Daniel's Disclaimer: In a surprise reversal of everything I've said so far, I got a letter in the mail today. It was in Japanese. After three hours of looking through on-line Japanese-to-English dictionaries, I puzzled out the first three sentances. What it said was that I am secretly the only child of Rumiko Takahashi and am thus heir to everything she's created; when she dies it will fall to me to make sure that shameless profiteers in Hollywood don't exploit and distort everything she wrote.
...
PSYCHE! I'm just as unrelated to Rumiko Takahashi as ever, and thus can make no claim of ownership to anything but my own pompous verbosity. Which I will zealousy defend to my last adjective.
I was reading through a book of Japanese stories a while back, and this rather comical cross-over came to mind. It's kinda touching, but... I still think this is a bit lamer, conceptually, than some of the others. Better than some, but worst than most.
Anyway, in the spirit of the new, more flexible (and rhyming!) title, this one is like 250 words.
Hanzo the Arrogant Sword Master sat down one day for a cup of sake. There was only one thing that exceeded Hanzo's arrogance, and that was his skill in kenjutsu.
A noble samurai came up and offered him one thousand ryo to teach him, but Hanzo said "pah, a wimpy mama's boy like you could never learn the sword, not in a hundred years!"
A rich merchant offered him TWO thousand ryo to teach him the sword, but Hanzo the Arrogant Sword Master sniffed with disdain. "A money-sucking coward like you would be too afraid to learn the sword, even if you studied for a hundred years!"
The emperor of Japan himself asked Hanzo the Arrogant Sword Master to teach him Kenjutsu, but Hanzo politely (for him) declined. "A courtesan like you is too soft to learn the sword. Maybe if you studied a hundred years!"
A time-traveling schoolgirl asked Hanzo if he would teach an injury-prone inuhanyou the sword, but Hanzo took one look at the sulking boy and snorted. "Even if I trained a hundred years, he'd be better than me!"
The time-traveling schoolgirl was flabbergasted. "Huh!?"
Hanzo spat. "Just look at him! He's not even afraid of pain, let alone death!" He threw back his head and swallowed his sake. "For someone without fear, mastering the sword is knowing how to swing the bloody thing!"
The time-traveling schoolgirl had nothing to say to that.
...Ok, this one probably needs a little bit of explination.
First off, recall that kenjutsu is the skill of killing with the sword. It doesn't have to look pretty, it doesn't have to be graceful, as long as you cut the other bloke before he cuts you. Kendo, on the other hand, is training with the sword for physical and spiritual development. If it's not pretty, if it's not graceful, it's not very good kendo. Understand the difference?
That said, there's an old tale about the instructor of martial arts in a certain han (feudal domain); it was his duty to make sure that the hanshi (samurai of the domain) were good at killing. Anyway, one day he was approached by a goshi (village samurai; a goshi is about as low as you can get within the samurai caste), who wanted the instructor to teach him kenjustsu.
The instructor looked at him funny and responded that the goshi was at least a master, himself. The goshi sheepishly responded that he'd never held a sword in his life; how could he be a master fighter?
The instructor glanced at him oddly again, and said that there was still something that bespoke a great warrior in the way the man carried himself.
The goshi shrugged, and said that because he was samurai, he felt it would be unbecoming to be afraid of death, and so grappled with his fear for several years, meditating on transceance until he was finally not afraid to die. Only then had he felt confident enough to approach the instructor for lessons.
The instructor snapped his fingers and said "that's it!" And then he informed the goshi that he had already learned the most difficult, most important lesson of all, the hardest thing in kenjutsu; fighting without fear of dying. And then he sent the goshi on his merry way, saying he was already a master swordsman.
(Personally this ending seemed kinda like a gyp to me, but there ya go).
(Also, this isn't a "little bit" of explination, but whatever...).
Anyway, the big point of this is an aspect of Inu-Yasha that I really, really respect, but no one else seems to recognize: he's honestly unafraid of pain. He really isn't afraid to die. This is more than heroic acceptance of a tragic fate; this is simple recognition that death is everywhere, and that there are people that want to kill you, want to hurt you. And still he's not afraid. This is the kind of real, down-right hardcore bravery that I really look up to.
Well, that's pretty much all the yammering I have to do. danielgudman, over and out!
(gawd, that was lame...)
