Daibutsu, Kamakura

Daibutsu, Kamakura
Daibutsu in Kamakura, June 2010. There were thousands of school kids visiting that day. It was still great fun.

Friday, October 31, 2008

The Art of War

Sun Tzu's classic, "The Art of War" has obviously been around along time. It recently, in the last 5 or 10 years, has become popular again. Interpretations of the old Chinese book have been written to help people to become successful in life, or business or other areas.

The last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, also read this book. According to the book, "The Last Shogun" by Ryotaro Shiba, Yoshinobu was rereading the classic book during his last days in power. Yoshinobu used the book to try and help him better understand his enemy, the leader of the Satsuma forces.

Amazing to think that a historic book used today by business professionals, executives, and other leaders was also used by the Japan's last shogun.

4 comments:

  1. I read this book during my waning days in college and wasn't all that impressed. Maybe it's because everything in the book has become standard practice, but I found it very redundant.

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  2. I actually have not read the book yet.

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  3. Anonymous8:32 AM

    I actually like the Art of War, but not as a road to life. I think that approach is kind of silly. Sun-tzu's intent was how to win wars quickly and effectively, with minimal loss of life, rather than dragging things out in needless sieges, wasteful attacks and so on.

    I actually really like this one illustrated version by a famous Taiwanese cartoonist:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385472587?ie=UTF8&tag=thelev8thbud-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0385472587

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  4. The illustrated book looks interesting.

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