The Elusive Samurai never rests. Right after Kojirō and Ayako, the loyal and courageous retainers of Tokiyuki Hōjō, whom I commented on in my last article, reassure the young heir (and us) in the face of betrayal and join him on the path of heroism, another tyrant comes to town, bringing with him new problems that require…well, new solutions!
This is warlord Ogasawara Sadamune (1292–1347), whose historically accurate archer skills we witness firsthand. You see, Sadamune was a champion of a happily disappeared sport called inuoumono, which entails, ahem, shooting at dogs with a bow from the top of a horse. More importantly, Sadamune brings with him an order from the Imperial Court that could mean death or exile for those protecting Tokiyuki. To stop this from happening, they will need to physically steal the document containing the decree.
And for that, they must recruit a retainer completely unlike Kojirō and Ayako. We hear an enigmatic piece of advice from Yorishige, the priest, seer, and mentor of our hero, one that seems at odds with the righteousness he otherwise tries to instill in the young ruler: to seek not only good retainers, but also wicked ones. Retainers, that is, such as Genba Kazama, a feared thief who is infamous in the region. But what does this advice mean? And how does it square with the heroic ideal Tokiyuki is striving for?
A World of Broken Bonds
Kazama Genba is presented to us as a terrifying, faceless thieving nobleman with a kitsune (fox) mask, symbolizing cunning and mischief. He is hated and feared, and not without reason. If anyone gets on his bad side, he will make sure to inflict suffering and laugh while he’s at it. When they finally meet him, he makes one thing very clear. He only serves money, and he only respects guts. And if he accepts Tokiyuki’s offer, it is only to expose him as empty.
The first scene of the episode shows us that, at the core of this philosophy, there is a certain wound, expressed in a deathbed confession made in tears. That wound comes from an injustice, from an act of evil that has generated ripples. For the world of The Elusive Samurai is a wounded world, a great wasteland of broken bonds. If Tokiyuki was the son of a lord betrayed by his unfaithful servants, Genba is the son of a vassal betrayed by the lord he was devoted to.
To help the clan, Genba’s father learned the skills of a thief, but even as everyone agreed that this was necessary, those same skills brought him dishonor and disgrace. In a hypocritical world, there is no contradiction between using someone’s talents and condemning him for having them. He was an easy target and became a scapegoat.
Indeed, when there is a general sense that things are out of control but it is not easy to actually right the wrongs, the temptation can arise to project our guilt onto a scapegoat. Someone vulnerable, someone who is already disliked, somebody who can be punished to ease the tension in the air. Someone whose guilt is more manifest, or who is in a more vulnerable or antisocial position, regardless of actual guilt. And there are few things more disheartening than seeing this process take place, especially if the victim is a loved one. As the internet might say, this could easily “blackpill” you.
And thus, the bond was broken, and the loyal retainer was broken too. The man who had always been scrupulously loyal and honest as a retainer rejected that path, and on his deathbed, he instructed his son to resist the call of lords and princes, the call to loyalty and heroism. He told him to serve only money and to use his ninja skills to take what he wanted without regard for others. To make sense of who we are, we need communion, bonds, other people. And they are still there in Genba’s life. But they are prey, competitors, or fellow travelers at best.
What happens to Genba can happen to us too, or to those around us. The contradiction between the deep desires of our hearts and an often dark, disappointing reality is a constant experience in our lives. One that may tempt us to despair of the ideal altogether and decide to grab for ourselves whatever we can from now on, and to hold onto it. Even if we do not, as life goes on, the experience of imperfection, sickness, death, and, most of all, our voluntary acts of evil that get in the way of the things we love the most creates what St. Paul called the “flesh” (Romans 8:5) or the “old man” (Ephesians 4:22–24), a self of darkness and self-absorption, of cynicism and animal desires, of sin. A beast inside.
A Darkness that Spreads
Aristotle once said: “He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god” (Politics 1.1253a.27–9). Despairing of others means that you must make yourself a bit of both. And so, Genba received a mask that would always hide his face, that of a tanuki, a trickster, a force of nature outside the bonds of society, an uncontrollable force of chaos. This is very much what he has made of himself, and what the people of the village see in him. This is the man Tokiyuki wants to make his retainer.
Genba is reflecting in himself the image of the world his father showed him at that crucial moment of pain. His father told him that all relationships are transactional, and he became a mercenary. His father told him that morality is hypocrisy, a mere mechanism by which an evil society controls the capable, and he makes a point to show that he cannot be controlled. His father told him that there is no point in honesty, and he steals casually. And since his father said that lords and leaders are mere figureheads, he naturally decides to expose Tokiyuki as a fool or a fraud.
Evil has this contagion effect that creates cycles of evil. An abyss calls to another abyss. A drop poisons a well. The realization that everyone, even supposedly pro-social, upstanding people, has this beast inside can make a person despair of goodness altogether and see every human reality as spoiled. It can instill hatred of the light.
How to prevent this? One way is that of denial and scapegoating, of blaming everything on others to preserve one’s own supposed goodness. This is obviously self-defeating. A second path is to say that there is no goodness or wickedness, and denounce those who see a clear difference as liars. But the problem persists, because the wounds you inflict by behaving like that are like the ones you received. You may say there’s no difference, but you do feel it.
Thus, this view ultimately leads to a painful world where everyone is either a fool, a Pharisee, or a proud sinner. A world like the one Genba sees through his mask.
But Tokiyuki is not empty. There is a light radiating from him that Genba can feel. When, heeding the advice of Yorishige, he accepts Genba and fights alongside him, the wisdom of the priest’s advice becomes clear. The love of the light, the need for it, even if desperate, even if hopeless, is part of our nature, and it is not going anywhere. Genba’s father tells him to actively resist the impulse to find a lord, to give devotion or trust. But the problem is that the wish to do so, to be heroes, is deeply ingrained in the human heart.
Yorishige’s advice seems jarring at first. It is a no-brainer to tell a kid to associate with other good kids and avoid the “bad apples.” This makes some sense, since negative traits can be imitated and reinforced, and kids are still forming their sense of morality. But when we face, sooner or later, the problem of significant negative traits in ourselves, wickedness even, that advice turns out to be incomplete. We certainly must not compromise when it comes to good and evil. We should certainly avoid those companions, however fun or attractive, who tempt us to do that. But we must also strive to find a love so strong that it can resist being influenced by evil, and actually influence others for good.
Whenever we can, like Tokiyuki, we must bring those who are wounded, lost, or plain evil to the light. To healing. To truly fight wickedness in us, we need to strive to recover the wicked for the cause of the good without confusing them. We need to extend a helping hand, like Our Father, who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).
And we can only do that if we believe that bonds can be restored, that evil can be purified, that the wounds that feed it and the wounds that it keeps causing can be healed. This is what we witness as Genba realizes the true character of Tokiyuki and joins the fight. To develop a sense of good so great and strong that it can guide us in our purification from evil, and offer the same path to the outcasts and the sinners. Even if this is quite the tall order. But how can we hope to do this? Not by ourselves, but as retainers of a Lord who can achieve even what seems impossible.
The hands of a King are the hands of a Healer
Yes, I love The Lord of the Rings. But the quote is actually relevant. I promise.
In Matthew 9:9, we see Jesus Christ recruiting a famous thief to be among his followers. Technically, he is a tax collector for a foreign power, but for most people there is no difference, and fraud and theft certainly do run rampant among tax collectors. At his house, at dinner, he talks to other tax collectors and other famous sinners. “When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Matthew 9:10-15).
Our Lord is a physician of our souls and our bodies, and explicitly connects these two realities by forgiving the sins of the paralytic man just before restoring him to bodily health (Matthew 9:2). His followers, then, must constantly heal and be healed. And the way we may do it is by taking off our masks, acknowledging ourselves as men, not gods, and letting the Lord touch the beast inside. Because His love is not empty. He will walk alongside us, fight alongside us, and entrust us with a mission. In following him, we are the ones being given the connection that is missing. Being healed.
How is this done? The answer might also have to do with animals representing people: Scapegoating, as we have seen, is mostly a negative reality, something not to do. But the term actually comes from the Bible, from Leviticus 16, where it refers to a rite of purification prescribed for the Day of Atonement. And there, it takes an entirely different meaning. Though the ritual is complex, these are the basics. The priest, Aaron, shall sacrifice a bull for his own sins and a goat for the sins of the people, who fall into sin every year and break their covenant with their Lord.
But what makes this sacrifice unique is that he shall also choose a second goat. And “then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness” (Leviticus 17:20-22). After this, the priest shall enter into the tent that symbolizes the presence of God, bathe, and go out to burn the offerings, making “atonement for himself and for the people.”
Following the words of St. Paul, Christians interpret the sacrifices of the Old Law as symbols where the animals represent Jesus. And so, instead of punishing someone supposedly worse to relieve our own burden, we—priests, laymen, high, low, Pharisees or infamous sinners—are to accept the bloody sacrifice He voluntarily offers, confess our sins, and let them go. Atone for them not by ourselves, but in Our Lord.
For the Catholic Church, the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, also known simply as confession, is the way we entrust ourselves to the Lord who made us his retainers. The priest presents to us the sacrifice of Christ, and in turn we remove our masks to confess each sin and accept the forgiveness, the purification, the bath Christ gives us.
Unlike Baptism, which is provided once, the Catholic Church understands confession as a way to return again and again to the light after realizing we have been led into the darkness. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance for all sinful members of his Church: above all for those who, since Baptism, have fallen into grave sin, and have thus lost their baptismal grace and wounded ecclesial communion. It is to them that the sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to convert and to recover the grace of justification” (CCC 1446).
The text indicates that the Fathers of the Church present this sacrament as “the second plank [of salvation] after the shipwreck which is the loss of grace.” And shipwreck is indeed the word. Again and again, after my most serious transgressions, when I have felt most monstrous or darkest, when I have felt the mask of the beast on my face, I have come back to my Lord. And time after time, I have heard these words: “God, the Father of mercies, through the death and the resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
Against any earthly power, against our own betrayals, against any laws of the world, He can guarantee that the world of love, the world of heroes, the world of goodness, the world God intended, remains available for us to return to, if we dare to take off our masks. And like Genba, we find ourselves sitting at the table again. “A remarkable sign of this is the fact that Jesus receives sinners at his table, a gesture that expresses in an astonishing way both God’s forgiveness and the return to the bosom of the People of God” (CCC 1443).
But the Sacraments of Healing are two. For Our Lord knows the vertigo man experiences in the presence of death, the consciousness of our flaws that may tempt us to despair, the darkness Genba’s father experiences in the show. And so, “by the sacred anointing of the sick and the prayer of the priests the whole Church commends those who are ill to the suffering and glorified Lord, that he may raise them up and save them. And indeed she exhorts them to contribute to the good of the People of God by freely uniting themselves to the Passion and death of Christ” (CCC 1499).
This is a Sacrament I have never experienced. It is only given to those who are seriously ill. “In my name”, said the Lord, “they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover” (Mark 16:17-18). Sometimes, the effect is indeed miraculous healing, the kind that leaves the doctor scratching their heads. More often, it is the more important, more permanent kind of healing and recovering that is given to the sick in these last moments, a preparation for the final journey—hopefully, the journey home. To the Father.
And this is the way I hope to go. Not cursing the world or myself, not sowing despair, but with hope, entrusting my soul to the Lord who did not disdain involving me in His affairs, joyfully fighting by my side, even though I often find myself wearing the mask of Genba Kazama. The Lord whose love is just that strong. My Lord.
The Elusive Samurai can be streamed at Crunchyroll.
