The Jade Hand

[ewokxz]

The Eight-fold Way

The Samurai of Rokugan follows the code of conduct we call Bushido. To the rest of the empire, what separates a samurai to the common bushi (soldier) – is his understanding and mental grasp of the “Eight Fold Way”. When the eight kami founded the empire we now know as Rokugan, Akodo began to write the first volumes of what is to become “the Way of the Samurai (warrior)”. It is with these scrolls of thought that became the benchmark of what is to become the samurai of Rokugan.

It is said that when Akodo prepared to write his great volume on the Way of the Warrior he asked each of his siblings what they thought was most important in a good man.
Hida thought long, and grumbled, "It is the sense of Duty, or the man will cease to do good, for it is an unforgiving, lonely task."
Togashi sent his brother word, "Understanding, for the good man knows why he chooses to do right."
Lady Doji told him, "It must be Excellence, for in man it is not what he is able to do, but his drive to do better in all things that makes him great."
The twins said, "Compassion, for without it the man can do no good for any but himself" and "Loyalty, for through loyalty does the man contribute to the good that is greater than himself."
His sister Shinjo pondered, "Family, for only family can redeem his goodness when a man falls."
Akodo asked his youngest brother, and he replied "Courtesy, for the man may only know his place in the Celestial Order by the respect he gives and receives."
And then Hantei asked him his own question. Akodo considered the many wise answers his siblings had given him. The he replied, "Courage, for without it the man will never have the strength to try."

(…as taken from the Agate Palace @ http://www.agatepalace.org)




On Bushido…

A gaijin mind could not begin to ponder the real meaning of Bushido lest even to understand how it simply works for they were not born unto it. To understand bushido is to live, breath and sleep with it. It is imprinted on the Rokugani soul from the very first time they were given life. Only when you are born to it can you begin to comprehend what it is all about, but even then, one will still not be able to fathom the completeness of its doctrine. It is a continuous process which encompasses birth, death and re-birth to the afterlife.

Trying to put it simply, it is the complexity of Bushido and the contradictions that lay within it that shapes a samurai to be what he is. Ones honor is never dictated by the morals of the world but to that of the blueprint by which the eight codes represents. Explaining Bushido in a single parchment or a page of scroll will do no justice to it. Like a broken chapters in a book, a samurai must uphold a certain degree of attunement to a code before understanding the rest. As he moves on in his life, he then starts to understand how the other codes intertwine with his purpose in life.

For an example… A Hida Samurai is bound by his Duty to the Wall, to protect the empire against the Dark forces that seeks to overthrow the empire. Abandoning that duty is a grave disrespect to the honor of his family, his clan and to the empire.
He is bound by Excellence, anything less is an affront to his honor and to the Crab.
Understanding his place in the greater things is his sole definition of his purpose in life, you never question what you are, only that it is who you are.
Loyalty to the Family that is his Clan and the Emperor gives him the reason to stand fast in the wall lest the man next to him will fall and the empire with it.
Courage is never a question to him, but to the Crab, a retreat in the face of great odds does not mean cowardice, but a chance to strike again with his sword at the heart of the enemy where it will hurt the most and die with it. A life lost in a lost cause is not worth the honor gained if in so doing - you let the men after you and Wall to fall to the enemy, it is failure of Duty. Better to heal back the wounds then try again where much will be gained, then accept death so that honor will be regained. To a Lion samurai, such notion of retreat is an affront to his belief. He will stand fast his ground and die trying, doing less is dishonorable. If you are to Question the difference between the two ideals, then you have lost a point of honor that dictates bushido. It is not your place to question another in his way, you may imply such a notion but in a risk of questioning the honor of those you speak.
Courtesy… here is where the Crab is weakest; it is because in their fight against the shadowlands that made them to be whom they are, brute and straightforward. The Crab values honesty more than sincerity, for there are no lies in the battlefield. To the rest of the empire, the Crab is unruly but never discourteous. Why so? A Crab samurai will mean no disrespect, but their straightforwardness can be unnerving to the point of disrespect. An Imperial court basks in lies and tricks coated with false sincerity and regality which the Crab has no need of. Their directness can be an affront to the unwary, but it is this honest conduct that the samurai of the Crab lives for. To them it is not a show of disrespect, even if it might seem to others , but to say that in front of him is reason enough to stain the honor of the Crab.
Finally we speak of Compassion, make no mistake, the Crab are compassionate even in an unruly way, they only display cruelty and mercilessness in the face of an Oni horde and to the enemy they feel that earns their disrespect.
Now the conflict begins here… If your Duty calls for you to take arms against your Family, what will you choose? If Understanding what is right makes you choose between compassion and loyalty to your daimyo and the emperor, what honor will you choose? Courtesy requires you to stand down however much truth is laid down, but the insult to your courage and excellence is enough for you to take arms, will your sword suffice, or will you abandon your right to be atoned?

Clearly bushido is a very confusing way of life. To live such and to see it lived by the samurai is to appreciate the sacrifices and decisions that they make so that the empire might survive. A gaijin will question the veracity of these ideals, but to do so will be to question the very existence of the empire that was built by the kami. If you feel that no man should live a life the way a samurai lives his, then you have no right to be called a Samurai. Search for another land, where your reason will be appreciated. Rokugan will exist even if you will not choose it to. But make no mistake, the way you choose yours might not be so different from us; you only gave it another name so that it will not be harder for you to understand. (Authors Note: I’m willing to be corrected in these following passages)





The Ties that Bind…

The precepts of Bushido is not complete, it never was. The Eight-Fold Way that defines the construct of the “Way of the Samurai” follows a doctrine underlined by the eight virtues of the eight Kami that founded the empire. To the uninitiated, the Code of Honor that is the blood and spirit of the samurai follows the eight codes as was handed to them directly from the lineage of the Kami that founded their clans.

Here list the Eight Clan founders, their Clan, the Code they represent and their purpose to the empire.

Hida______Crab______Duty__________The Wall
Togashi___Dragon____Understanding___The Mystic Arts
Doji______Crane_____Excellence______Culture
Shiba_____Phoenix___Compassion_____The Scholars
Bayushi___Scorpion___Loyalty_________Secrets
Shinjo____Ki-Rin______Family_________The Explorers
Akodo____Lion_______Courage________Military
Hantei____Emperor____Courtesy________Leadership

Towards the end of the Second Day of Thunder, when Shinsei returned to fulfill an ancient prophesy, the doctrines of bushido was put into question, as the samurai of the empire struggled to regain what honor loss their families have committed during the Clan Wars. When the ashes of the fallen have been scattered to the four winds and the memory of what has happened are transcribed so that they may not be forgotten, the samurai of Rokugan trotted a new path that now constitutes the New Way of the Samurai, the modern take of Bushido to accept the changes that came.
*
As the dust of conflict settled on the fields of Rokugan, the status of a Major Clan was given to the Four Man Alliance, becoming the Mantis Clan under the family of Yoritomo. They became the bastion of the seas, guardians of the waters that border the South-Eastern reaches of the empire. The line of Hantei was finally cut, replaced by a new name, that of Toturi. The Ki-Rin clan began to usurp their mark in the empire. Branded as outcasts since their return eight centuries before, they now bear the mark of the Unicorn. The Crab returned to the Wall, their duty now in question. The Phoenix, in their duty and loyalty to the empire led them to their destruction, but like their namesake, “rose from the ashes to begin anew”. The Lion was broken, their purpose now lost and taken over by the Ki-Rin. The Dragon has ventured down from their mountains, ending their long isolation from the empire. New purpose and new doctrines on bushido were thought of, but only Akodo himself can rewrite the “Way” he has written millennia ago.

But the new blood requires a new way to bushido. It is made clear on the Second day of Thunder. While the original precepts are still accepted and to question their validity is a grave affront to the Kami that founded the empire, the changing times must also reflect in the samurais’ ‘Code of Honor’ if bushido is to survive the next age.
The Lion prided themselves as the inheritor of the original scriptures. In their pride that they insist to hold the right in augmenting the “Way of the Warrior” but the empire remembers…it was Lions pride that broke their clan and their service to the Hantei line, and it was Matsu Tsukos’ sacrifice that mended it back. The only way to circumvent the fact of this matter is for the Great clans to all agree upon the new transcriptions, the Mantis included. It was a bitter pill to swallow for the Lions pride but choosing between handing it all to the Crane and letting the Mantis in the view of things, the former is a much bigger insult. It is thus best to have the whole of the empire in the mix than have Akodos’ legacy corrupted by Crane vanity, or so they will say.

A symposium was formed to address the problem, then by Imperial Edict under Toturi the First, an Imperial assembly was created that will study the whole length of ‘Akodos – Way of the Samurai’, its modernity and how it stands up to the new Empire. Made up each of three of the best minds from each clan, their duty is to secure the integrity of bushido, so that they will survive the changes that the empire will undergo. They were separated from the field of Rokugani politics and the rest of the empires undertakings so as not to influence the outcome of the study. Progressive copies were delivered to the emperors, until more recently, the final draft of the New Way was delivered to Toturi the III before his untimely demise.
It was in this copy that an encrypted message was found. In one sentence it was described clearly.

“…the ‘Way’ is not complete…”

The profoundness of the implications was known only to a few people including the Emperor. It was initially thought that the final draft was the one indicated as incomplete, but the discovery of another line gave it away. It read…

“…there were ten, but only eight were written…”

Of the ten… there were ten sons and daughters of the kami, nine fell and one remained in heaven dying. Eight founded the empire, one chose to destroy it.

A haiku roughly translated in the gaijin tongue clearly characterizes the confounding truth.

“Paper white as snow
Black ink on snow
Is it day on night?”

The haiku - explained….
To know day exists, there must be something to define it, a contrast that will define its existence. There is day because there is also night. Will you call it a day if there is no night? Why do we call black - black? And white as white? Will we call it white if the only color we see is white, do we still need to name it if it is the only color that exist. What defines white is because there is black, and the same can be said to day and night.
The “poet”

When the Shadowlands lobbied for recognition in the empire, under the family of Daigotsu, it was only then that the hidden writings were finally understood.
The Eight-Fold Way is the tenets of bushido, the pure qualities of a samurai that makes him noble. But like the ‘day’ it has to exist with the ‘night’ for it to be defined as thus. When Daigotsu took the mantle of daimyo of the “Lost”, and lobbied for recognition as part of the Empire, the rest of Rokugan has to face the truth they have so long ignored……that the shadowlands exist with the empire, and the empire exists with the shadowlands.

“There were ten kami – nine fell – eight founded the Emerald Empire. That empire has passed and so has the Jade Empire in so short a time, now…the Steel throne is empty. While the rest of the empire seek absolution with the spread of enlightenment, they forgot the true measure of the legacy that is theirs to bear from the very beginning of the empire…Bushido”
Asako Geki, historian of the Phoenix Clan


The Missing Part of Bushido

These matters were hidden to the rest of the empire, to question the purity of bushido even today is to call upon dishonor to all the samurai in the land. It was this enlightened realization that the emperor immediately ordered the dissolution of the ‘assembly’. Of the twenty four clan representatives, fourteen were samurais who underwent the ritual of honorable seppuku. Seven chose to go in exile, three to the north and four beyond the Sea of Storms including two monks. The remaining three stayed. For what purpose they will serve, only the emperor knows, a reason and purpose he took with him to Tengoku.

“What was the missing virtue? Is it virtue if it represents the clan or faction within the empire that symbolizes corruption…the Shadowlands?
We are now left to ponder, for those who dare to question bushido.
I am Gaijin, but I have absorbed Rokugani life as if I was born to it. I came to Rokugan in a quest for knowledge of what lies beyond. When a storm swept me into this land, I was lost, but now I am found.
I now follow bushido like it was a part of me. I walk the land with a naginata as my cane; I am not allowed to hold a katana for I am gaijin.
Now I seek the answer to the questions. What was the last and ninth virtue that Akodo failed to add? Did he not add it on purpose, or was he so afraid of the truth?
If so, can anybody in this land tell me the answer, or I need to follow those who went into exile to the other lands to find it?
And if it is found…there is still another question. Is there a tenth virtue, an eleventh and a twelfth? Yes the empire was founded by eight, now make it nine, but there were twelve kami, and they all had a hand in making the empire what it was, from the very start.
Let Rokugan be innocent of this until it is resolved, for it might ruin the empire.
Let the samurai go on with their take on bushido…but leave the questioning to me, for I am gaijin.

Remwel Gebaune – gaijin scholar to the Clans


“…that nothing so pure can exist if corruption itself is non existent…”

Toritaka Anube…the wandering scribe – His take on the missing Ninth Virtue

================================================
OT: I have my fictions in PDF format, is there any way i can upload it here because i added images on them for effect...