Silent Evidence and Musha Shugyo

Financial crisis got you worried? Downtrodden? Has the collapse of everything your parents sought to build undermined your belief in the world? Does your career path now look meaningless?

Why not pick up a sword and challange someone to mortal combat?

It seems ridiculous, but when I reread Takehiko's Vagabond recently along with Taleb Kweli's 'Black Swan' I am reconsidering.

I think the world may have lost something in the extinction of the Japanese tradition of Musha Shugyo.

Some qualifications, by tradition it was not like say 'walkabout' in the Australian Indegenous example or the 'vision quest' of Native American persuasion. It was not a passage into adulthood. It was simply an optional way of life.

The beauty of Takehiko is his ability to provide such a convincing narative in his fictionalised account of Musashi's life. For example the character of Ito Ittosai a mysterious figure in Japanese history and another aparantly invincible swordsman although there are no records to indicate any formal duels just anecdotes and oral traditions.

Anyway Inoue's Ito (are you following) demonstrated the weakness of groupism in Vagabond when he handed out scores to a group of 5 swordsmen wishing to challange him. He gave them numbers ranging between 1-9 based on his judgement of their ability, giving himself 10,000 points. Denshichiro the second heir of the Yoshioka school enquires what his score is, naming his famous father. Ito responds that he uses his father's name to intimidate opponents and also has 'a babysitter, that's why you get a zero score' pointing out the Denshichiro characters key weakness throughout the story - a lack of self esteem.

I raise Vagabond and 'The Black Swan' together because Vagabond is an obvious narative, a fictionalised account of a historical figure, based on another fictional account that suggests its own explanations for what made Musashi an invincible swordsman. The Black Swan is all about the narrative fallacy and limits of knowledge.

Even Musashi's treatise on his own success at cutting men down the 'Go Rin No Sho' is a narrative. Musashi certainly states that he wrote the work because he did not believe luck played a role in his success. For the record I don't believe luck played a significant role in his success.

The problem Black Swan raises is that of silent evidence. Silent evidence is the 30 second news bit on a lottery winner that causes people to grossly overestimate their odds of winning the lottery, more precisely, the silent evidence is the 9 and a half years of 30 second news bits on every single loser from a single weeks lottery we don't see to put the one winner in perspective.

Silent evidence is Donald Trumps somewhat fickle fortune that drives people to buy his books laying out the secrets of his success. The silent evidence being the hundreds of thousands of ambitious people like Donald Trump that bought his books and still aren't rich. (and if there's any justice in the world, aren't even modestly successful).

So too it is hard to know whether there were any swordsman in Musashi's time that were just as skilled at fighting as him that happened to lose. What is the balance between Musashi truly having an invincible system of fighting (pure skill) to Musashi being the probable equivalent of a coin flipped 60 times and coming up heads all 60 times (pure luck)?

Incidently Taleb himself raises a coin toss example in The Black Swan he calls the Ludic fallacy, he describes a nerd as thinking inside the box and thus accepting that the coin is fair, when told it has come up heads 99 times and what are the odds of the next toss being tails, under the assumption it is an easily identified gambler's fallacy. The odds don't change based on historical results.
The other example is the outside the box thinker that rejects the assumption and says based on the evidence the coin must be loaded. Not making the Ludic fallacy.
My understanding of the Ludic fallacy is that you can't translate mathematical games to real life situations, a mistake nerds make thinking inside the box when estimating risk.

Under the Ludic fallacy you would then assume that there was a special property to Musashi that meant the chances of any given samurai fighting against him and emerging victorious where going to be 'less than 1%'

I intend to thus in exploring Musha Shugyo practitioners demonstrate what a legitimate lifestyle choice the Musha Shugyo was. Perhaps more so than many of the options presented to us by career advisors.

I will discuss it in terms of what I've read about so far in 'the black swan' because I find it highly complementary reading to Vagabond.

1. Musha Shugyo is in the province of Extremistan

In Vagabond Inoue has one character observe that Musashi has chosen a lifestyle with 'less than 1/10,000 chance of succeeding' whether young men that chose to go on the warrior's pilgrimage were actually aware of the odds or not is unknowable.
It's plausible that they were overestimating the odds of success due to silent evidence, your average country samurai or farm boy entertaining delusions of grandeur as an invincible warrior based on all the stories they heard of legendary warriors that were triumphant (like Ito Ittosai in Musashi's case) and not hearing stories about the 10,000 warriors that went out into the world and failed almost immediately.
The other view is that Japan has a cultural heritage of celebrating 'honorable losers' as well. People who risked all and lost were often just as celebrated as those who risked all and one. It was a romantic notion.

Furthermore bringing it back to Taleb's terminology Mediocristan is where people assume little risk for constant small rewards. 'betting dollars to win pennies' was the phraseology I liked. As such for a Japanese kid choosing career paths, being a rice farmer was the way to go. You got fed and sheltered. You worked hard, but you were defenceless against improbable large scale events like Earthquakes, Fires and War. Being a farmer is what most people chose/had forced upon them.

Over in extremistan though there was the Musha Shugyo. Wandering around Japan with no guaruntee of shelter or food, pitting your life against strong opponents in order to walk away with (most desirably) a post as a sword instructor for a fuedal lord or else dying in the attempt. One strong swordsman would win, many others would lose. Even if you won 5 iterations of mortal combat, you may lose one of the ten teaching posts available to a swordsman who won 20 duels. Your life was not worth much, but the top of the tree won big. 'betting pennies to win dollars'. You more or less threw your life away for a remote chance at the good life.

Here then is the first absence felt in modern civilization (pitting your life may still be a reality in failed states, drug gangs spring to mind too), one cannot risk one's life as a way of life. Sure there is base jumping. but it isn't the same. One all other analogies were almost never legally sanctioned. There was duelling pistols in European Aristocracy, and fencing in Renaissance Italy, Germany and so fourth. But Duels were legally sanctioned in Japan. If a formal challange was issued, murder could not be charged. The two opponents formed a contract in which the winner ended the others life (with another possibility of both dying in the act).

The closest I can think of is Gunslingers in the old west. Fastest draw in the west and what not. These too are narratives, but a clear distinction between the Musha Shugyo and Gunfighting is that Musha Shugyo was a learning and developmental process. Gunfighting was accidental.

Famous gunfighters never fought each other, and went to pains to avoid eachother, it was not a test of skill. They were crimes born of necessity, accident or compulsion and usually involved Kid Curry shooting unsuspecting policemen, or Wild Bill shooting someone while hunting and so fourth. Infact the wikipedia description of gunfighting says the main tactic of the quick draw was not the tense standoff of reflexes but trying to distract your opponent in an underhanded 'psyche out' way and then shoot them (akin to a sucker punch).

Musha Shugyo was in many ways opposite, they provided a controlled environment (that you still wouldn't trust) and the more success you had the stronger the opponents you were expected to face.

As such, the mentality of someone adopting the lifestyle was that you would likely wind up killed sooner or later. As George Orwell opens 1984 with 'Once he knew he was dead it became of the utmost importance to stay alive as long as possible'. The narrative I put forward, and the one Vagabond captures well is that death in Musha Shugyo was not a matter of if, but rather a game of when. (but isn't it anyway).

2. Swordfighting is Know How.

Taleb makes the distinction between Know-how and know-what. The difference being that know-how involve disciplines like carpentry, surgery, chemistry, physics, engineering etc. Professions where you can do something, some specified task (say lift 20kgs) with precision and correctness. Definitive correctness. If you are cutting out a kidney, the evidence is easily tested, the kidney is cut out AND the patient is alive AND better for it. This means in know-what professions you can have experts.

Know-what professions are knowledge based and thus rely on prediction and understanding. Things like Economist, Marketing, Advertising, Social Commentator, Historian. I believe Taleb describes them as moving targets where the knowledge base is subject to change. These professions cannot have experts due to the unpredictability factor.

The case for Swordfighting (kendo) being a know-what is that the opponent is always going to be a variable, the technique used to cut down 59 previous opponents has no guaruntee of working the 60th time.

That said there is plenty of basis for know how - human anatomy does not vary enough to invalidate the practitioner from predicting how to kill someone. Bleeding to death is a know-how assumption, (assuming the opponent is human). Slicing the jugular, piercing a 'vital' organ or just plain cutting someone in half should always result in death.

If you know a range of weapons you might also be able to accumulate know-how in how to deal with defence. It's worth pointing out that being a General in fuedal Japan may have been a 'know-what' profession in practice, particularly those that went up against Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi who introduced rifles for the first time.

But their are reliable (as reliable as history gets, which is to say not very reliable) accounts of Musashi defeating wielders of Halbierds, Bow and Arrow, Sickle and Chain, Staff, Swords of Various lengths, Spears etc. He prescribes being familiar with a whole range of weapons in his school. A fundemental of being a bushi.

The Yagyu school also provide evidence of swordsmanship being a 'know-what' profession. Their ultimate technique was the 'No-sword' technique, a system the Yagyu masters employed to disarm opponents. They were willing to enter mortal combat against someone weilding a sword with bare hands.

Silent evidence though casts a cloud of doubt over whether an 'invincible technique' exists. One question of silent evidence being that Musashi never faced off with the Yagyu master - Yagyu Munenori who's 'Life Giving Sword' is probably the second big treatise on swordsmanship after the 'Go Rin No Sho'. Both swordsman's schools survive incidently, I get a feeling the transmission of technique has less vagueries in the Yagyu school.

If Musashi had lost to Yagyu Munenori or Munenori lost to Musashi would we have heard of the loser today? For sure if Musashi had been killed the Go Rin No Sho would not have been written, so the survivor gets to provide a narrative.

Here though is my surviving narrative - my justification for swordsmanship being 'know-what' though I will admit, luck is still going to play a part. Taleb points out that whilst 'true randomness' and 'chaotic determinism' have a mathematical distinction practically they are irrelevant, indistinguishable.

Mathematically I believe Musashi wins, practically Musashi's book trumps the Yagyu schools. Indeed, why not let their books fight the 'know-what' argument.

The Yagyu committed to paper the 'half-moon length' or something technique. I can't remember it's name, but in practice it meant that you controlled the battle by predicting accurately the reach of your opponents attack, then controlled this distance. A two dimensional game that relied on precision forecasting - an incredible eye. The Yagyu's must have been some painters being able to translate an upright stance into reach so confidently, that's an amazing sense of proportion. The equivalent of being as accurate as 3d modelling software.

Musashi's game as committed to paper was based around the inaccuracy of forecasting, something I would hope Taleb Kweli would approve of. The margin of error in Musashi's technique was far more relevant than his predictions. The 'middle stance' is what it is called and it is about the relative position of your opponents weapon.

it requires no real degree of accuracy, it is thrilling to read Musashi put down 'If he lifts his sword high, point yours at his eyes' so too if he goes to the left - you move left, if he goes low cut up at his hands.

Furthermore, Musashi makes a point that every single 'beat' should be an attack, if your opponent deflects your sword you attack on the rebound. Musashi plays an imprecise game which is exactly his mastery.

To paraphrase a business maxim I don't know where it came from 'to double your success rate, double your failure rate'. On offense Musashi tried to get in more hits than his opponent did, controlling the pace and play and opting for a stack of individually small odds accumulating a high probability of landing a fatal hit. Furthermore on defense he kept it as broad as possible, to capture as many offensive uncertainties as possible.

On top of this the true strength of having two swords (instead of one) meant that Musashi was twice as unpredictable himself. I have assumed that the Yagyu No-sword disarming technique is dependant on the assumption that your opponent carries one weapon in two hands and not two weapons in two hands.

Even then Musashi facing off someone else adept at staying alive in a profession that has the highest probability of death outside of suicide will attract a degree of uncertainty. Which is why it remains mathematical. But even in maths - Musashi's technique certainly trumps the Yagyu's. his approach is one adapted to unknowledge.

That said if Musashi fought with his preferred weapon - the wooden practice sword, all my mathematical modelling falls apart, that I couldn't be certain of. the only thing I'm fairly certain of is that no duel between them ever happened.

But a general 'know-how' rule I believe Musashi uncovered is that techniques that are based on precision are doomed to fail sooner rather than later. Techniques based on imprecision are bound to succeed.

3. The Turkey Problem

Bertrand Russell creates a problem that Taleb raises often in 'The Black Swan'. It is the problem of knowledge in general, 'how can we draw general knowledge from specific observations' - Bertrand uses a Chicken, and being not from North America I will stick with the Chicken.
A chicken might make the daily observation that a human feeds it. For 1000 days the chicken collects more evidence that the human has its best interests at heart and will protect it and feed it. On the 1001st day the chicken is cooked for Christmas dinner.
The point being that the Chicken is most convinced of its safety at the highest point of danger. This is the problem Kaleb extracts to point out that if an argument is conditional on the survivors ability to make it, it should be disregarded.

Examples in black swan being arguments about why Nuclear War will never occur (which could not be made if you were killed in a nuclear war), or why 'us' New Yorkers always bounces back (which could not be made if New Yorkers were suddenly to fall to the ground and stay there).

How then can a survivor like Musashi make the observation that he is invincible, when many other people at the time were also presently alive and yet did not make the same bold claim.

Well hopefully Musashi was smart enough to describe himself as an 'invincible swordsman'. Because its patently true that he died, from cancer. Also I'm sure his technique was never so fancy that he might claim to have been able to survive standing under the payload of 'fat boy' when it detonated over Hiroshima bay. (strangely enough the building it did detonate directly over is still standing [western architecture ironically]).

Notably, Musashi survived where his most famous opponent Sasaki Kojiro did not, Sasaki could no longer make the argument he was invincible from precisely the moment he died. Does this observation make Musashi's argument invalid?

Probably.

But again it is a corner of history where narrative has to be used, without pretense to being real history. The know-what argument points to again a difference in technique.

Musashi knew something definitively that Sasaki did not. Sasaki's famed technique was 'The Swallow Cut' no diagrams or instructions remain but it was described as mimicking a swallow's tail in flight, so the general accepted hypothesis (see how much uncertainty is in history) is that it was a swift down motion, followed by a quick upstroke.

When in my minds eye I try to deglamorize sword play (think Kurosawa's ending duel in Sanjuru vs. Ang Lee's stylistic and choreographed dance piece fights of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) I imagine that Sasaki probably owed much of his success to this simple deception.

He used 'tactics of mistake' that were probably actually superior to the Yagyu's technique. He used a naginata (that much IS known) that was long and straight unlike the preferred katana. So like Musashi he was unusual, normal assumptions didn't work.

the assumption you would make was that his reach was greater than normal, so when this big guy stepped forward and thrust his sword down missing you be inches, you would naturally assume that it was safe to charge in and strike (you would have to step closer because if you'd been keeping a safe distance your katana would never have outreached his naginata to hit his body) Stepping in if Kojiro had suddenly and quickly attacked with an upward stroke you would have found your assumption that the attack was finished AND more crucially the assumption that he had missed was wrong. You would have ended up running onto the end of a sword perforating your bowels, stomach, heart, neck depending on how fast you moved.

It was a dirty, sucker punch, a 'tactic of mistake' where you lure someone into committing an error by appearing to do so your self.

Again that narrative I just made up. Musashi beat Sasaki's head in with an oar then ran away (assuming an ambush, a reasonable assumption that he 'didn't know if he was safe').

Whether Musashi jumped, or attacked on Sasaki's downstroke (thus thwarting a one-trick-pony) or dodged to the side or whatever is not really known. The thing that makes me believe Musashi developed 'invincible know-how' is two-fold.

At any rate it is irelevant, Musashi won the fight, but what did this fight represent? Unlike the chicken/turkey problem, the longer a Musha Shugyo vagabond survives the more danger he percieves to himself. He percieves his risk as greatest, because in essence you are A) required to essentially throw your life away as you enter each duel and B) you are actively encouraged towards stronger and stronger opponents.

it isn't a coin toss, in other words, Musashi probably one the duel because it took him so long to get there. A younger man with less fighting experience is more likely to overestimate his abilities because his own status as a fighter reflects on his opponent. In other words, a rookie vs a rookie will probably accurately assess their own level of danger, a rookie vs a 3 win opponent might assume that the experience difference is not so great if the swordsman is still fighting rookies.

A rookie will probably feel they are in danger no matter who they fight, but if a 5 win swordsman fights a 8 win swordsman, they probably won't assume the same level of danger as a rookie vs a 3 win opponent. The distortions are going to multiply the longer you are in the game 20 vs 30? 27 vs 50? I won't pretend to know it, but Darwinian natural selection probably means their is a 'magic threshold' were the survivors of x number of duels are the one's that make no assumptions beyond 'there's an unknowable chance i will get killed, be cautious for fucks sake.'

Musashi ends his book with the book of emptiness, like Taleb points out about Nietzsche's superman - Musashi's book of emptiness is something anyone interprets as they wish. Some projecting it as mystical, others that it was some specific mind emptying technique. Myself I choose to interpret it as 'abandoning assumptions' the Zen tradition hopefully corroborates this interpretation.

In other words Musashi as the Chicken would assess only the instant predicament, the present. The previous 1000 days of evidence account for nothing, so on the 1001st day Musashi watches the human feeder with skepticism judging his actions and intents as they come.

The second piece of evidence I feel is Musashi's most extraordinary claim, more so than being invincible. Musashi claimed that through mastery of the sword, he had mastered everything.

Not exactly everything, he did not become omniscient, but rather he could become a master of something with no instruction.

I have to cede some doubt to Japan's cultural context, mastery was prescriptive. Most pursuits were vary 'know-how' oriented, seperated into schools and meme's often rigorously reinforced when transferred from master to pupil. As such mastering sculpture or sumi-e without having a teacher was probably culturally unthinkable. Yet Musashi's works survive.

admittedly they could also be evidence that Musashi had very, very good hand eye coordination. Except their is an artfulness to sumi-e that is not about capturing reality, but instead painting using an absolute economy of strokes. Similarly carving wooden statues was proscriptive as well, so Musashi was an imitator at least.

I would not imagine that he became able to predict the future or necessarily a master of 'know-what' professions. At any rate there are no masters of 'know-what' with which to benchmark him against, nor any surviving evidence that he mastered commerce or what-not.



And that's where I will leave 'The Black Swan' comparisons behind. There are western basis of comparison with Musashi Miyamoto - Michelangelo who was a master of sculpture, painting and drawing, Leonardo who was a master artist as well as engineer and mathematician, and I lost the name but I think it is Frederico Ghisliero who applied Euclidean geometry to Italian rapier street fighting.

Michelangelo and Leonardo were called 'Renaissance men' nowadays known as 'Polymath' which should really be applied to Musashi Miyamoto as well. Taleb Kweli author of 'The Black Swan' is described as a polymath, and ironically is close in approach to Musashi, both of them acknowledging the significant role of the unknown in their application.

The Renaissance Man was originally a title that was meant to indicate someone who had obtained mastery of all known areas of knowledge (something that was considered far more obtainable in the Renaissance than is now, albeit much like the Achilles vs the Tortoise motion paradox, the frontiers of knowledge will perpetually expand faster than our ability to reach it). So it is ironic that it may be aplied to someone who embraces the fact that they don't know much, cannot predict, but as such doesn't take risks blindfolded.

But returning to my original feeling, that the world has lost something by losing the tradition of Musha Shugyo, I would simply point out - if people can become polymaths by surviving a series of duels to the death, or from painting ceilings for 7 years, or from cutting apart animals and drawing their insides it is just as legitimate a way to spend your life as being a doctor or lawyer.

Our society has become geared as such where a relatively meaningless profession such as being a Lawyer or Doctor is desirable, where a lifestyle of fighting mortal combat with other willing opponents is unthinkable.

I guess you need to have an existential crisis to appreciate it really, but if I was a commodoties trader betting on a growth area this year it would be existential crisis as millions watch their parents worldview and retirement plans wiped out by market corrections. A lot of young people just starting out in life (that's anyone betwixt 2-50) are having to face facts that a lot of crucial assumptions about how we interact with the universe and just what is a valuable expenditure of the crucial resource of time are wrong. Dead wrong.

There are traders posted in skyscrapers (the epitome of human security and superiority) that have blindly eradicated the homes of millions of people. To me the idea that someone disillusioned might learn something from a lifestyle of known extreme risk, that someone might want to push their challenge of their own existence to such an extreme as to ask someone to kill or be killed is not that controversial.

If you asked me 'would I (tohm) do it?' the answer is I honestly don't know. I would unquestionably find the experience of surviving mortal combat temptingly unique and distinct from say surviving some involuntary situation. At the same time, the unknown risk is insurmountable, thanks to my cultural programming. Furthermore I doubt I could take a life even of a willing participant. Strongly doubt it. I thus far think I'm cowardly enough to avoid even defending my own life with lethal force.

If I could contemplate it from the perspective of a Japanese farm boy, weighing up between a life of secure serfdom vs an almost certain prospect of an exciting death (the 'almost' is the tantilising part) I like to think I'd choose the latter.

I like to think that as far as modern contexts allow, that is the choice I'm currently making. (substitute 'financial and reputational ruin' with 'death' in the paragraph above)

Appendix 1: Sanjuro fight scene (blink and you'll miss it)


Appendix 2: Crouching Tiger blah blah blah scene (why I'd still back Japan over China)