Sun Tzu the Art Of

SUN TZU’S BILINGUAL CHINESE AND ENGLISH TEXT Art of war_part1.indd i 28/4/16 1:33 pm To my brother Captain Valentine Giles, R. C., in the hope that a work 2400 years old may yet contain lessons worth consideration to the soldier of today, this translation is affectionately dedicated SUN TZU BILINGUAL CHINESE AND ENGLISH TEXT With a new foreword by John Minford Translated by Lionel Giles TUTTLE Publishing Tokyo Rutland, Vermont Singapore ABOUT TUTTLE “Books to Span the East and West” Our core mission at Tuttle Publishing is to create books which bring people together one page at a time. Tuttle was founded in 1832 in the small New England town of Rutland, Vermont (USA). Our fundamental values remain as strong today as they were then—to publish best-in-class books informing the English-speaking world about the countries and peoples of Asia. The world has become a smaller place today and Asia’s economic, cultural and political inﬂ uence has expanded, yet the need for meaning- ful dialogue and information about this diverse region has never been greater. Since 1948, Tuttle has been a leader in publishing books on the cultures, arts, cuisines, lan- guages and literatures of Asia. Our authors and photographers have won numerous awards and Tuttle has published thousands of books on subjects ranging from martial arts to paper crafts. We welcome you to explore the wealth of information available on Asia at www.tuttlepublishing.com. Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Distributed by Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd. North America, Latin America & Europe www.tuttlepublishing.com Tuttle Publishing 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon Copyright © 2008 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd. VT 05759-9436 U.S.A. Th is paperback edition Copyright © 2016 Tel: 1 (802) 773-8930; Fax: 1 (802) 773-6993 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd. 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CONTENTS FOREWORD The Art of War: A Classic for our Times ...................... vii PREFACE ............................................................................... xxvii INTRODUCTION Sun Tzŭ and His Book .................................................... xxx The Text of Sun Tzŭ ........................................................ xlvii The Commentators ......................................................... li Appreciations of Sun Tzŭ ............................................... lvii Apologies for War ........................................................... lix Bibliography .................................................................... lxiv Part One: The Art of War COMPLETE CHINESE TEXT AND ENGLISH TRANSLATION Chapter 1 Laying Plans................................................... 2 Chapter 2 Waging War ................................................... 6 Chapter 3 Attack by Stratagem ...................................... 10 Chapter 4 Tactical Dispositions ..................................... 14 Chapter 5 Energy ............................................................ 17 Chapter 6 Weak Points and Strong ................................ 21 Chapter 7 Maneuvering.................................................. 27 Chapter 8 Variation of Tactics ....................................... 32 Chapter 9 The Army on the March ............................... 35 Chapter 10 Terrain ............................................................ 42 vi CONTENTS Chapter 11 The Nine Situations ....................................... 47 Chapter 12 The Attack by Fire ......................................... 57 Chapter 13 The Use of Spies ............................................. 60 Part Two: Critical Notes and Commentaries Chapter 1 Laying Plans................................................... 66 Chapter 2 Waging War ................................................... 71 Chapter 3 Attack by Stratagem ...................................... 76 Chapter 4 Tactical Dispositions ..................................... 82 Chapter 5 Energy ............................................................ 86 Chapter 6 Weak Points and Strong ................................ 93 Chapter 7 Maneuvering.................................................. 101 Chapter 8 Variation of Tactics ....................................... 112 Chapter 9 The Army on the March ............................... 119 Chapter 10 Terrain ............................................................ 133 Chapter 11 The Nine Situations ....................................... 142 Chapter 12 The Attack by Fire ......................................... 169 Chapter 13 The Use of Spies ............................................. 177 FOREWORD The Art of War: A Classic for our Times This extraordinary little book is one of the oldest, shortest and most frequently translated of all Chinese classical texts. In this re- spect, it stands in the same category as those two other venerable scriptures, The Book of Changes (Yijing 易經), and The Way and Its Power (Daodejing 道德經). Since probably the fifth century BC, The Art of War has been one of the key texts of Chinese strategic thinking. Widely read in Japan since the eighth century, it has also since the eighteenth century held a deep fascination for the West- ern reader. Napoleon is reputed to have possessed a copy of the earliest (1782) French translation by the Jesuit, Père Jean-Joseph- Marie Amiot (1718-1793). It has also exerted a huge influence in the modern Chinese world. Both Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Ze- dong are known to have studied the book carefully, and Chiang was an avid collector of Art of War editions. As for Mao, he learned many lessons from Master Sun, applying them to the dialectics of guerrilla warfare, and himself writing in December 1936: “Some people are good at knowing themselves and poor at knowing their enemy, and some are the other way around. There is a saying in the book of Sun Tzŭ, the great military scientist of ancient China, ‘Know the enemy, know yourself, and victory is never in doubt, not in a hundred battles,’ which refers both to the stage of learning and to the stage of application, both to knowing the laws of the development of objective reality and to deciding on our own action in accordance with these laws in order to overcome the enemy facing us. We should not take this saying lightly.”1 1 Mao Zedong, “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”, Selected Works, vol. 1. For the original, see Mao Zedong xuanji 毛澤東選集 (Beijing, 1969), p. 166. See also the excellent viii FOREWORD In the twentieth century, the relevance of Sun Tzŭ was widely acknowledged across the globe. During the Second World War, an English version was produced for the Royal Air Force, with the admonition: “Master Sun is fundamental and, read with in- sight, lays bare the mental mechanism of our enemy (the Japa- nese). Study him, and study him again. Do not be misled by his simplicity.” We are told that American soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are provided with a copy. The great historian of Chinese science, Joseph Needham, called Sun Tzŭ’s The Art of War a “unique masterpiece of military thinking,”2 and went on to compare its extremely modern “psychological emphasis” on the “duel of minds” with the work of twentieth-century “praxi- ologists” (“those who study the spring of individual action and conduct”), such as Parsons and Shils.3 Needham’s summary of the book remains one of the most intelligent and succinct. The military historian B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970) wrote in 1963: “Sun Tzŭ’s essays on ‘The Art of War’ have never been sur- passed in comprehensiveness and depth of understanding…The need [for a fresh translation of Sun Tzŭ] has increased with the development of nuclear weapons, potentially suicidal and geno- cidal. It becomes all the more important in view of the re-emer- gence of China, under Mao, as a great military power.”4 Liddell Hart’s own principles of strategy, as seen in his study Strategy: the indirect approach, often reflect his reading of Sun Tzŭ: In strategy the longest way round is often the shortest way there; a direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, whereas an indirect approach loos- ens the defender’s hold by upsetting his balance. study and translation by Brigadier General Sam Griffith, US Marine Corps,Sun Tzu: The Art of War (Oxford, 1963), especially part six of the Introduction, “Sun Tzu and Mao Tse-tung.” This book was based on the author’s Oxford D. Phil. Dissertation. In addition to his military background, Griffith had the good fortune to be supervised in his work by the prominent scholar Wu Shichang, then teaching at Oxford. 2 Joseph Needham and Robin

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