer Wilson's approach - this is Munenori's text, this is what Munenori says, and it is up to the reader to provide that further context.  Certainly each has a place, especially if you are studying Yagyû Munenori, and unlike Fiore, it is almost impossible to divorce Munenori, his writing, or his practice from Zen Buddhism.  However, my interest in the man is as a swordsman, not as a philosopher; Takuan's text is only interesting insofar as Takuan spoke fluent swordsman, having grown up around them and lived among them his entire life.

Their particular emphases also drive the tones of the translations - Wilson is very much writing to make Munenori accessible, and so it is written in a plain, unornamented English about on par with Caesar's Gallic Wars in terms of accessibility, generally free of footnotes and explanations, while Satô, writing to capture the cultural moment, uses lots of footnotes and explanations, but his tone is generally ever so slightly stilted, compared to a native English speaker.  Between the two of them, there is little to choose but personal preference, which I suspect at least partly explains why the English-speaking Yagyû students prefer Wilson and Yagyû Koichi prefers Satô, as I can hear echoes of Satô's diction and cadence in Yagyû-sensei's English.  The second-rank translations - Hathway and the HPB copy - are very different in tone, with the HPB copy adopting an almost archaic voice and Hathway treating it as a very personal project.

What, then, do each of them say? Spoiler: Weapons are unfortunate implements! Violence is bad - but not being able to be violent is even worse! Do the right thing, even if it wasn't what you had planned!