宮本武蔵 miyamoto musashi Miyamoto Musashi

宮本武蔵 is a name each reader meets through a different door. Some know the swordsman of the duels, or the inventor of a two-sword style. Some know the strategist, or the young hero of Yoshikawa Eiji's novel. Others know the painter in ink. The earliest printed book known to name him already knew him as both the swordsman and the painter. Which Musashi is yours.

The name joins 宮本, which the biography of 1909 takes from the village his family lived in and another account from his mother's house, to 武蔵, the name of a province used as his common name without the governorship it would imply; it is the name in the two letters in his own hand, the name the Hosokawa house of Kumamoto wrote for him in the 1640s and the surname his adopted son bore, while the book he wrote on strategy is signed with another surname, Shinmen.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 宮本武蔵.

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