The Book of Five Rings

This vedicrystalpunk (thanks, Paul) will soon begin learning Japanese from a native gentleman, and this post marks the realization that 1/f may be a Japanophile or otaku. Nintendo, you are to blame for injecting all this subliminal stuff into an innocent child's brain - but now the subject has discovered more sophisticated distractions, such as the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, written circa 1645. Go ahead and read all the wonderful quotations extracted by the kind Wikipedian who wrote that detail, for example:

Timing is important in dancing and pipe or string music, for they are in rhythm only if timing is good. Timing and rhythm are also involved in the military arts, shooting bows and guns, and riding horses. In all skills and abilities there is timing.... There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.

There is going to be a whole lot more Japan to come, I suspect.