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The Book of Five Rings was a text on swordsmanship written by Miyamoto Musashi in the 1640s- about a decade before coffeehouses become popular in Europe, and Istanbul overtakes Beijing to become the largest city in the world. The Dutch VOC is happily underway and EIC is to follow https://t.co/ZH3qZM5tEB
Musashi has legendary status; some consider him *the* Kensei, the sword-saint of Japan. I‘m not intimately familiar with the history or culture so I’m not going to pretend to know this stuff well. All I can say is that Musashi seemed Cool and Badass. He was undefeated in 61 duels https://t.co/QfLjMyCJdJ
(Of course, trying to learn about anybody with a mythical status is challenging, and especially if they’re from hundreds of years ago. Many of the facts are contested. A lot of mythologizing.) Besides being a swordsman, and author Musashi also painted. He seemed to like birds https://t.co/vLU9xSecKh
