Way The character for Way is read "Michi" in Japanese or "Do" in Chinese-based reading. It is equivalent to the Chinese "Tao" and means the whole life of the warrior, his devotion to the sword, his place in the Confucius-coloured bureaucracy of the Tokugawa system. It is the road of the cosmos, not just a set of ethics for the artist or priest to live by, but the divine footprints of God pointing the Way.

Strategy "Heiho" is a word of Chinese derivation meaning military strategy. "Hei" means soldier and "Ho" means method or form.

Homage to heaven "Ten" or heaven means the Shinto religion. Shinto - a word compounding the two characters "Kami" (God) and "Michi" (Way) - is the old religion of Japan. In Shinto there are many Holies, gods of steel and fermentation, place and industry, and so on, and the first gods, ancestors to the Imperial line.

Kwannon God(dess) of mercy in Buddhism.

Arima Kihei of the Shinto school. See note 15.

All things with no teacher There had been traditions instituted for the arts in the Muromachi period, system of grades and licences and seniority, and these were perpetuated perhaps more rigidly under the Tokugawa bureaucracy. Musashi studied various arts in separate schools, but when after his enlightenment he persued his studies he had become separate from traditional guidance. He writes his final words in the book of the Void: "Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense, and taking the Void as the Way, you will thee the Way as Void."

Spirit "Shin" or "Kokoro" has been translated "heart", "soul", or "spirit". It could be put as feeling, manner. It has always been said "The sword is the soul of the samurai."

The hour of the tiger Years, months and hours were named after the ancient Chinese Zodiacal time system.