have varied anywhere from his 20s to as late as his 50s. Even worse, a number of scholars contend that identifying Seigen as Kojirō's teacher is a mistake and that he was actually trained by a student of Seigen's, Kanemaki Jisai. The reason for this was that the person interviewed for the Nitenki (the last known witness to the duel) said Kojirō's age but the author missed the first part, and only got the last part which was 18 (十八), pronounced as "juu hachi" - however, numbers in Japanese are spoken as tens and ones, such as 48 (四十八) "yonjuuhachi". The reason his last name is Sasaki can be because of two reasons: His mother was a member of the Sasaki clan and had him out of wedlock. Since they were not married, he took on his mother's last name. She later married a distant cousin who also shared the same last name, and raised him as his own son. His mother was unaware she was pregnant with him when she married into the Sasaki clan. Thus, her husband, although suspecting the child wasn't his, raised him as his own son. Like his adversary Musashi, he was also very tall (about 5 ft. 10 in. or 1.78 m), a giant compared to the average Japanese at that time. Apparently, the young Musashi, at the time, around 29 years old, heard of Sasaki's fame and asked Lord Hosokawa Tadaoki, through an intermediary, Nagaoka Sado Okinaga, a principal vassal of Tadaoki, to arrange a duel. Tadaoki assented and set the time and place as 13 April 1612 on the comparatively remote island of Ganryujima of Funashima, the strait between Honshū and Kyūshū. The match was probably set in such a remote place because by this time Sasaki had acquired many students and disciples, and were Sasaki to lose, they would probably have attempted to kill Musashi. According to the legend, Musashi arrived more than three hours late and goaded Sasaki by taunting him. When Sasaki attacked, his blow came so close as to sever Musashi's chonmage. He came close to victory several times until, supposedly, he was blinded by the sunset behind Musashi, who struck him on the skull with his oversized bokken, or wooden sword, which was long. Musashi had supposedly fashioned the long bokken, a type called a suburitō due to its above-average length, by shaving down the spare oar