Vagabond, Vol. 11

Vagabond is a seinen manga by Takehiko Inoue, serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Morning since 1998. Adapted from Eiji Yoshikawa's novel Musashi, it is set from the late Sengoku period into the early Edo period and follows Miyamoto Musashi's growth from a battlefield deserter in search of "the way of the sword." The work departs substantially from the original framework: it portrays Sasaki Kojirō as a man born deaf and mute who achieves oneness of person and sword through a clear heart, and invents his coming-of-age story; the narrative also weaves in a subplot in which Hon'iden Matahachi poses as "Kojirō" to make a living, so that Musashi's path of seeking and the fates of Kojirō and Matahachi mirror one another. In the middle and later stages of serialization, Inoue turned to a strikingly powerful ink-wash brush style and incorporated calligraphy by the calligrapher Huang Mingsheng, with negative space and brush momentum themselves becoming the language of the narrative. This is Volume 11 of the series (the Japanese original Volume 11, published by Kodansha on August 20, 2001, 216 pages). The story enters the stage of Musashi's confrontation with Yagyū Sekishūsai: Musashi breaks past the four senior Yagyū disciples and bursts into Sekishūsai's bedchamber to face this master known as "peerless under heaven"; Sekishūsai's mountain-like, unfathomable depth delivers a powerful shock to Musashi, and the obsession with being "peerless under heaven" is reexamined. Meanwhile, Hon'iden Matahachi, who has been impersonating Sasaki Kojirō, is exposed and troubles pile up. The keenness of the quest and the absurdity of worldly cunning interweave in this volume, an important turning point in the whole work.