Way to Victory: The Annotated Book of Five Rings

A vibrant new translation and a guided tour through the history and strategy lessons of the most influential marital arts treatise ever written.Although it was written over 300 years ago as a treatise on strategy and combat, Miyamoto Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings is heralded today as a classic work that speaks almost equally to the businessperson, the philosopher, and the practitioner of the martial arts. In A Way to Victory, Master Hidy Ochiai–a legend in the martial arts who has devoted much of his life to the teachings of Musashi–provides both a new translation of The Book of Five Rings and annotations that clarify the text’s lessons in strategy for a contemporary reader.Ochiai’s new translation represents a seven-year effort not only to render the wisdom and spirit of Musashi’s timeless teachings, but to painstakingly maintain the completeness and precision of his original words. Master Ochiai then follows each of the five volumes of the book with an in-depth analysis of that section’s themes, offering the work as “a constructive method of overcoming challenges in life, personal or otherwise.” A Way to Victory is a testament to the lasting importance of The Book of Five Rings. It is the perfect complement to Musashi’s classic work.