The Art of War examinations. During the Sengoku period (c. 1467–1568), the Japanese "daimyō" named Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) is said to have become almost invincible in all battles without relying on guns, because he studied "The Art of War". The book even gave him the inspiration for his famous battle standard "Fūrinkazan" (Wind, Forest, Fire and Mountain), meaning fast as the wind, silent as a forest, ferocious as fire and immovable as a mountain. The translator Samuel B. Griffith offers a chapter on "Sun Tzu and Mao Tse-Tung" where "The Art of War" is cited as influencing Mao's "On Guerrilla Warfare", "On the Protracted
What Is Art? art. In short, new artists imitate the classics, setting their own feelings aside, which, according to Tolstoy, is contrary to the point of art. Art schools teach people how to imitate the method of the masters, but they cannot teach the sincerity of emotion that is the propellant of great works. In Tolstoy's words, "[n]o school can call up feelings in a man, and still less can it teach a man what is the essence of art: the manifestation of feeling in his own particular fashion". Throughout the book Tolstoy demonstrates a willingness to dismiss generally accepted masters, among them