Known for hunting tigers for sport armed with only a spear, the Koreans greatly feared Kato Kiyomasa and called him "Kishokan"—"The Devil General". William Scott Wilson describes Katō Kiyomasa thus: "He was a military man first and last, outlawing even the recitation of poetry, putting the martial arts above all else. His precepts show the single-mindedness and Spartan attitudes of the man, (they) demonstrate emphatically that the warrior's first duty in the early 17th century was simply to "grasp the sword and die." Contemporary accounts of Katō describe him as "awe-inspiring, yet not unfriendly, and a natural leader of men".