To Become the Enemy

To Become the Enemy is a principle of strategic perspective-taking: rather than judge an opponent from the outside, the practitioner must imagine occupying the opponent’s position. That reversal can expose how apparent strength or weakness depends on circumstance, and helps the strategist act without being governed by fear of the enemy’s reputation.

Meaning and Reversal

The expression asks the strategist to think from the enemy’s position. Its central illustration reverses the apparent roles in a house: a robber trapped inside may look like a fortified adversary to those outside, but imagining the situation from within changes the picture. The person shut inside is a pheasant; the person who enters to arrest him is a hawk. The image makes perspective operational: who appears powerful depends on where each party is situated and what choices remain available.

This is not simply sympathy with an opponent. The shift is a means of assessing the contest more accurately. The person who sees only a fortified enemy may become cautious; the person who considers the opponent’s confinement can recognize that the situation may constrain him instead.

Use in Large-Scale Strategy

In large-scale strategy, the text identifies a habitual error: people assume the enemy is strong and grow cautious as a result. To Become the Enemy counters that reflex by directing attention to the conditions on both sides. With good soldiers, an understanding of strategic principles, and knowledge of how to defeat the enemy, there is no need for apprehension merely because the opponent seems powerful.

The principle therefore links judgment to practical readiness. It does not claim that every enemy is weak, or that strength can be ignored; it argues that fear based on an unexamined impression can distort the assessment. Perspective-taking helps the commander test that impression against the forces and strategic knowledge actually available.

Use in Single Combat

The same reversal applies in single combat. The practitioner must consider the opponent’s position rather than assume that the opponent’s mastery makes defeat inevitable. If the fighter imagines facing a master of the Way who understands strategy, the text warns, that assumption itself leads toward loss. The point is not to deny the adversary’s skill, but to avoid granting it decisive power before the contest is understood.

This principle belongs to a wider discipline in which judgment is trained alongside bodily action. The prescribed stance keeps the head erect and the body composed; the gaze takes a broad view, distinguishing strong perception from weaker sight and learning to see distant things as if close and close things from a distance. The practitioner is also told to attend to the enemy’s sword without distraction by its insignificant movements. To Become the Enemy extends this trained attention from visible movement to the opponent’s situation: both require looking past an immediate impression.

Strategic and Bodily Discipline

The book’s other instructions show how perspective must be joined to controlled action. The long sword is held with a grip that avoids both slackness and rigidity; the hands remain intent on cutting but pliable rather than fixed. Footwork follows ordinary walking, with the feet alternating rather than relying on one foot. In close engagement, the practitioner is advised to maintain contact without a gap between bodies, while the Body Strike uses the left shoulder to strike the enemy’s breast through an opening in the guard. These are not definitions of To Become the Enemy, but they place it within a method that coordinates attention, posture, movement, and decision.

Other strategic images likewise turn practical circumstances into tests of judgment. Crossing at a Ford means knowing the route, the ship’s soundness, and the favour of the day before setting out, then rowing the remaining distance if the wind changes near the destination. To Hold Down a Pillow means suppressing the enemy’s useful actions and stopping an attack as it begins. Together, such examples clarify the work done by perspective-taking: it belongs to a strategy of reading conditions, anticipating what the opponent can do, and preventing an assumption from becoming a constraint on one’s own action.

Scope and Significance

The principle’s force lies in the change of scale it supports. In a house, it reverses the apparent relation between the trapped figure and the person entering to capture him; in large-scale strategy, it checks the tendency to treat the enemy as overwhelmingly strong; in single combat, it prevents imagined mastery from deciding the contest in advance. The same act of changing standpoint can therefore clarify both physical confinement and strategic confidence.

To Become the Enemy is also one part of a larger vocabulary of change. The Mountain-Sea Change warns against repeating an unsuccessful attack and calls for a different method; Rat’s Head, Ox’s Neck directs the warrior to shift suddenly between small detail and a large view. Against that background, taking the enemy’s position is a disciplined correction of perspective: it allows the strategist to see the contest from another angle, without mistaking an impression for the whole situation.