Episode 6 – To Win or to Die?

Episode six delves into two contrasting perspectives on the samurai spirit: Miyamoto Musashi’s, forged in the fires of war, and Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure, written a century later in an age of lasting peace.

“Bushidō is the path of death.”

That’s the bold opening of the Hagakure, written by Edo-period samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
To Tsunetomo, a true warrior is one who embraces death without hesitation, a defining trait that separates samurai from ordinary men.

This idea, dying well as the essence of Bushidō, was already common by the Kamakura period.

But not all samurai agreed.

Miyamoto Musashi, master of the dual-sword style and a Sengoku legend, took a radically different view.
In his timeless Book of Five Rings, he writes:

“Many believe the way of the warrior means being ready to die.
But even monks and women can face death fearlessly.
Honor, duty, and the choice of death are not unique to us.”

So what, then, is the true way of the warrior?

Musashi’s answer is clear:

“To win.”
To win in single combat. To win on the battlefield.
To win for your lord. And to win for yourself.

That, says Musashi, is the goal of strategy—
Not to die. But to live, and to win.

In just a hundred years, the samurai spirit was transformed. Around 1600, warriors like Miyamoto Musashi lived and breathed combat—victory, tactics, and survival defined their honor. With sword in hand, they carved their legacy in the turmoil of civil war. But after peace settled under Tokugawa rule and the guns of Osaka fell silent in 1615, those days faded into legend. By 1710, when Hagakure was penned, bushidō had turned inward. Death was no longer an imminent threat—it became a subject of meditation. Musashi taught how to live and win; Yamamoto Tsunetomo taught how to die with dignity. The battlefield was gone, but the ideal endured—turning warriors into philosophers and guardians of a vanished era.