1573 — Takuan Sōhō born at Izushi, in Tajima.
c. 1584 — Musashi born, most probably in Harima or Mimasaka. The date and place are both contested.
c. 1596 — Musashi's first duel, against Arima Kihei of the Shintō-ryū. He is thirteen and kills him.
1600 — Sekigahara. The settlement that produces the Tokugawa.
c. 1604 — the Yoshioka encounters at Kyoto, in the traditional accounts.
1609 — Takuan appointed abbot of Daitoku-ji, aged thirty-seven. He resigns after three days.
c. 1612 — Ganryūjima.
1614–15 — the Osaka campaigns. Musashi present; his side disputed.
1626 — Miyamoto Mikinosuke performs oibara on the death of Honda Tadatoki. Iori adopted.
1629 — the Purple Robe Affair. Takuan exiled to Dewa.
1632 — Takuan pardoned. Yagyū Munenori completes Heihō Kadensho.
1630s — Takuan writes Fudōchi Shinmyōroku to Munenori.
1637–38 — Shimabara. Musashi present with the Hosokawa contingent, aged fifty-four, and injured by a thrown stone.
1639 — Iemitsu builds Tōkai-ji in Edo and installs Takuan as founding abbot.
1640 — Musashi arrives at Kumamoto under Hosokawa Tadatoshi.
1641 — Musashi writes the Thirty-Five Articles. Tadatoshi dies.
1643 — Musashi withdraws to Reigandō and begins Go Rin No Sho.
1645, fifth month — the scrolls finished and handed to Terao Magonojō. The Dokkōdō written on the twelfth. Musashi dies on the nineteenth. Takuan dies in the same year.
1654 — Iori raises the Kokura monument.
1935 — Yoshikawa Eiji begins serialising Musashi in the Asahi Shimbun, and gives a hundred million people a face.