Musashi's Gnostic Passion (1)

I've had quite a bad digestion problem for the past few days. Maybe it's not just due to common cold but also to the maldigestion caused by reading a book by Erich Fromm and two by Carl Jung within a week. I feel that I need to get back to these books again a few weeks later so that I can absorb them better...

Well, even though I've been sick and tired and spent much of my free time in the bed these days, I still have a very strong desire to read. But I don't feel like reading something tough amid the intellectual maldigestion so I picked up the Chinese translation of Musashi, a classic popular novel by Eiji Yoshikawa(吉川英治著「宮本武藏」). It's awkward to read the translation of a novel written in my mother tongue but these two-volume books are the game from my garbage collection. No one throws away Japanese books here in the southern tip of China. Anyway, very few people throw books away, anyway... (Well, I read most of Murakami's works in Chinese translation, too. I like the mainland versions better than Taiwanese versions...)

And I've found the novel very suitable for the Passion Week.

Musashi, a young and wild straggler was pursued by the local authority after killing some border guards. After the local samurai and peasant failed to capture him after a long and extensive search, an eccentric Zen master Takuan (whose name is very funny to the modern Japanese because it means yellow pickled raddish popular in the East Asia) offered to capture him within three days.

After Master Takuan captures Musashi by attracting the lonely and hungry man with taro stew, the monk asked the local warlord to allow him to treat Musashi as he wanted. The petition was granted and Master Takuan told everyone that he would execute the young beastly warrior twice. And the way Takuan, a man who had made a vow of no-killing, killed Musashi was just like the Gnostic Passion myth... I will tell you more about this tomorrow.