Description: Light in the Clouds Sharing contents about the martial arts, language, and culture of Japan
There are many interesting documents of old that describe all sorts of trades, practices, cultural topics from pre-modern Japan. This is especially true for those who are enthusiasts of Japanese martial/military history, for there are many resources on said topic. Some famous documents are usually easy to obtain as great strides are taken to make these more readily available to the public. Then there are those rare gems that are part of individuals’ personal collection or found in second-hand bookstores, wh
There is a term for documents that we must be wary about, which is “gisaku” (偽作). While it’s simple to translate this term as “forgery” or “fake”, this term actually has more layers to its use. There are reasons to labeling an old document gisaku, which could range from, but not limited to, the following:
In the following text below, certain excerpts from a source entitled, “Buke Kojitsu Gunrei bassho” (武家故実軍令抜書, Excerpts of Customary Practices and Rules of the Samurai) will be used to illustrate this point about war documents that could be labeled as gisaku. Unfortunately, the author of this is not mentioned, which leans it closer to not the most trust-worthy of documents as there’s no way to verify the information.