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context: comics > some works > Lone Wolf & Cub
Lone Wolf & Cub: The Gateless Barrier
This is one story, running to 60 pages in the 8,500 pages of the title. It made my jaw drop when I first read it, many years ago, and it still takes my breath away. This is partly because it is a powerful story, masterfully executed, but I think it also played a big part in opening my mind to how much there is that is utterly different in Japanese thinking, and its art. I felt as if I was coming up against what philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn terms an 'incommensurable paradigm' difference - and indeed I was.
Itto Ogami is a dispossessed samurai on the run, with his infant son, working as an assassin. He is the hero of the story, yet he accepts any paid work, with no moral judgements. A daimyo hires him to kill a priest, regarded as a buddha, who is loved by the peasants, and who is urging the lord to forego taxation because his people are starving. Our hero makes no argument about this, and accepts the job. He finds the priest alone and defenceless, and announces that he is there to kill him - and cannot do it. The two sit down together and the priest explains why he cannot do this: this is a Zen explanation, that you cannot kill one who has attained mu, nothingness, enlightenment - unless you have also attained this. Ogami leaves to meditate, with both knowing that he must try again. He meditates alone in mountains, surrounded by wolves, for some undefined time, then returns to find the priest being carried in a parade - and he kills him. The priest's last words are in praise of our hero having achieved the enlightenment to permit this. The priest's followers try to attack, but are unable to. The daimyo and his soldiers then complete their plan - attacking the assassin they hired so as to both dispose of their main opponent and then win back the peasants' trust. He deliberately allows this attack, and cuts them all down.
This is a highly unusual story. It is very hard to make any sense of its morality, of the priest advising the assassin what he needs to do to kill him, then praising him when he achieves it. However, when you know a little about Zen, it stops being so hard to comprehend.