Free Samurai and Ninja: The Real Story Behind the Japanese Warrior Myth That Shatters the Bushido Mystique by Antony Cummins Page B

The form, the structure of a skill, and to follow the basics.
    2. 破 Ha – To break from the form, to start to allow the form to fall away, and the teaching to be used freely.
    3. 離 Ri – To be free of the form and to create using principles.
    Remember, we must not imagine that the samurai is simply a brute, yet we must not see him as incapable of horrific acts; so to help to show the complexities of samurai thinking the following are examples of just how deep samurai thought could be:
    本末
    The concept of Honmatsu
    Hon 本 —Meaning “source” or “origin,” this is the root of things, the focus and the center; an analogy would be the trunk of a tree and could be seen as internal.
    Matsu 末 —Meaning “secondary,” this is the surface of all things, the outside; an analogy would be the leaves of a tree and it could be seen as things external.
    The concept of honmatsu is to identify and discern between that which is an internal truth and the periphery, the reality of what is happening on the inside of a situation and that which is external—i.e., to identify if information is directly from the source or if it is secondhand, or to know a person’s true feelings above the feelings that they display publicly.
    利 & 道理
    Ri and Dori
    Ri 利 – Constructed logic
    Dori 道理 – Truth
    A samurai and shinobi need to identify that which is a truth and that which is constructed logic . Ri is the false, the man-made information and the arguments constructed with an agenda, while Dori is the truth of a matter, the reality.
    虚実
    Kyojitsu
    Kyo 虚 – Insubstantial
    Jitsu 実 – Substantial
    This term is heavily used in samurai and shinobi records; it is equated to solid and weak, presence and the illusion of presence, a true attack or a feint . The idea is that in warfare a strategic move is either a real and serious move or it is a feint. This is found in all warfare: the movement of troops, the positioning of forces, the outward structure of a fortress, etc. One of the main tasks of the shinobi is to discover if something is kyo or if it is jitsu, i.e., if it is fake or true.
    There are numerous examples like the above, but only a few have been outlined here to show that the samurai followed the intellectual and the philosophical—yet at the same time, their primary aim was war.
    Samurai and Shinobi Scrolls
    When the period of the great wars came to an end, the samurai were concerned with the skills of their schools becoming useless and a massive increase in written scrolls erupted with the aim to preserve their teachings. At a basic level, samurai manuals are written to preserve the teachings when those teachings cannot be tested in warfare.
    Samurai and shinobi skills are often given names and are collated together. This has led to the belief that samurai and shinobi scrolls are written in code, which is erroneous. Normally the name of a skill is poetic or has a visual trigger and the contents are taught by word of mouth— kuden . This means that often some samurai and shinobi scrolls are in the format of a mokuroku —a list. This list is unintelligible to a normal reader, not because it is in code, but because it is a list of skill names that the reader has not had the opportunity to have explained to them. For example, the Bansenshukai ninja scroll— The Book of Ninja in English—lists the following skills:
♦ Six points on preparations
    ♦ Three points of Katsuraotoko no jutsu (planting an undercover agent within a possible enemy)
    ♦ Three points of Jokei jutsu (planning an undercover attack in a tense or urgent situation)
    ♦ Two points of Kunoichi no jutsu when using Kunoichi (female agents)
    ♦ Two points of Satobito no jutsu (utilizing local people)
    ♦ Two point of Minomushi no jutsu (making a spy out of a local inhabitant)
    ♦ Two points on Fukurogaeshi no jutsu—the skill of reversing a bag (serving the enemy and then betraying them in the end)
    ♦ Three points on Hotarubi no