Vagabond 257

Here’s yet another quick chapter of Vagabond. This time it’s chapter 257.

Page #1:

Just fighting

Page #2:

Just fighting

Page #3:

Title – Chapter 257: Contradiction

Page #4:

Musashi: Entirely decided…

Musashi: …and totally free…?

Musashi: That’s stupid.

Musashi: If something is completely decided then there is no freedom, right? That’s pretty contradictory.

Takuan: So you’d think, right?

Takuan: But it’s really not the case at all!

Takuan: Where should I start…?

Page #5:

Takuan: So if you’re the way of the sword and I am the way of the Buddha…

Takuan: The Buddha’s path is the path of man…

Takuan: A journey to find the answer to “man”…

Takuan: Is a trip where you are shown the visage of “man” that you do not want to see.

Page #6:

Ogawa: Oof…

Ogawa (thinking): Just how did you manage to put that kind of weight behind that little twig…

Ogawa: Sasaki Kojiro…

Page #7:

Ogawa: One of life’s…major events…

Gakupe: Ogawa! Ogawa!!

Page #8:

Gakupe: Hmm, where did he go?

Kouetsu: Maybe the bathroom?

Gakupe: Ogawa is the finest example of a martial artist* I have met, Kouetsu-dono. (*the word is hyouhouka which is someone who studied/taught Japanese style martial arts back in the warring states period)

Gakupe: By my estimation he’d even be better than the most recent sword instructor Ujiie Magoshirou. That’s just between us though.

Kouetsu: Oh, even greater than the Okura Hosokawa house’s sword instructor…

Gakupe: …..

Gakupe: Kouetsu-dono.

Gakupe: I’ve been thinking that since we’ve traveled all the way to Kyoto why not have Ogawa face one of the many famous martial artists here In Kyoto.

Page #9:

Gakupe: Like maybe “Miyamoto Musashi”…I guess he’s better called the “The One Unparalleled Under the Heavens”

Musashi: Me, huh?

Page #10:

Musashi: You’re talking about me, right?

Musashi: The visage of “man” that you don’t want to look at?

Takuan: Everybody.

Takuan: Of course that includes me too.

Takuan: Despairing at the images of all of us…

Takuan: The answer of “man”…

Takuan: What would finding it really accomplish…

Takuan: Then I would think there was no way I could lead people and I spit.

Takuan: That spit would then fly back at me and in order to wipe that spit off and escape I would return to my journey to find the answer of man.

Page #11:

Takuan: And then I was forced to learn—living while ignoring one’s connection to heaven results only in pain.

Takuan: If there is a point to having been born then…

Takuan: Just take it all in…

Page #12:

No text

Page #13:

Takuan: Each path born is by Heaven perfectly decided…

Takuan: …and at once perfectly free.

Page #14:

Takuan: …as long as everything is left up to Heaven…

Page #15:

Takuan: I figured it would get through to the you suffering right now, Musashi.

Page #16

Takuan: Regardless of whether you won the battle with the 70 Yoshioka or not…I knew that right about now you’d be experiencing the kind of suffering that no individual can understand.

Takuan: In this world, there is not a single person who can understand your suffering.

Takuan: But Musashi, do you understand?

Page#17:

Takuan: Even so, you are still connected with Heaven.

Page #18:

Musashi: ……