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(*)Translated by William Scott Wilson (★)(1.´The 36 Secret Strategies of the Martial Arts´is a collection of ancient Chinese maxims that encapsulate some of the Far East´s most cunning tactics for battle and deception -and as such offer invaluable insights into facets of the Oriental mind. Each of these strategies represents a distilled nugget of Chinese wisdom. Hiroshi Moriya, an acknowledged authority on Chinese culture and philosophy, published a book in Japanese in which he analyzed and explained these strategies. He then used examples from ancient and recent history to further elucidate their meaning. Now, renowned translator William Scott Wilson makes´The 36 Secret Strategies´accessible to today´s reader with his new English translation of both the Chinese maxim itself and Moriya´s interpretive work. The volume is organized into six parts [Strategies for Victory in Battle, Strategies for Engaging the Enemy, Strategies for Attack, Strategies for Ambiguous Situations, Strategies for Unified Battle, and Strategies for a Lost Battle], with six chapters in each part. Some of the ideas presented will be familiar ; others will be new and counterintuitive. Short, pithy titles encapsulate each one :´Borrow a Sword to Make Your Kill´,´If You Covet It, Leave It Alone´,´Cast a Brick, Pull in Jade´,´To Catch a Thief, Catch His King´,´Send Them to the Roof, Remove the Ladder´, and so on. While these strategies offer a look into the past, they are even more valuable to today´s reader for providing insights into contemporary China. And, like such other classics as´The Book of Five Rings´and´The Art of War´,´The 36 Secret Strategies´gives the businessman, the diplomat, the politician, the military strategist, the martial artist, and the sports competitor keys to understanding, interpreting, and countering the actions of even the most daunting opponent. 2.Hiroshi Moriya is an authority on Chinese culture and philosophy. For the past fifty years, he has devoted himself to explaining the Chinese to the outside world. He has written over seventy books on China [in Japanese], and from the late 1940s has visited China more than fifty times. Moriya lives near Tokyo. 3.William Scott Wilson was born in 1944 and grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College in 1966, he was invited by a friend to join a three-month kayak trip up the coast of Japan from Shimonoseki to Tokyo. This eye-opening journey, beautifully documented in´National Geographic´, spurred Wilson´s fascination with the culture and history of Japan. After receiving a B.A. degree in political science from Dartmouth, Wilson earned a second B.A. in Japanese language and literature from the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies in Monterey, California, then undertook extensive research on Edo-oeriod [1603-1868] philosophy at the Aichi Prefectural University, in Nagoya, Japan. Wilson completed his first translation,´Hagakure´, while living in an old farmhouse deep in the Japanese countryside.´Hagakure´saw publication in 1979, the same year Wilson completed an M.A. in Japanese language and literature at the University of Washington. Two decades after its initial publication, Hagakure was prominently featured in the Jim Jarmusch film´Ghost Dog´. Wilson´s other translations include´The Book of Five Rings´,´The Life-Giving Sword´,´The Unfettered Mind´, The Eiji Yoshikawa novel´Taiko´,´The Flowering Spirit : Classic Teachings in the Art of Noo´, and´Ideals of the Samurai´, whicha has been used as a college textbook on Japanese history and thought. Wilson is also the author of the´The Lone Samurai´, a best-selling study of the life of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. Traveling frequently to Japan for research and pleasure, Wilson currently lives in Miami, Florida.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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