Book of Five Rings Leadership Lessons: Musashi for Managers

Who was Musashi, and what is the Book of Five Rings?

Miyamoto Musashi was a Japanese swordsman, ink painter and writer. Sources differ on his birth year: Japan's Tourism Agency gives 1584, while a historical essay on Nippon.com gives 1582. He died in 1645. In 1640 he moved to Kumamoto as a guest of the Hosokawa lords, and in his last years he wrote Gorin no sho, the Book of Five Rings, in five scrolls named after the elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Emptiness (sometimes translated Void).

The Japan Tourism Agency's description of Reigando Cave, near Kumamoto, records the tradition that he composed the book there. He addressed it to his pupil Terao Magonojo and finished it in 1645, shortly before he died. In the same month he wrote the Dokkodo, a list of 21 one-line personal precepts; the original, in his own hand, is held by the Kumamoto Prefectural Museum of Art.

Musashi wrote for warriors, and his book is frank about combat. Read through modern work, though, it is something rarer: a lifelong practitioner writing down how mastery is built. That is why managers keep coming back to it, and why it is worth reading carefully rather than through slogans.

What do the five scrolls mean for leaders?

Each scroll maps onto a part of a leader's job. The table below gives a practical reading. It is an interpretation for workplace use, not a translation.

What are Musashi's nine rules?

At the close of the Earth scroll Musashi lists nine things for anyone who wants to learn his Way. In the 1909 printed edition the list begins "第一によこしまになき事を思ふ所", the first rule, which in our rendering reads: First: keep your thinking straight, with nothing crooked in it.

In plain workplace words (our rendering, not a published translation), the nine are: keep your thinking straight; train in your Way; put your hand to other arts; learn how other trades work; weigh what each thing costs and returns; train your eye to judge quality; sense what lies beneath the surface; notice the small signals; and spend no effort on work that serves no purpose.

The simplest way to use them is a two-minute morning check. Before you open your email, pick the one rule your day most needs and write one line about where you will apply it. A day of negotiations might need the rule about sensing what lies beneath the surface; a day of status meetings, the rule about useless work. Once a week, rate yourself from 1 to 5 on each rule. Within a month you will see which rules you lean on and which you avoid.

How does the Water scroll help you stay calm under pressure?

The Water scroll opens with the state of mind Musashi wants in a contest, and his first instruction is that it should be no different from your everyday mind. He describes a mind that is broad and straight, neither strained nor slack, alert when things are quiet and unhurried when they are fast.

For leaders, that is a practical description of composure. When a leader speeds up under pressure, the team speeds up too, and mistakes follow. A quick check helps: notice whether you are tight or slack, ask whether you are protecting your own position, and choose the next single action. Then give one instruction at a time.

The same scroll warns against a fixed grip. Musashi's line, "いつくと云事を嫌ふ、いつくはしぬる手也、いつかざるは生る手也", is about holding a sword, but it reads well as a warning about plans. In Bodhih's rendering: Avoid gripping fast: a hand that locks has died, and a hand that stays loose is alive. Hold plans firmly but loosely, decide in advance what evidence would change them, and review them when reality drifts.

What does the Book of Five Rings say about practice?

Practice runs through the whole book. Musashi tells the reader to practise item by item, to compare themselves first with their own yesterday, and to treat mastery as a very long process: "千日の稽古を鍛とし萬日の稽古を鍊とす" In our rendering: A thousand days of practice hammers the metal into shape; ten thousand days tempers it.

This fits what researchers call deliberate practice, an idea associated with the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson: focused work on a specific part of a skill, with feedback, just beyond your current level. For a manager, that might mean ten minutes a day on one part of one skill, such as opening a difficult conversation or briefing a senior leader in three minutes.

Musashi also insists that practice must hold up in real conditions. Rehearse as you will perform, with a recording, a colleague or a real meeting set up with a clear intention, and keep a short log of what you noticed and what you will change next time.

How can managers use the Fire scroll without being aggressive?

The Fire scroll is about contests, and it puts initiative and timing at the centre. It also contains tactics for unsettling an opponent, which have no place at work. The useful parts are the ones about preparation and perspective.

Musashi compares decisive moments to crossing at a ford: know your boat, read the weather, use the wind that is there, and be ready to row the last stretch. Before a launch, hire or announcement, rate your readiness, read the conditions, decide whether to move first or respond, plan a back-up and set a date.

His most practical line for negotiators is about perspective: "敵になると云は、我身を敵になり替て思ふべきと云所也" In our rendering: To 'become the other side' means to put yourself in their place and think from there. Write the other side's brief in their voice before you meet them. And follow his rule about repeated failure: if an approach has failed twice, try something different in kind rather than the same thing a third time.

• Prepare: rate your readiness on people, plan, money and support.
• Read the conditions: is the client, market or rival rising or declining?
• Think from the other side: their goals, pressures and fears.
• Retire anything that has failed twice.
• Set a date, and plan the last stretch.

What does the Wind scroll teach about learning from competitors?

The Wind scroll reviews other schools of swordsmanship. Musashi's reason is the opposite of tribalism: he argues you cannot understand your own way without knowing how others work. He is also sharp about what he finds: schools that dress their art up for sale, that lean too far in one direction, that fix the eyes on one thing, or that prize speed over timing.

For managers, that becomes a weekly habit. Pick one other school: a competitor, another industry, another discipline or another team. Describe what they do in plain facts, ask why it works for them, find where they are one-sided, separate the ceremony from the part that bears weight, and decide what you will adapt and what you will not copy. Use public or freely shared information only, and never seek anyone's confidential information.

If you want a baseline for how you learn from experience and from others, a learning agility assessment such as AssessAll's Learning Agility (Interactive) can give you a starting point to compare against later.

Which Musashi quotes are fake?

Many lines shared online as Musashi quotes do not appear in his texts. Popular lines about there being many paths up the mountain, or about the true aim of martial arts being never to use them, are not in the Book of Five Rings. A popular English version of the Dokkodo's first article, about accepting everything as it is, does not match the original either: Musashi's own line is about not setting yourself against the ways of the world.

There is also no English translation of the Book of Five Rings in the public domain: the well-known translations are modern and under copyright. If you want to quote Musashi accurately, go to the Japanese text, such as the 1909 edition held by the National Diet Library of Japan, and label any English you write as your own rendering.

How can you start applying the Book of Five Rings this week?

Start small. Tomorrow morning, pick one of the nine rules and write one line about where you will use it. Choose one leadership skill you want to improve over twelve weeks, break it into parts and practise one part for ten minutes. In your next tense meeting, take ten seconds to check whether you are tight or slack. On Friday, write down one thing a competitor or another field does better than your team, and one thing you will not copy.

Over the following weeks, work through the scrolls in order: Earth for foundations and matching people to work, Water for composure and practice, Fire for timing and the other side's view, Wind for other schools and Emptiness for clear judgement. Finish by writing a short personal code of your own, in the spirit of the Dokkodo. To turn the practice into a development plan, Jobulary's explanation of the 70-20-10 model shows how learning on the job fits with learning from others. If you want the whole system ready to use, Bodhih Training's Musashi's Book of Five Rings for Leaders kit includes the e-book, the Mastery Practice Ledger, fillable forms, a 52-card deck and a 12-week programme calendar.