Usagi Yojimbo: the Dragon Bellow Conspiracy (part 2 of 3)

"Did you learn this old warrior-riddle: 'Which more exemplifies bushido - a samurai who serves a good and just lord, or one who faithfully serves a wicked lord?'"

"Hah! I haven't heard that since I was a tot! 'The one who is loyal to his evil lord, of course.' Loyalty is the first principle of bushido."

"Do you know this one: 'is there ever a circumstance when rebellion against one's lord can be justified?'"

"Never!"

"Ah, but it can be justified...if the rebellion succeeds."

…

Usagi impresses Daimyo Tamakuro with not only his combat skills, but also his background. The army he's been recruiting for his planned coup is severely lacking in experienced, professional soldiers, so Usagi is quickly taken under the wing of Tamakuro's master-at-arms to be groomed for a command. Said master-at-arms, a stern old cat named Torame, takes quite a personal liking to Usagi. When he is forced to lie to Usagi about the reasons for his lord's troop buildup (only a very small number of people are allowed to know about the plot at this juncture), he is visibly pained.

Tamakuro's house is an ancient noble lineage, and Torame's family have been their retainers for eight generations. They survived the Warring States chaos with their arrangement and their land-holdings both intact, which has taught them to take war-readiness and martial vigilance very seriously.

And then, almost apropos of nothing from Usagi's perspective, Torame starts monologuing about the double edged nature of bushido loyalty. In a way that makes it seem like he's talking more to himself than to Usagi. Leading to the exchange that I quoted at the top of this post. "The Dragon Bellow Conspiracy" buried the lede relatively far into is page count, but that bit of dialogue is basically the foundation of Usagi's whole arc in this story. It doesn't quite continue directly from where we left off with his development at the end of "Samurai," but it covers some overlapping territory, and together the two stories form a kind of consensus on where Usagi is at and where he needs to be going.

This scene is both preceded and followed very closely by some illustrations of what Torame is worried about. His lord might be politically savvy enough to act the part of a reasonable authority figure and a good employer, but when he isn't playing a part, well...

Hikiji might be a total bastard, but his kind of bastardry is at least pragmatic. He'll do anything to get more power, hurting exactly as many or as few people as that entails, and that's pretty much all he cares about. Tamakuro with his petty spite and self-indulgent sadism is a whole different kind of monster.

One memorable line in that dialogue between Torame and Usagi has the former admitting, under the pretence of whimsical musing, that he wishes he was still a young samurai-in-training. The subtext there is more obvious to the reader than it is to Usagi, but even Usagi starts to pick up on it as he learns more about the situation. If Usagi happened to be born in this province rather than two provinces over, he'd have probably been Tamakuro's bodyguard. What would that mean for him? What should that mean for him?

...

I wish "Dragon Bellow" concentrated more on this central piece of character development. Much of the rest of it is pretty scattershot, with the story's lack of focus being by far its greatest flaw.

...

As luck has it, Usagi managed to gain enough respect and trust from Torame over the next few days that he can pull the Bavarian Fire Drill on Tamakuro's grunts by the time the daimyo orders Tomoe's crucifixion. They get seen making their escape attempt, though, and Tomoe ends up telling Usagi about Tamakuro's planned coup and then turning around to keep his men distracted while Usagi escapes to inform Noriyuki on her behalf. Usagi's a better fighter than her, and she's malnourished and beaten up on top of that; she deems him much more likely to succeed than her. And also shuts the castle door behind him before letting him know what she's planning to do, to prevent him from trying to save her.

I think she might be pretty ashamed of getting caught during her initial spy mission and getting all her men killed. A bit of death wish mixed into her reasoning here.

It turns out that the constant troop movements and active patrols that Usagi asked Torame about earlier have a purpose, though. Sound and light signals are used to get a patrol group moved into Usagi's path, and he ends up getting dismounted and wounded just like Tomoe did at the end of the prologue. Tamakuro is a competent enough evil overlord to be dangerous (or at least, he has a competent enough underling in Torame to get the same effect). Usagi's reprieve, of course, comes in the form of a lone masked figure hurling shurikens. Usagi regains consciousness in a warm hut, with Shinjen preparing the same herbal healing skills to him that he used to treat his own leg in "Shogun's Gift."

Shinjen figured out what happened. They're cool now.

See what I mean about the waterfall fight having been kinda pointless? Shinjen happening on Usagi being overwhelmed by their common enemy's forces and deciding to save him on account of knowing firsthand what a good fighter he is would have been totally sufficient motivation for him here.

Anyway. Usagi escaping with Tomoe's intel spurs Tamakuro into launching his operation early. I'm not sure what that entails, honestly. Having a lot of guns is only part of the equation, and we're never told what the plan is for getting his forces to Edo undetected (and we've explicitly been told his army isn't even that good, on account of all the new hires). Well, whatever the plan is, he apparently can launch it early if he has to. While that's going on, Tomoe manages to - against all odds - slip the guards' notice and lay low in the castle complex. She won't be able to hide forever, but hopefully for long enough. Shinjen takes a recovered Usagi to the real Nyanja main base, where they make a semi-formal alliance for as long as it takes to deal with Tamakuro.

The nyanjas have managed to get another spy or two into the castle, and they report that Tamakuro's moved all the weapons into the heavily-fortified central keep, and seems to be gearing up to do the thing early. Probably sooner than they can inform the Hikiji or Geishu estates and have them send forces, let alone get word to Edo. However, the spies also report that at present Tamakuro's own forces are in total disarray. He's got half his men out hunting for Usagi, the other half turning the place upside down looking for Tomoe, and still others out rallying his vassals. For the next day or two, his castle will be sufficiently understaffed that even a small, underequipped force might be able to penetrate it.

Usagi is definitely in, if Tomoe truly is still alive and giving them grief rather than dead like he'd assumed. They'll get in, destroy the gunpowder stores, take out Tamakuro himself if they think they can manage it, and then hopefully get out alive again. They set out to attack the castle, and run into this other subplot that's been happening in the background the whole time.

Right, these guys are also in this story, remember?

Gen has just tracked down Ino and started getting his ass kicked by him. When Ino slices his horn off with a blow that very nearly took the top of his head, Gen starts to actually have second thoughts about this bounty, and even about bounty hunting period, but Ino isn't the type to let an aggressor get away.

I love Gen's expressions in the last two panels. Totally foreign look on him, and the schadenfreude is perfectly balanced.​

By total coincidence, Usagi and the nyanjas happen into them as their duel is nearing its conclusion, and - out of both desperation for more manpower and probably a desire to not see two people who he doesn't completely hate kill each other - gives them a pitch. If Ino helps rescue Tomoe, then Usagi is sure that Geishu Noriyuki will set him up in a secure part of his territory and place him under his protection. As for Gennosuke, well, securing his cooperation is never a very complicated matter.

Especially since he thinks he might be able to deniably get Ino killed in the battle. Then he'd get the reward for helping save Tomoe, AND the reward for killing Ino, AND whatever loot he can steal from this rich guy's house that they're about to break into. Even when humbled by hornlessness, Scumbag Rhino's mind works in predictable ways.

Anyway, the two of them are in.

...

Yeah. Just...that sort of randomly happens. Nothing really leading up to it at all.

It's from this point on that my complaint about this story's lack of focus really originates.

...

The attack goes about as well as it possibly could, all things considered. The nyanja or two who already slipped into the compound are able to set up a gunpowder bomb of their own to use as a breaching charge, blowing the gate open and letting the party inside. On one hand, as aforementioned, frontal assaults are not a ninja's forte. On the other hand, these ninjas have Usagi, Gen, and Ino to tank for them while they spread out across the castle complex to do sneaky bullshit to whoever they can get the drop on. Also, the kitties did bring a lot of grenades, so that does somewhat even things out in this sort of terrain at least until their supply runs out.

As Usagi covers for the ninjas and tries to look for Tomoe, he naturally ends up coming face to face with his erstwhile philosophy buddy Torame.

Like Usagi himself, Torame isn't a hypocrite about bushido. His righteous anger at Usagi dissipates when he learns that Usagi came here in the first place to infiltrate an enemy fortress and rescue an ally; bushido allows for subterfuge, so what Usagi did wasn't treachery, just trickery. That's on the right side of the rules.

The thing is, the rules also demand that Torame try to kill him now. And Usagi is forced to confront the uncomfortable truth that he's always managed to narrowly avoid facing until this point.

Usagi must have already known what the answer to his question would be before he asked it. And, in response, he sighs and tells Torame that yes, fair enough, he'd have never betrayed his own master, Daimyo Mifune, if an enemy asked him to, no matter what the rights and wrongs of the battle were. But Usagi doesn't look so sure of himself when he says this. And, the fact that he even asked the question in the first place - that it even occurred to him that that might be a question worth asking - is a significant milestone for Usagi's character.

Usagi's bushido loyalty was never put to the test the way Torame's has been. The young Usagi we flashed back to in "Samurai," the one who was strong enough and lucky enough that he was able to get by without learning that there are more important things than honor and pride, would probably have passed said test. Now, though, looking at another man who he could have very easily been, seeing what he's fighting and killing and dying for, Usagi is starting to wonder if this is a test anyone in their right mind should want to pass.

The worst part of all of this is that Torame himself knows that bushido is bullshit. "Rebellion against one's lord is never permissible - unless the rebellion succeeds." Torame's lord is rebelling against his own lord, the Shogun. If the conspiracy is successful, then there will be no one to hold him accountable for this. The rules only bind you until you beat the game...but until then, they're sacred and inviolable for...um...some reason.

And there's the haunting possibility, underlying all of this, that maybe the sacred, honorable path of the samurai was devised by people like Tamakuro and Hikiji to begin with, and that its creators never intended to be bound by the rules themselves; just for other people to be bound by them. And now, it's become a core part of people like Usagi, Kenichi, Tomoe, and Torame's identities. To the point that they're not sure they can even live without it.

Usagi doesn't try to argue any further. He can't do that yet. But he looks miserable. The fight has no drama or excitement to it. It's short, and relatively easy. It ends with Usagi standing over yet another corpse

Elsewhere on the grounds, Shinjen and his men - honorable men, in their own ninja way, men who Usagi has started to like - are fighting and dying too. Partly for revenge for the slaughter of that village of theirs, sure, but also partly out of duty to Daimyo Hikiji. What's going to happen the minute after Tamakuro is no longer a problem?

Tomoe comes out of hiding and reunites with Usagi shortly after this. It improves his mood. Somewhat.


Part three will be the conclusion.