Vagabond: Volume 14

by Takehiko Inoue, based on the novel Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, 198 pages

Having long ago given up the sword, aging master and social outsider Kanemaki Jisai sits beside the sea and resigns himself to death. But the sea and fate have other plans for him as a small boat washes violently in on the surf and leaves in his care its only survivor--his former student's infant son, Sasaki Kojirô.

Watching Kanemaki run about repeatedly depositing Kojirô with neighbors, certain he cannot raise a child himself, and then frantically rushing back to retrieve him, certain no one else can do the job but him, is both touching and hilarious. As he comes to understand his adopted son's condition--the boy is deaf--he grows even more protective and takes it upon himself to teach Kojirô what he can and raise him to be a good man who does not live by the sword the way his true and adopted fathers both have. But since the child reacts to an unusually long sword that washed up the same day he did the way a normal child would to a favorite stuffed animal or security blanket, Kanemaki has his work cut out for him.

This volume's story takes place 17 years before the Battle of Sekigahara, which opens Musashi's tale in volume 1. I hadn't thought much at the time about the man behind the name Matahachi takes as his own, but now I care as much about Kojirô as I do his imposter. How did he come to gain the reputation of greatness that has proven both a blessing and a curse to Matahachi? And how did he come to give it up to a thoughtless passing youth? It's been so long since I read the volume where Matahachi absconds with Kojirô's papers that I can't remember the exact circumstances other than they were sad and that Matahachi was probably biting off more than he could chew. Now, having seen little Kojirô shuffling down the beach, contentedly sucking on the thumb of one hand while the other clutches his sheathed sword, its tip dragging along in the sand behind him, all as though it were the most natural thing in the world, it is clear Matahachi couldn't have chosen more difficult shoes to fill.