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Re: My Yami fic
This essay contains a massive spoiler for Chapter Eight of my Yami no Matsuei fanfic, Mercy of the Fallen, which you should totally go read now before reading this. Cuz it's cool. And cuz then you'll be able to make sense of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rubyd's gorgeous fanart!!!!!! (Thank you so much o my gods SQUEEE!)
So... Muraki’s an angel.
Muraki’s a what, now?
I was given this idea by my lovely wife,rushthatspeaks, who discussed it with seishonagon and homasse (who wrote up the discussion on her website here. I’ll provide a brief recap of their arguments, along with my expansion of the idea specifically in terms of Muraki’s karmic functions.
There’s a tremendous amount of textual evidence in Yami for Muraki being an angel. From his first appearance in the anime (kneeling in a church, the beams of light through the windows crossing at his back like wings), he is constantly surrounded by religious allusions. His appearance-- dressed all in white, with silver (“platinum blond”) hair-- fits the Western idea of an angel pretty well, and “as beautiful as an angel” is exactly how people (Tsubaki-hime, the nurses in the Kyoto arc, etc.) keep describing him. The silver hair helps-- it’s often used in anime as a signifier of supernatural or angelic origin (spoiler: In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kaoru is a perfect example).* He says cryptic things about “humans” as if he isn’t one, and he has a ridiculous amount of power for a human, even a human magician. This is a person who can go toe to toe with a shinigami with twelve gods at his command, and come out on top every time. Plus, he has this unnerving habit of appearing out of the air in a shower of white feathers and bearing people away, smiling beatifically. There may be better explanations for this than him being an angel, but I can’t think of any.
One thing to keep in mind here is that I’m not talking about angels as the sort of sweet, reassuring fluffy folks in night-gowns one finds on lapel pins and Hallmark cards. Biblical Christian angels are messengers of God, reflections of His** awesome power, and therefore terrifying. As C.S. Lewis points out in the introduction to The Screwtape Letters, “in Scripture, the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying, ‘Fear not.’” Angels war, battle serpents, destroy cities... they are God’s instruments in the constant reshaping and re-creation of the world. And this is a God who either permitted or created Hell for the people who manage to fall out of His good Graces.
It’s true that some angels may be guardians, but Muraki would not be one of them. He’d be one of the darker ones-- maybe the angel of death, or, ashomasse suggested, an angel of vengeance. He might also be a fallen angel-- his magic (pentacles, demon-summoning, and the same slitted eye as Sagatanus) suggest that strongly. But either way, the textual evidence all points to him being some kind of Christian angel.
At least, that’s what he might be in a mostly Christian country. But he’s Japanese (at least partly), and only about 1% of Japanese people are Christian. The majority of Japanese people practice a combination of Buddhism and Shinto, usually in fairly harmonious combination (eg, Shinto rituals for birthdays, Buddhist ones for funerals). And Yami is also pretty evenly split between Shinto and Buddhism, with a scattering of Christianity thrown in-- Enma is Buddhist, shinigami are Shinto, Sagatanus works more like a Christian devil than a Buddhist one.
Now, Shinto doesn’t seem to have angels per se. As far as I can tell, in Shinto, the division between gods and lesser spiritual beings is not very distinct-- they’re all some sort of kami. It’s been suggested to me that kitsune, or fox-spirits, fill the same messenger role (specifically for the god Inari) as Christian angels, but there’s no particular being at which I could point to call angelic.
Buddhism, however, has a much closer equivalent in their devas or tenbu. In Japanese Buddhism, devas are emanations and guardians of the boddhisattvas and buddhas. They are celestial beings, guardians of the four and twelve directions. They are seen as occupying the highest of the six states of mortal existence, just above humans and just below the boddhisattvas. This means that, though much closer to enlightenment than anyone else, devas are still trapped within the cycle of death and reincarnation.
Devas are often seen as ferocious, threatening, well-armed protectors of the boddhisattvas and Buddhas, as well as of Buddhist law. There are many different devas-- including Enma, god of the South and judge of the dead. Muraki as I’ve written him here seems in function most like a vidyaraja or “wrathful savior.” According to artsmia.org, “this type of deity forms a direct counterpoint to a bodhisattva. Rather than standing or sitting on a beautiful lotus throne, they are positioned on piles of rock to suggest their immovable strength. Rather than compellingly sweet and serene faces, vidyaraja glare from beneath scowling brows and sometimes have fangs, flame-like hair and hold terrifying weapons.” The author of this article describes two statues of devas thusly: “The fury of these wrathful deities suggests their impatience with humankind's inability to follow the Buddha's teachings. This furious energy forms a counterpoint to the calm benevolence of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. In essence, however, all Buddhist deities— at their core— are concerned with humankind's salvation.”
In this fic, then, Muraki is portrayed as having the appearance and attitude of a Christian angel, but the function of a vidyaraja... with something all his own thrown in to keep things interesting.
Muraki’s choices.
The thing about karma, as I understand it, is that it’s long-term. Your actions follow you for hundreds of lifetimes, your circumstances now were created by your actions long ago. If you’re suffering at the moment, well, this life is temporary. The important thing is that it will help to purify your soul, so that eventually you might gain enlightenment and break out of the cycle. Thus, torturing someone might actually be doing him/her a favor, if it lets him/her work of some of his/her previous bad karma (though if you’re human, torturing someone else will do rotten things to your own karma).
So, one could say that Muraki’s job as an angel is simply to torture people for their past deeds in order to help them work off their karma. But when we looked at the series, that seemed less interesting than the pattern we saw. Muraki is so hard to deal with not because he’s wantonly cruel, but because he intelligently and perceptively seems to play on people’s weaknesses. The impressive thing about that is that, through interacting with him, those weaknesses sometimes seem to become strengths.
For example:
Maria Wong
Maria Wong’s vampirism (zombiehood, whatever) seems entirely undeserved. She seems like a perfectly sweet girl whose only crime is to be a little too easy to push around. Now, I know that Buddhism teaches that while it’s important to develop detachment from the material world, it also teaches that while you’re here, it’s important to fulfill the duties of the life in which you find yourself. I’m just not sure what it teaches when there’s a conflict between duty to your work and duty to your family-- whether it would be better for Maria to obey her step-mother even though it meant that she sang less well because her heart was elsewhere. I would suspect, though, that it is very difficult to achieve any kind of enlightenment without having some strength of will-- and it was the choice of whether or not to exert that strength of will which Muraki posed her. Under his spell, Maria could choose either to continue to obey and to murder-- or to refuse to submit, standing up for what she knew was right. She chose to fight, working to break the spell on her own, and fighting hard to help Tsuzuki to rescue her. Thus, she made a significant choice and sacrifice in order to do the right thing, and probably died with much better karma than she would have had she never met Muraki.
And... they’re all like that. Every single person with whom Muraki interacts is posed that kind of choice, and their karma is improved or worsened by it:
Maria’s Step-Mother Will you force your step-daughter to murder in order to make money for yourself?
Mr. Kakyoin Will you murder innocent people to keep your daughter from dying?
All the other VIPs Will you profit from the murder of innocent people? (Either through blackmail or directly.)
Eileen Will you die to save your friend? (I’m not sure whether he gave her this choice before she died, but she certainly had the option afterwards to rest easy and let Tsubaki-hime live unknowing. Unless you believe Muraki that there was no ghost, and Tsubaki-hime was just possessed into believing that there was.)
Tsubaki-hime Will you let your friend be murdered for you? And once you find out about it, will you forgive the person who put you in that position?
Saotome-sensei Will you let innocent people be murdered for your research and fame?
Maki-chan(She’s the one who got killed first.) Will you learn to take something-- anything-- seriously?
Mariko-chan Will you learn to stop worrying enough to trust somebody else to help you?
And then we get to the people who Muraki didn’t kill and send on to their next lives. And so, one assumes, they haven’t all made their choices yet. Some of these are guesses, some of them are the choices my fic is posing for them.
Watari Will you reach past your safe, scientist’s detachment in order to save your friends? (I’m thinking of the scene in the manga (though not, alas, the anime), where he yells at Tatsumi to forget about the right thing and go get Tsuzuki out of Touda’s fire, dammit, now.)
Tatsumi Will you let loose of doing the Proper Thing enough to see what you really want and act on it? I realize this doesn’t sound much like Buddhist detachment from this world, but there’s such a thing as being overly attached to detachment, and Tatsumi’s got it in spades. He’s miserably tied to the world, in large part because he’s so determined not to admit when it matters to him.
Oriya Will you hang on so hard to your loyalty to your friend that you let him drag you with him into evil actions?
And the big ones:
Tsuzuki Will you let go of your guilt? Muraki hurts Tsuzuki beyond any reasonable punishment-- whatever sin he may have committed, surely, he’s paid for it by now. But he can’t let go-- he nearly dies to punish himself for what he’s done. He makes the choice-- no, he can’t let go of the guilt-- and it’s nearly the end of him. But Hisoka gets in the way.
Which means that Tsuzuki never made his final choice. He’s still got it before him-- will he let go of his guilt, or will it finally destroy him?
Hisoka Lucky Hisoka... he gets two.
The first, from after Muraki rapes and kills him-- Will you learn to let go of your anger and fear enough to trust people again?
But he’s still around, after that. And so’s Muraki. Which means Hisoka gets another choice.
Tune in next chapter.
REFERENCES
http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/VedicJapan.pdf
http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/buddhism/buddhism-whos-who.cfm
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tenbu-top.shtml
*I’m not sure whether the fact that he’s androgynously gorgeous has anything to do with it-- it is a typical feature of Western representations of angels, but on the other hand, he is a bishounen.
**I’m not Christian or Buddhist, but I enjoy their theology. So, for these sections of the essay, I’m trying to use Christian/Buddhist terms and attitudes as much as possible, and I apologize if I in any way mess up.
rubyd's gorgeous fanart!!!!!! (Thank you so much o my gods SQUEEE!) 
So... Muraki’s an angel.
Muraki’s a what, now?
I was given this idea by my lovely wife,
rushthatspeaks, who discussed it with seishonagon and homasse (who wrote up the discussion on her website here. I’ll provide a brief recap of their arguments, along with my expansion of the idea specifically in terms of Muraki’s karmic functions. There’s a tremendous amount of textual evidence in Yami for Muraki being an angel. From his first appearance in the anime (kneeling in a church, the beams of light through the windows crossing at his back like wings), he is constantly surrounded by religious allusions. His appearance-- dressed all in white, with silver (“platinum blond”) hair-- fits the Western idea of an angel pretty well, and “as beautiful as an angel” is exactly how people (Tsubaki-hime, the nurses in the Kyoto arc, etc.) keep describing him. The silver hair helps-- it’s often used in anime as a signifier of supernatural or angelic origin (spoiler: In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Kaoru is a perfect example).* He says cryptic things about “humans” as if he isn’t one, and he has a ridiculous amount of power for a human, even a human magician. This is a person who can go toe to toe with a shinigami with twelve gods at his command, and come out on top every time. Plus, he has this unnerving habit of appearing out of the air in a shower of white feathers and bearing people away, smiling beatifically. There may be better explanations for this than him being an angel, but I can’t think of any.
One thing to keep in mind here is that I’m not talking about angels as the sort of sweet, reassuring fluffy folks in night-gowns one finds on lapel pins and Hallmark cards. Biblical Christian angels are messengers of God, reflections of His** awesome power, and therefore terrifying. As C.S. Lewis points out in the introduction to The Screwtape Letters, “in Scripture, the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying, ‘Fear not.’” Angels war, battle serpents, destroy cities... they are God’s instruments in the constant reshaping and re-creation of the world. And this is a God who either permitted or created Hell for the people who manage to fall out of His good Graces.
It’s true that some angels may be guardians, but Muraki would not be one of them. He’d be one of the darker ones-- maybe the angel of death, or, as
homasse suggested, an angel of vengeance. He might also be a fallen angel-- his magic (pentacles, demon-summoning, and the same slitted eye as Sagatanus) suggest that strongly. But either way, the textual evidence all points to him being some kind of Christian angel. At least, that’s what he might be in a mostly Christian country. But he’s Japanese (at least partly), and only about 1% of Japanese people are Christian. The majority of Japanese people practice a combination of Buddhism and Shinto, usually in fairly harmonious combination (eg, Shinto rituals for birthdays, Buddhist ones for funerals). And Yami is also pretty evenly split between Shinto and Buddhism, with a scattering of Christianity thrown in-- Enma is Buddhist, shinigami are Shinto, Sagatanus works more like a Christian devil than a Buddhist one.
Now, Shinto doesn’t seem to have angels per se. As far as I can tell, in Shinto, the division between gods and lesser spiritual beings is not very distinct-- they’re all some sort of kami. It’s been suggested to me that kitsune, or fox-spirits, fill the same messenger role (specifically for the god Inari) as Christian angels, but there’s no particular being at which I could point to call angelic.
Buddhism, however, has a much closer equivalent in their devas or tenbu. In Japanese Buddhism, devas are emanations and guardians of the boddhisattvas and buddhas. They are celestial beings, guardians of the four and twelve directions. They are seen as occupying the highest of the six states of mortal existence, just above humans and just below the boddhisattvas. This means that, though much closer to enlightenment than anyone else, devas are still trapped within the cycle of death and reincarnation.
Devas are often seen as ferocious, threatening, well-armed protectors of the boddhisattvas and Buddhas, as well as of Buddhist law. There are many different devas-- including Enma, god of the South and judge of the dead. Muraki as I’ve written him here seems in function most like a vidyaraja or “wrathful savior.” According to artsmia.org, “this type of deity forms a direct counterpoint to a bodhisattva. Rather than standing or sitting on a beautiful lotus throne, they are positioned on piles of rock to suggest their immovable strength. Rather than compellingly sweet and serene faces, vidyaraja glare from beneath scowling brows and sometimes have fangs, flame-like hair and hold terrifying weapons.” The author of this article describes two statues of devas thusly: “The fury of these wrathful deities suggests their impatience with humankind's inability to follow the Buddha's teachings. This furious energy forms a counterpoint to the calm benevolence of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. In essence, however, all Buddhist deities— at their core— are concerned with humankind's salvation.”
In this fic, then, Muraki is portrayed as having the appearance and attitude of a Christian angel, but the function of a vidyaraja... with something all his own thrown in to keep things interesting.
Muraki’s choices.
The thing about karma, as I understand it, is that it’s long-term. Your actions follow you for hundreds of lifetimes, your circumstances now were created by your actions long ago. If you’re suffering at the moment, well, this life is temporary. The important thing is that it will help to purify your soul, so that eventually you might gain enlightenment and break out of the cycle. Thus, torturing someone might actually be doing him/her a favor, if it lets him/her work of some of his/her previous bad karma (though if you’re human, torturing someone else will do rotten things to your own karma).
So, one could say that Muraki’s job as an angel is simply to torture people for their past deeds in order to help them work off their karma. But when we looked at the series, that seemed less interesting than the pattern we saw. Muraki is so hard to deal with not because he’s wantonly cruel, but because he intelligently and perceptively seems to play on people’s weaknesses. The impressive thing about that is that, through interacting with him, those weaknesses sometimes seem to become strengths.
For example:
Maria Wong
Maria Wong’s vampirism (zombiehood, whatever) seems entirely undeserved. She seems like a perfectly sweet girl whose only crime is to be a little too easy to push around. Now, I know that Buddhism teaches that while it’s important to develop detachment from the material world, it also teaches that while you’re here, it’s important to fulfill the duties of the life in which you find yourself. I’m just not sure what it teaches when there’s a conflict between duty to your work and duty to your family-- whether it would be better for Maria to obey her step-mother even though it meant that she sang less well because her heart was elsewhere. I would suspect, though, that it is very difficult to achieve any kind of enlightenment without having some strength of will-- and it was the choice of whether or not to exert that strength of will which Muraki posed her. Under his spell, Maria could choose either to continue to obey and to murder-- or to refuse to submit, standing up for what she knew was right. She chose to fight, working to break the spell on her own, and fighting hard to help Tsuzuki to rescue her. Thus, she made a significant choice and sacrifice in order to do the right thing, and probably died with much better karma than she would have had she never met Muraki.
And... they’re all like that. Every single person with whom Muraki interacts is posed that kind of choice, and their karma is improved or worsened by it:
Maria’s Step-Mother Will you force your step-daughter to murder in order to make money for yourself?
Mr. Kakyoin Will you murder innocent people to keep your daughter from dying?
All the other VIPs Will you profit from the murder of innocent people? (Either through blackmail or directly.)
Eileen Will you die to save your friend? (I’m not sure whether he gave her this choice before she died, but she certainly had the option afterwards to rest easy and let Tsubaki-hime live unknowing. Unless you believe Muraki that there was no ghost, and Tsubaki-hime was just possessed into believing that there was.)
Tsubaki-hime Will you let your friend be murdered for you? And once you find out about it, will you forgive the person who put you in that position?
Saotome-sensei Will you let innocent people be murdered for your research and fame?
Maki-chan(She’s the one who got killed first.) Will you learn to take something-- anything-- seriously?
Mariko-chan Will you learn to stop worrying enough to trust somebody else to help you?
And then we get to the people who Muraki didn’t kill and send on to their next lives. And so, one assumes, they haven’t all made their choices yet. Some of these are guesses, some of them are the choices my fic is posing for them.
Watari Will you reach past your safe, scientist’s detachment in order to save your friends? (I’m thinking of the scene in the manga (though not, alas, the anime), where he yells at Tatsumi to forget about the right thing and go get Tsuzuki out of Touda’s fire, dammit, now.)
Tatsumi Will you let loose of doing the Proper Thing enough to see what you really want and act on it? I realize this doesn’t sound much like Buddhist detachment from this world, but there’s such a thing as being overly attached to detachment, and Tatsumi’s got it in spades. He’s miserably tied to the world, in large part because he’s so determined not to admit when it matters to him.
Oriya Will you hang on so hard to your loyalty to your friend that you let him drag you with him into evil actions?
And the big ones:
Tsuzuki Will you let go of your guilt? Muraki hurts Tsuzuki beyond any reasonable punishment-- whatever sin he may have committed, surely, he’s paid for it by now. But he can’t let go-- he nearly dies to punish himself for what he’s done. He makes the choice-- no, he can’t let go of the guilt-- and it’s nearly the end of him. But Hisoka gets in the way.
Which means that Tsuzuki never made his final choice. He’s still got it before him-- will he let go of his guilt, or will it finally destroy him?
Hisoka Lucky Hisoka... he gets two.
The first, from after Muraki rapes and kills him-- Will you learn to let go of your anger and fear enough to trust people again?
But he’s still around, after that. And so’s Muraki. Which means Hisoka gets another choice.
Tune in next chapter.
REFERENCES
http://www.ece.lsu.edu/kak/VedicJapan.pdf
http://www.artsmia.org/art-of-asia/buddhism/buddhism-whos-who.cfm
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/tenbu-top.shtml
*I’m not sure whether the fact that he’s androgynously gorgeous has anything to do with it-- it is a typical feature of Western representations of angels, but on the other hand, he is a bishounen.
**I’m not Christian or Buddhist, but I enjoy their theology. So, for these sections of the essay, I’m trying to use Christian/Buddhist terms and attitudes as much as possible, and I apologize if I in any way mess up.