This book introduces you to martial arts treatises that were written by two legendary 17th-century Japanese, Takuan Soho and Miyamoto Musashi. Takuan Soho was a Zen monk, calligrapher, painter, poet, gardener, tea ceremony master and inventor of the recipe for pickling radishes, which bears his name and is popular in Japan up to the present. Tradition says that Takuan was the teacher of the invincible sword master Miyamoto Musashi, who wrote at the end of his life the well-known treatise on strategy "The Book of Five Rings," also included in the present edition. These days, they are read with the same interest as they were three and a half centuries ago.