The 36 Secret Strategies of the Martial Arts

Hiroshi Moriya’s book is a collection of ancient Chinese maxims that encapsulate some of the Far East’s most cunning tactics for battle and deception — and as such offer invaluable insights into facets of the Oriental mind.

Each of these strategies represents a distilled nugget of Chinese wisdom. Moriya, an acknowledged authority on Chinese culture and philosophy, originally published a book in Japanese in which he analyzed and explained these strategies. He then used examples from ancient and recent history to further elucidate their meaning. Now, translator William Scott Wilson makes “The 36 Secret Strategies” accessible to today’s reader with his new English translation of both the Chinese maxim itself and Moriya’s interpretive work.

The volume is organized into six parts (Strategies for Victory in Battle, Strategies for Engaging the Enemy, Strategies for Attack, Strategies for Ambiguous Situations, Strategies for Unified Battle, and Strategies for a Lost Battle), with six chapters in each part. Some of the ideas presented will be familiar; others will be new and counterintuitive. Short, pithy titles encapsulate each one: “Borrow a Sword to Make Your Kill”, “If You Covet It, Leave It Alone,” “Cast a Brick, Pull in Jade,” “To Catch a Thief, Catch His King,” “Send Them to the Roof, Remove the Ladder,” and so on.

While these strategies offer a look into the past, they are even more valuable to today’s reader for providing insights into contemporary China. And, like such other classics as “The Book of Five Rings” and “The Art of War,” “The 36 Secret Strategies” gives the businessman, the diplomat, the politician, the military strategist, the martial artist, and the sports competitor keys to understanding, interpreting, and countering the actions of even the most daunting opponent.