After reading some of the manga Vagabond, I decided to go straight to the source material and read Yoshikawa's Musashi, a historical fiction account of Miyamoto Musashi at the start of the Edo period. Despite it having roots as a serialized novel with a few pages released every day in a Japanese newspaper almost a century ago, the book feels very modern. It's surprising to see how many ideas like recurring comical villains, kidnapping plots, younger boy hero prototypes and love triangles were already established. The spiritual quest of Musashi and his evolving understanding of warfare is probably the most rewarding part of it though. It's worth reading.