Product Description

A series of picaresque adventures set against the backdrop of a Japan still closed off from the rest of the world, Musui's Story recounts the escapades of samurai Katsu Kokichi. As it depicts Katsu stealing, brawling, indulging in the pleasure quarters, and getting the better of authorities, it also provides a refreshing perspective on Japanese society, customs, economy, and human relationships. From childhood Katsu was given to mischief. He ran away from home, once at thirteen, making his way as a beggar on the great trunk road between Edo and Kyoto, and again at twenty, posing as the emissary of a feudal lord. He eventually married and had children but never obtained official preferment and was forced to supplement a meager stipend by dealing in swords, selling protection to shopkeepers, and generally using his muscle and wits. Katsu's descriptions of loyalty and kindness, greed and deception, vanity and superstition offer an intimate view of daily life in nineteenth-century Japan unavailable in standard history books. Musui's Story will delight not only students of Japan's past but also general readers who will be entranced by Katsu's candor and boundless zest for life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38232 in Books
• Published on: 1991-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 178 pages

Language Notes
Text: English, Japanese (translation)

From the Inside Flap
A series of picaresque adventures set against the backdrop of a Japan still closed off from the rest of the world, Musui's Story recounts the escapades of samurai Katsu Kokichi. As it depicts Katsu stealing, brawling, indulging in the pleasure quarters, and getting the better of authorities, it also provides a refreshing perspective on Japanese society, customs, economy, and human relationships. From childhood Katsu was given to mischief. He ran away from home, once at thirteen, making his way as a beggar on the great trunk road between Edo and Kyoto, and again at twenty, posing as the emissary of a feudal lord. He eventually married and had children but never obtained official preferment and was forced to supplement a meager stipend by dealing in swords, selling protection to shopkeepers, and generally using his muscle and wits. Katsu's descriptions of loyalty and kindness, greed and deception, vanity and superstition offer an intimate view of daily life in nineteenth-century Japan unavailable in standard history books. Musui's Story will delight not only students of Japan's past but also general readers who will be entranced by Katsu's candor and boundless zest for life.

Customer Reviews

One of a kind look into a Japanese Samurai
This book is the reprinted translated diary of a Samurai in Japan in the early 1800's. It gives the reader a unique look into Japanese society at that time. The samurai in question, Katsu Kokichi, is not a very good samurai which makes this book all the more interesting to read. The reader is drawn into the dilemmas of Katsu and his times. The book also includes beautiful ink drawings and full color plates of tokyo and its environs. This adds to the fullness of the story. This book is perfect for anyone who likes autobiographies or who is interested in Japanese and Asian culture

A very important book.
Katsu Kokichi's autobiography shows the gritty, dark, realistic side of Tokugawa society. This samurai, who was always down on his luck, mostly because of his own rotten ideas and unethical actions, lied, cheated, stole and ran around with the riffraff of Edo. He ran away from home, twice, once at the age of 14 and once at the age of 21. The second time he was running away from his OWN household - his wife and his bills. He once lived as a begger, travelled a lot (well, ran away a lot) and learned a lot about how to get money without doing any real work.
This book is important as a piece of first person history into the real lifes and people of the 19th Century Japan. It showed how many Samurai lived during the time of peace, trying to take odd jobs, make some money and still dress, act and give the impression of being warriors. A must for any history library.

This fast-paced read gives an in-depth, personal account of what it was like to be a samuari during the peaceful Tokugawa Era.
This easy to read autobiography by Katsu Kokichi is a revealing glimpse of the day to day life and struggles of a Japanese samauri in the late Tokugawa era. Filled with fast-paced adventures and heart wrenching hardships one gets the sense that people in this time period knew how to survive. If Katsu's life could be drawn out in a horizontal timeline it would be characterized by peaks and valleys marking his prosperous highs of fiscal fortune and widespread popularity and his debt ridden lows of illness and incurred filial dishonor. Juxtaposing stories of the highlights of his successes as a swordsman, teacher and local sage are tales of poverty, shame and rakishness--Katsu is such an incorrigible youth that his family locks him in a cage for three years during his early 20s.

The author seems to recognize his best trait saying in his Prologue that, "surely Heaven must have blessed me because even in the midst of my errant ways I helped people out, giving money unstingily and rescuing them from difficulties." Nevertheless, he cannot help but look back on his life in his reitrement with guilt-ridden scorn, telling his progreny to, "read carefully what I have set down and take it as a warning." This book gives an in depth, personal look at what it was like to be a samuari in the Tokugawa era, a 200 year-long age of peace in Japan that lasted from approximately the late 16th Century until 1868. What is a warrior to do when there are no wars to fight and no domestic uprisings to quell? How is a samauri supposed to survive off of a modest government stipend while there are a limited number of jobs he can do? Musui's Story answers these questions and much, much more.