Vagabond Vol. 41

This is Volume 41 of the Hong Kong full-color Chinese edition of Vagabond, and the final volume of that color edition. Its contents correspond to the chapters around the Japanese tankōbon Volume 17, with the main thread following Sasaki Kojirō. The story begins seventeen years before the Battle of Sekigahara: the newborn Sasaki Kojirō is entrusted to the care of Kanemaki Jisai, a master swordsman who has already abandoned the way of the sword. Kojirō is extraordinarily gifted, and even the loss of his hearing does not stop him from climbing to the pinnacle of swordsmanship; bound by the sword to Kamekichi, a boy who longs to become a great swordsman, he grows up alongside him. Years later, Jisai's former disciple Ittōsai Yagorō appears at the door once more, deeply drawn to Kojirō's talent, and decides to lead him down a path that is anything but ordinary. At Yagorō's provocation, the five men pursuing Kojirō fight him, awakening the savage "Echizen mad tiger" lurking within; afterward, on a beach with no stars and no moon, he crosses swords with Yoshikawa Denshichirō, second son of the Yoshioka house. Meanwhile, Musashi's thread also advances: he fights a life-or-death duel with Hōin Inshun in Nara, faces the four top disciples of the Yagyū, meets Sekishūsai, and later ventures deep into the mountains to test himself against Shishido Baiken, master of the chain-and-sickle. The two threads interweave to unfold the question this work keeps asking: is the sword a technique for killing, or is it one's entire life?