the swan song

News came yesterday that Nobuhiro Watsuki got arrested for child pornography possession. i was pretty shattered. Perhaps all the future generations from now on will dismiss Rurouni Kenshin as "the manga drawn by that paedophile" and it will not be valued anymore, which i think is absolutely tragic.

More tragic perhaps is that I couldn't help but imagine myself being called upon in the wee hours of the morning for an emergency assessment if Watsuki sensei attempts suicide in custody(they commonly do) and what I will end up saying to him---"Hello sensei, I am your shrink. i grew up reading your Rurouni Kenshin and it really shaped my life and brought me to where I am now. Sadly I can't think of anything that can fix you. All I can do is to keep you alive for prison no matter how much you want to die. In all honesty, your shit has nothing to do with me. I just don't want to end up going to the coroners for you when you get your easy way out. I will now ask Romeo the Phillipino nurse to sit with you for suicide watch. He's not much of a talker given his Japanese isn't great, but he's much bigger than you so don't even think about doing anything silly.  Hopefully after the weekend some other shrink will take over and you won't be my business any more. "

Now this is all rather defeating (and racist too), and perhaps affirms the point that mangas are mangas, and at the end of day they do nothing to make us mere mortals better people--readers or artist alike--but still I am grieving. I am getting old and weary not to say I have felt old and weary for years now. I see life as an ocean of suffering that knows no bounds and over time my pool of ideals continue to diminish, which makes the sudden shattering of another all the more heart wrenching.

I have expected the Kenshin story to end somewhat badly, but not like this. The first few chapters of the new Hokkaido arc were bland to say the least. maybe I would have coped with Watsuki-sensei going down in mediocrity, and accept that he will eventually ruin his once upon a time brilliant imaginary world by being too weighed down by his need to please an audience and earn a living when his creativity dried up. but, no, nothing dramatic and scandalous like this.

I guess I am also scared that our modern times have become so infantile in its division of good and bad, and so fixated on shaming, that Kenshin will get discarded like a baby along with the bathwater. If this becomes the case, the values from the beautiful story which shaped my life and provided me with such comfort during my loveless adolescent years will be one day doubted and dismissed even by myself. I fear that if I do not record some of these down, one day their emotional weight within me will also puff away without a trace...

i remember for many years even after my adolescence, despite my avoidance of the ever renewing phone technology, I would go to great length to set up Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu as my ringtone on every single new phone i acquire, just so during the years of miserable and frightening work calls, there was something comforting I could hold onto.

i remember despite my lack of alcohol dehydrogenase I would still reach for a drink or two when I remember Master Hiko's words - you watch the cherry blossoms in spring, you gaze the starry night sky in summer, you admire the full moon in autumn, and you greet the first snow in winter. Such sceneries! how can your sake not be tasty when your are in the midst of them! If you still dislike your alcohol, there must be something really wrong with you.
the context of nearby death and suffering in which he said it, just makes you ponder his words again and again.

i am touched when I look back to Kenshin and Master Hiko's final battle, many years later as a shrink, and be amazed all the more at its masterful development -- that this tells nothing but an old old story of the tragic Oedipal drama -- but told with such fineness, warmth and goodness from one's heart that the inherent elements of tragedy were not lost, but it so convincingly turned it around with atonement, acceptance and individuation. The son has killed his father, but the father was also rescued by the son, without his conscious knowledge. The father tells the son to value his own life and follow his own instincts in critical moments- they intend good and not harm!--and that was when the son's own journey of change truly began.



this is getting long... i will grieve some more and write part II bit later in the week... T_T