Musashi

Leiko Gotoda's praised translation - the first complete version of the work in the West - paved the way for a whole wave of translations directly from Japanese into Brazil. This epic novel based on Japanese history narrates a period in the life of Japan's most famous samurai, who lived between 1584 and 1645. The beginning is iconic: Musashi regains consciousness amidst piles of corpses on the side of the defeated in the famous battle of Sekigahara in 1600. He then wanders through a crisis-stricken Japan where samurais condemned to unemployment and poverty by feudal lords (the ronin), scattered, sow villainy by dictating the law of the strongest. Musashi will be just another of these small tyrants, mercilessly defeating anyone who crosses his path until a monk armed only with his wit and some Zen-Buddhist philosophical precepts manages to capture him and put him to the test. Musashi escapes thanks to a young admirer, only to be captured again, and is now confined to a dungeon for three years where a long penitence made up of readings and reflections will make him see a new meaning in life, as well as new uses for his extraordinary strength and skill. The paths towards the fullest being are never easy, and in his years of pilgrimage in search of perfection, both spiritual and warrior, he will face the most diverse opponents. It is in one of these situations that, completely cornered, he will use for the first time, in the heat of the fight and almost unconsciously at first, the surprising technique of the two swords, the Niten ichi style, which would make him famous for the rest of time. The reader can witness his maturing, accompanying the path that led him to transform from a wild and bloodthirsty boy into the greatest and wisest of the samurais, capable of understanding and loving both fencing and the arts. At the same time, the plot moves towards the expected and inevitable duel on the island of Funashima with Sasaki Kojiro, the other great swordsman of the time and Musashi's rival in skill, tenacity, and warrior wisdom. This incredible duel, which concludes the work, has been established through literature (in all kinds of adaptations and through its various cinematic versions) in the collective imagery of the Japanese nation, and many people can comment on its moves in the smallest details. Musashi also depicts a panel of Japan at its crossroads at the time of national unification under the Tokugawa lineage, in a long transition that saw it go from constant armed battles between small lords (daimyo) to the dominion of a class of "paper and brush bureaucrats" (in the words of specialist Edwin Reischauer, who signs the foreword), which would make the country develop independently from the rest of the world for two and a half centuries. The work will also be marked by events in Edo, the future Tokyo, then in frenzied development, whose vibrant underworld foreshadows the metropolis that would later emerge, and which constitute the urban foray of this predominantly bucolic work with a strong presence of a feudalism in suffering modernization. Musashi is the best-selling literary work in Japanese history. There are several editions, as well as about 15 film or television versions. Its main characters became part of Japanese daily life, and the work became a bedside book and a guide to the art of living for generations of Japanese. This commemorative edition - a box containing the work in three volumes and a booklet illustrated with representations of the great samurai in ukiyo-e prints - was originally released by Estação Liberdade on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Musashi in Brazil, the mark of 100,000 copies sold of the two volumes of the previous edition. Now, after more than 17,000 boxes sold, we at Editora Estação Liberdade are bringing a completely revamped box. Updated design, yellow paper, different covers, fonts, and illustrations, all brand new! Important: the textual contents of the three books have undergone no changes.

product information: