OFH Throwback - Episode #55 - Who Was Japan's Greatest Swordsman? (Part I)

August 12, 2025·1 hr 1 min·5 clips

A 12-year-old boy challenges a master swordsman to a duel with a wooden sword he carved himself.

Episode 55 returns from season 3. The host says the show is on a short summer hiatus, and Musashi's story seemed like the right wild thing to send out with listeners on the road. Fair enough. He imagines people taking Our Fake History to Italy, hiking through Australia, or crossing Canada, then hands them a story about a disheveled Japanese swordsman carving through the countryside. First, though, come the names. Musashi was apparently called Benesuke as a child before taking the Miyamoto name in honor of his father's hometown. Too many names, the host admits, so he sticks with Musashi or Miyamoto Musashi. Sensible. This legend is tangled enough already. Then the family story gets shaky. Musashi's father is generally believed to be Munisai, who turns up all over the stories about him. But a gravestone may put Munisai's death four years before Musashi's birth. If that date is right, the fatherhood story falls apart. Maybe the memorial is wrong. Maybe the origin story is fake. The host wants that doubt sitting in the listener's pocket before the tale goes any further. Musashi's birth mother is said to have died soon after he was born, leaving him with his father's second wife, Yoshiko. After a divorce, Yoshiko stayed his guardian and moved to the next village with a new guy. Musashi later learned the truth, and it hit hard, especially once he heard his real father was a respected samurai. The myth begins crooked: uncertainty first, clean hero portrait later, if at all.

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