MYTHCOMICS: "THE GUNS OF SAKAI" WEEKLY MANGA ACTION, 197?

As with my last LONE WOLF AND CUB review, it's taken from the translation provided by First Comics.

I noticed a pattern in a re-read of several LONE WOLF issues. that the series' glorification of the samurai code bushido usually takes one of two positions. Either assassin Itto Ogami comes across people who deviate from the honor of the code, after which Ogami either kills them or shames them with his dispassionate scorn, or he comes across people who fulfill the code, after which Ogami usually duels them to the death.

"The Guns of Sakai" takes a somewhat broader sociological view of Ogami's world, 16th-century Japan, then under control of a Shogunate constantly trying to keep all its subjects in line. Ogami's skills as an assassin are engaged by a group of gunsmiths who provide rifles for the Shogun. The gunsmiths claim that one of their number, Shichirobei "the Silent Gunsmith." has been providing guns to rebel forces. Ogami asserts that the gunsmiths want him to do their dirty work so that they can steal his gun-making secrets, but he accepts the contract anyway.

Eventually Ogami comes face to face with Shichirobei, and sword contends with gun as Ogami explains his willingness to die because "only one thing matters [to the assassin on the path of hell]. Death to the opponent."

Shichirobei's rifle-armed students show up, but once Shichirobei realizes that Ogami is willing to die as long as he slays his target, he asks a boon from Ogami: to let him impart to his students his 'secret traditions of the quest of the gun," after which he will submit to assassination. Ogami agrees, and sits in while Shichirobei hectors his students about their inability to understand his doctrines.

He also excoriates his rival gunsmiths for trying to steal his secrets and making a bad job of it. Nothing is said about his supplying guns to rebels, which suggests that this was a lie by his rivals, for the Silent Gunsmith-- apparently so called because he can talk about nothing but guns-- has a scientist's desire for infinite improvement : "striving toward the future, innovating, refining..." Then Shichirobei reveals his real intentions: he knows that all three students sold his secrets to the rivals and hoped to steal yet more. He kills them all with a device not unlike a handheld gatling-gun.

Having slain his betrayers, Shichirobei expresses a quasi-patriotic desire for innovation in weapons-building, in part because of the threat of barbarian outsiders.

He gives Ogami his gun-plans, so that the Lone Wolf can use them in his quest for justice, and then accepts his death by the assassin's sword.

Ogami then leaves with his son Daigoro in the usual baby-cart, but his employers catch up with him, demanding to be given the plans. The Lone Wolf decimates the riflemen with the repeating-rifle,  but spares the gunsmiths because it was Shichirobei's wish that they be spared, so that they could carry on the work of innovation, albeit without his help. The story ends by showing how Ogami uses a forge to incorporate the guns into the baby-cart, which remains one of the signature images of the series.

MYTHCOMICS: "EXECUTIONER'S HILL" (WEEKLY MANGA ACTION ?, 197?)

(Note: my translation of this LONE WOLF AND CUB story is the one provided in issue #12 of the First Comics reprint-effort.)

I won't attempt in this post to cover every aspect of the complicated manga-saga LONE WOLF AND CUB, a series taking place during the era of Japan's Shogunate rule. Main character Itto Ogami, a master of the samurai sword and executioner to the Shogun, is cast out from his lofty position due to the political maneuvers of his enemies. With the fall of his aristocratic house, he wanders Japan as a masterless ronin, hiring out his sword as a master assassin. At the same time he's constantly pursued by enemies for the price on his head. His only companion is his very young son Daigoro, whom Itto usually pushes in a baby cart.

This image alone, a melding of the worlds of innocence and violence, is quintessentially Japanese in character. That said, not every LONE WOLF story is equally mythic. Some stories are simply tales in which Itto takes on some powerful foe and wins out. Other stories succeed in communicating the rigor of the samurai ethos but characters may remain flat.

"Executioner's Hill" displays more mythic resonance than the average tale. It starts with six roving bounty hunters, impoverished due to a lack of victims. One of them complains, "The world's gotten peaceful too damn fast." The group's leader, known only as Shiwasu ("boss"), tells them that they'll have to go looking for fresh hunting-grounds. However, on their way out of town, they spot Itto with his baby-cart. Siwashu gets the idea that Itto must be saving up the gold he earns for his assassin-jobs in order to vanquish his foes and rebuild his family line, so that Daigoro can inherit this status. The hunters manage to capture Daigoro, hoping to use the child to blackmail Itto into surrendering his money.

The LONE WOLF world is one in which the desire for money and creature comforts is distinctly inferior to the pitiless road of the samurai-- particularly one who, like Itto, views that road as the road to hell itself. Itto will not yield anything for the life of his son, since he regards both of them as fated to die on their path of violence. Thus creators Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima craft a sociological myth opposing the path of self-interest and comfort to that of selfless, though not especially beneficial, violent action. I wrote in this essay that Lady Snowblood, another of Koike's creations, was one of "a long line of Japanese heroes whose raison d’etre concerns committing brutal actions with a near-mystical detachment." Itto Ogami is perhaps even more effective in transmitting that ethos than Snowblood.

There are some other poetic tropes in the story: both Itto and his main adversary Shiwasu are compared to wolves, with Shiwasu clearly being portrayed as the wolf who has become relatively "tamed" by civilization. In addition, the story displays a high level of craft with respect to action sequences like this one, allegedly a major influence on Frank Miller (cover artist for this First reprint).