Dizeres de Samurai ( VII )

"To talk about other people's affairs is a great mistake. To praise them, too, is unfitting. In any event, it is best to know your own ability well, to put forth effort in your endeavors, and to be discreet in speech."

( pág. 82 do "Hagakure - the Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658- 1719 )

Dizeres de Samurai ( VI )

" During happy times, pride and extravagance are dangerous. If one is not prudent in ordinary times, he will not be able to catch up. A person who advances during good times will fater during the bad."

( pág.56 de " Hagakure - the Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658-1719 )

Dizeres de Samurai ( V )

" When I was young, I kept a "Dairy of Regret" and tried to record my mistakes day by day, but there was never a day when I didn't have twenty or thirty entries. As there was no end to it, I gave up. Even today, when I think about the day's affairs after going to bed, there is never a day when I do not make some blunder in speaking or in some activity. Living without mistakes is truly impossible. But this is something that people who live by cleverness have no inclination to think about. "

( pág. 55 do "Hagakure - the Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658 - 1719 )

Dizeres de Samurai ( IV )

" It is said that what is called "the spirit of an age" is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same.

For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. This is the mistake of people who are attached to past generations. They have no understanding of this point.

On the other hand, people who only know the disposition of the present day and dislike the ways of the past are too lax."

( pág. 68 do "Hagakure - the Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658 - 1719 )

Dizeres de Samurai ( III )

" In China there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. His deep affection for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. It is said that he died of fright. He was probably a man who always spoke big words but acted differently when facing the real thing. "

( pág. 38 do "Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658 - 1719 )

Dizeres de Samurai ( II )

" At the time when there was a council concerning the promotion of a certain man, the council members were at the point of deciding that promotion was useless because of the fact that the man had previously been involved in a drunken brawl. But someone said, "If we were to cast aside every man who had made a mistake once, useful men could probably not be come by. A man who makes a mistake once will be considerably more prudent and useful because of his repentance. I feel that he should be promoted."
Someone else then asked, "Will you guarantee him?"
The man replied, "Of course I will."
The others asked, "By what will you guarantee him?"
And he replied, "I can guarantee him by the fact that he is a man who has erred once. A man who has never once erred is dangerous." This said, the man was promoted."

( pág. 28 do "Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658 - 1719 )

Dizeres de Samurai ( I )

" Furthermore, during the last thirty years customs have changed; now when young samurai get together, if there is not just talk about money matters, loss and gain, secrets, clothing styles or matters of sex, there is no reason to gather together at all. Customs are going to pieces. One can say that formerly when a man reached the age of twenty or thirty, he did not carry despicable things in his heart, and thus neither did such words appear. If an elder unwittingly said something of that sort, he thought of it as a sort of injury. This new custom probably appears because people attach importance to being beautiful before society and to household finances. What things a person should be able to accomplish if he had no haughtiness concerning his place in society !

It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material possessions . Men with contriving hearts are lucking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect."

( pág. 34 do "Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai " de Yamamoto Tsunetomo, 1658 - 1719 )

HAGAKURE - O Livro do Samurai

" On May 16, 1700, Nabeshima Mitsushige, the third daimyõ of the area now known as Saga Prefecture, died at the age of sixty-nine. One of his closest retainers, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, who had gone into the service of Mitsushige as a child, was at that time forty-two years of age. Prohibited from committing disembowelment in simpathy with his master's death by edicts both of his own fief and of the Tokugawa government, and disappointed by the tendencies of Mitsushige's successor, Tsunetomo requested and was granted permission to retire and become a Buddhist priest. That summer he moved to a small hermitage in a place called Kurotsuchibaru, about twelve kilometers north of Saga Castle, and lived there in semi-seclusion. In 1710 he began to be visited by Tashiro Tsuramoto, a young samurai who for unknown reasons had been released from his service as a scribe the year before. Their conversations lasted for seven years, and on September 10, 1716, Yamamoto's utterances, as recorded by Tsuramoto, were arranged as a book and givem the title of Hagakure, a word that could mean either "hidden by the leaves" or "Hidden leaves". Three years later, Yamamoto passed away at the age of sixty-one"

Esta é a origem do livro " Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai" de Yamamoto Tsunetomo publicado pela primeira vez em 1979, em inglês, pela Kodansha International,Ltd, com tradução de William Scott Wilson.