Dear O'Keefe,
The samurai were well aware of the The Art of War from well before the
Sengoku era. Though the exact entry date into Japan is unclear, the work
attributed to Sun-Tzu (as well as the other 6 Chinese Military texts from
ancient China) were extant in Japan at least by the 12th century. Of
course, these texts came to Japan in their original classical Chinese form,
which was unreadable to most. Only those people with "classical" education
would have had any chance to read them. Before the Tokugawa era it was only
the select few, (e.g. - Imagawa Ryoshun, Kusunoki Masashige) who were
erudite enough warriors to have a chance to have read them for themselves.
These men were generals -- great leaders of men -- and in that sense a bit
closer to the courtiers in terms of education. As for the more "common"
fighting men, though they may have learned of the strategic principles
inculcated in Sun-Tzu and the like, there was almost no possibility for them
to have read them individually.
I heard recently, though, that by the 15th century there existed a sort of
"cheat book" (Japanese name escapes me) -- similar to the books we have
nowadays of useful quotations -- that had commonly quoted sayings from
Chinese classics (Military, Confucian and otherwise) as well as works of
Japanese "high" literature.
I believe that in his book _The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China_,
Ralph Sawyer mentions that there is info in Samuel Griffith's translation of
the Sun-Tzu about its dissemination into Japan.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Shannon
----Original Message Follows----
From: "O'Keefe" <
Viva77@...>
Reply-To:
samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com
To: <
samuraihistory@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [samuraihistory]
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 20:51:40 -0500
Hello. Did the samurai in the olden days know THE ART OF WAR from Sun Tzu?
and did they know any hipnosis these questions are on my thoughts thanks
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at
http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.