The Yagyû Comparison Project, Part 3: "Weapons Are Unfortunate Implements."

It feels appropriate to me to begin with the very first line of Munenori, as the first few paragraphs sum up much of his worldview.

Hathaway:

There is an old saying, "Weapons are in-auspicious tools.  They are shunned by Heaven's path.  Keep them ready without the intent to use them; that is Heaven's path."

HPB (Ridgway):

From antiquity it has been said, "Weapons are an inauspicious instrument, abhorred by the Way of Heaven, and to be used only when unavoidable.  That is the Way of Heaven."

Satô:

Here's what was said in the past: "Weapons are unfortunate instruments.  Heaven's Way hates them.  Using them when there is no other choice - that is Heaven's Way."

Footnote 2: Allusion to Section 31 of Lao Tzu: Good weapons are unfortunate instruments.  People hate them.  So someone with Tao does not rely on them... Weapons are unfortunate instruments and not the wise man's instruments.  When he uses them because there is no other choice he stresses straightforwardness and, in victory, does not praise himself."

Wilson:

In ancient times it was said, Weapons are instruments of ill omen.  The Way of Heaven finds them repugnant.  The Way of Heaven is to use them only when necessary. 

Endnote 1: Paraphrase of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 31: Fine weapons are instruments of ill omen./All things seem to hate them./Therefore the man of the Way avoids them. .../Weapons are instruments of ill omen,/And are not those of the Gentleman./He uses them only when it cannot be helped./He puts tranquility and indifference at the fore,/And does not glorify victory."

The first section of Munenori's book deals almost exclusively with the why of martial arts, and shows that this was written during a period of transition; fifty years prior, in his father's age, the obvious answer was that the entire nation was at war, and weapons, war, and bloodshed were simply part of life.   By Munenori's time, that had largely changed; except for sporadic regional rebellions, which would continue throughout the Edo period, the age of war was at an end, and war, and warriors, were largely outdated.  What, then, was the military class to do?

To Munenori at least the answer was fairly obvious: Rule.  Unlike samurai of fifty or a hundred years later, after the end of the post-Sengoku economic boom, he had fought at Sekigahara and Osaka, and had no great romantic illusions about battlefields, nor about the magic of being able to do violence.  Thus, he believed that, to quote his exegesis of that first passage, "... the Way of Heaven is a Way that brings life, while instruments that kill are, on the contrary, truly ill-omened... Nevertheless, it goes on to say that using weapons and killing people when this cannot be avoided is also the Way of Heaven." (Wilson, and I have neglected his Endnote 2, which elaborates on the character used for 'brings life'; Satô gives it as "but the statement says killing man by using a weapon when there is no other choice is also Heaven's Way," and Hathway gives the following: "Heaven's path is to promote life.  Things that take life are truly things that it can't comprehend... However, if in having the intent not to use it, the tool is used to kill, it can still be called Heaven's path."  There is a subtle shade of meaning, especially in Hathway, that makes it clear that Munenori specifically views violence as last resort as acceptable.)  Munenori's concept of rule, as his classical reference, and his explanation of it along classical Chinese lines, is clearly aristocratic, Confucian, and educated; nevertheless, it is still, as is appropriate for a man of his time and place, very much rule by the military class - warrior as gardener, removing that which threatens the whole in order to allow the rest to flourish.