About the Author

Born in 1630 to a samurai family during the lifetime of renowned swordsman Musashi, Ekiken Kaibara (d. 1714) was a samurai physician and neo-Confucian samurai scholar. As an adult he fell into disfavour with his lord and was stripped of his income and forced to become a ronin (a wandering, unemployed samurai). After being reinstated by the new daimyo lord of the Fukuoka region, he began an intense period of study in Kyoto, where he met some of the luminaries of the time. Kaibara became known for his keen intellect and wide interests, which encompassed a myriad of subjects, including Confucianism, education, history, herbal remedies, spiritual issues and philosophy. He published a number of books, one of his last being the Yojokun, released when he was 83. William Scott Wilson is the well-known translator of many Japanese and Chinese classics. As an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College in 1966, Wilson 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 California, then undertook extensive research on Edo-period (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. Wilson's other translations include The Book of Five Rings, The Life-Giving Sword, The Unfettered Mind, The Demon's Sermon, and the Eiji Yoshikawa samurai novel Taiko, as well as the Ideals of the Samurai, which has been used as a college textbook on Japanese history and thought.