ART OF WAR

>>8667659
Meme book

Pro-tip, stick to the Western Canon

has anyone here read hanfeizi?
i read five vermin for an east asian history class and it's pretty cool desu

>>8667659
If you're after something practically informative, a translation that sacrifices literalism, but if you're there for academic purposes, the former

>>8667661
T. Someone who's never read anything in the Western canon or otherwise

>>8667659

The Art of War is short and simple as fuck.

By no means breath-taking, just some general/simply guidelines for doing well in feudal China. The Prince is basically the same thing, only more political than military.

>>8667680
I found TAoW more compelling than Thucydides, but Gibbon's meme Rome series was better than both

What is the general /lit consesus on Musashis "The book of five rings" ?

>>8667714
Second to this

Get Modern Library's the Book of War.

Its translation is direct from archaeological texts.

As a bonus, you get the best translation of Clausewitz, which you should read if you are interested in war/strategy.

Just the art of war, meaning without commentary or anything before/after is short af. Just read it for the general ideas. I thought when i read it that i would become more wise but instead i just became an autist with "all war is based on deception" as a catch phrase.

>>8667659
>Chinese symbols translated directly
You mean a word-for-word translation paying no heed to the different granmatical structures of literary Chinese and English? That's an idea so silly I doubt it exists. Even Google Translate tries to do better than that, and it's a robot.

>>8667744
Cheers

>>8667659
>Chinese symbols translated directly, or a more coherent translation?

????????

i'm tempted to say "just learn chinese already" but i'll resign myself to recommending that you at least inform yourself about logographic scripts before you say shit like that

File: Three Kingdoms - A Historical Novel - Part One.jpg (163KB, 453x648px) Image search: [Google]

163KB, 453x648px

On a partly related noted, I have an epub of the unabridged two-volume version of Moss Roberts' translation of RotK.
http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520224780

I couldn't find an epub of Moss Roberts' for the longest time til this one. Spent a little over a week tidying it up. There were formatting issues when comparing to my physical copies and still some existing spelling errors which I sorted out.
https://aww.moe/v86hxd.epub

>>8667659
I found a decent translation online that was done by committee. It's a logistics book more than anything, but with specific figures relevant to warring in feudal China. An awful lot of it is the general principles tho.

>>8670100
This guy knows
>tfw when you want to look up Chinese econometrics research and have to slog through several pages of why these two symbols are better than these two other symbols, mostly in reference to etymology and use in English

>>8667714
i read it a few years ago, it's more about sword fighting than anything, there's a little bit of philosophy but not much.

his writings on dokkodo/ the path to walk alone is where his philosophy on life lies, and his acetism.

there's a pretty good doco on musashi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi4GB7XEcVg

>>8670100
>TFW reading directly translated Chinese
Dog woman house mountain mountain