“A Espada é o Centro da Vida”: O Imaginário dos Samurais no Mangá Vagabond (1996-2007).

Abstract

The samurai were a warrior caste that settled in Japan during its medieval period. Although the class was extinguished during the Meiji Era, which paved the way for the construction of modern Japan, it has survived in our imagination and popular culture for over a century and a half. In several media productions, made even in the West, samurai mark their presence in the imaginary in a similar way to medieval European knights or American cowboys. Among these warriors, some individuals stand out and Miyamoto Musashi is probably the best known of all. The fame of never having been defeated and his book (The Book of the Five Rings) – which presents his philosophy as a warrior, popularized by the name bushidô – consolidated Musashi as an "ideal samurai". His trajectory was the inspiration for Eiji Yoshikawa's novel Musashi, published in the 1940s and later became one of the most recognized Japanese literary works around the world. The novel, in addition to presenting a representation of Musashi's life, also presents the daily life of samurai during the great peace of the Tokugawa period, as well as the contradictions present in the lives of these warriors. In the 1990s, the Vagabond manga began its serialization, addressing Musashi's adventures, (re)adapting the novel to a new generation of consumers. The manga presents changes in relation to its "original" material; among these changes are the way samurai are represented. This dissertation aims to compare/analyze the representations of samurai in Vagabond and Musashi aiming to understand their distancing and what they might mean.