Vagabond 256

Here’s yet another quick chapter translation. This time it’s chapter 256:

Page #1:

Musashi (thinking): The lead I drank in.

Musashi (thinking): It weighs down on me with the weight of lead…

Musashi (thinking): …even now

Musashi (thinking): I guess it means that the fight is still going.

Takuan (thinking): That’s it.

Page #2:

Musashi (thinking): They’ve all been absolved (from having to keep fighting).

Musashi (thinking): Only for me does the fight continue on.

Page #3:

Musashi: So which one of us won?

Takuan: There is no winner. Or is that not it?

Musashi: No clue.

Takuan: The core of you understands. That it weighs so heavily on you is the clearest proof of that.

Page #4:

Musashi (thinking): There is no winner…

Title #256 – Voice(s)

Page #5:

Guard: Priest, it is nearly dinner time.

Takuan: Oh I see. Then I will have the same (as him).

Musashi: You’re gonna eat?

Takuan: Would you hurry up and woo Otsuu? You two need to just get together already.

Musashi: What?!

Takuan: It’s apparently good if you’re a little bit forceful. Come on, you had to have done it at least once…you know, maybe like going right for Otsuu?

Page #6:

Takuan: Just what do you think of Otsuu, anyway? What is Otsuu to you?

Musashi: Like I would ever want to tell you.

Takuan: All flustered, eh.

Takuan: Build a place return home to.

Musashi: What, you want make me quit being a swordsman that badly?

Musashi: Build a place to return home to? That’s ridiculous.

Musashi: If it’s a place to “return” to I already have one.

Page #7:

Musashi: How do you “return” to a place that you have yet to create (*that you will create going forward)…?

Takuan: !

Musashi: Well, you got one on me! I guess there was that way of looking at it.

Page #8 and 9:

Takuan: Truthfully…there’s a lot I don’t understand either.

Takuan: Especially when I look at men who kill each other with swords…

Takuan: What humans are here for…

Takuan: Why we are born…

Takuan: How we should live…

Takuan: Whether there is salvation for us…

Takuan: I didn’t understand any of it…

Takuan: In the confusing darkness…

Page #10:

Takuan: Writhing in pain…

Takuan: Committing wrongs…

Musashi: You?

Takuan: Yeah.

Takuan: That self-centeredness in me too…

Takuan: Whenever it would lift its ugly head I would start to feel that there was no point to the path I had walked…

Page #11:

Takuan: It all looked stupid…

Takuan (spirit): Idiot! What do you think that’ll do for you! Pe* (*Sound of it spitting in disgust)!

Takuan: Musashi…

Takuan: Assuming you actually lived through your 70 to 1 fight at Ichijouji pass, this was the conversation I wanted to have with you.

Page #12:

Takuan: Musashi…look…

Takuan: I’ve been hearing this voice recently…

Musashi: Who’s voice…?

Guard: Musashi-dono?

Guard: I brought you a stick…

Page #13:

Guard: Something like this?

Musashi: That’ll work.

Guard: He is technically a prisoner…is it okay to give it to him, Priest?

Takuan: I don’t mind.

Musashi (thinking): ……

Musashi: A voice…

Musashi: Who’s voice…?

Page #14:

No text…just lightning.

Page #15:

No text…just pointing.

Page #16:

Takuan: According to it…mine and your lives up to now and in the future…

Takuan: According to the heavens our lives have both been decided perfectly…and on top of that…

Page #17:

Takuan: …are completely free.

Page #18:

Ogawa (thinking): It’s heavy!

Ogawa (thinking): Putting his entire body weight on the point of this little twig…

Page #19:

Ogawa (thinking): Just what sort of…

Ogawa: Your name?

Kojiro: Aa-

Ogawa: Your name? …

Ogawa (thinking): He’s deaf and mute…

Ogawa (thinking): To think that in coming to Kyoto for the first time with my master…

Ogawa (thinking): …that a major event in my life would be waiting for me…

Ogawa: Assumptions are a scary thing (*he presumably thought that his trip would be uneventful)

Page #20:

Ogawa: In hearing of a deaf swordsman I thought you to be much older…Sasaki Kojiro-dono!