#kanryu

Ryuji pretends to be stupid and doesn’t put on a coat so Kanji’ll give him his jacket and stuff, Kanji doesn’t mind the cold (he’s got love to keep him warm)

I am super late on this update, but whatever! Welcome to the latest edition of my character analysis series under HYRK's Hiten Encyclopedia. TodayI’m going to be putting quite possible one of the funnest (don't even know if that's a word but it is now) characters in RK: Kanryuu Takeda under the microscope! T

At first blush, this little misanthropic piece-of-work is a typical villain but he’s far more nuanced than that. He’s more like an onion...a very rich onion that deals opium and wants to become an arms dealer. Driven by blind ambition, he shapes up to be a character that pretty much the entire cast hates. 

On a side note, while I am going to be talking about the character’s narrative role and symbolic representation in the story, I’d like to give a shout out to his actor, Teruyuki Kagawa for bringing a comedic element to this character, breathing in new life to an otherwise pretty flat and on the nose villain. 

                                                     The Meiji Era

 For those who don't know about the Bakumatsu (you’re reading RK people, you should know), it was an event that essentially ended the reign and existence of the special warrior caste in Japanese society known as Samurai. Power was restored to the Emperor of Japan, Meiji, during the events of those turbulent times. It was a pretty awful time for anyone to live in. Japan realized that they could no longer be isolationist and eventually opened it's borders for the sake of modernity. That is the important part to remember here. 

In an extremely simplified explanation, before and during the conflict, western influence was distinctly shunned, despite the fact that western societies were becoming increasingly more advanced. The opening of the borders from the Bakumatsu and the beginning of the Meiji era is an opportune time for a trade merchant. He can go and bring foreign goods to Japan and sell cheap items for a high profit margin to unsuspecting Japanese citizens who’d buy it primarily for novelty sometimes. Other times, this means he can bring in foreign drugs or supplies for manufacturing drugs to sell at a high price as well and opium, at the time, was particularly popular. 

Using the money he would make from his business, both legitimate and illegitimate, courtesy of the exploited  Megumi, he took advantage of the Oniwaban group (his ragtag team of misfits and Jin-e in the live action films) and other disadvantaged Samurai for protection, in exchange for feeding them as if they were dogs. 

The times were turbulent for samurai as their way of life abruptly ended and they possessed little to no life skills that carried over for modern life, making finding a job and food extremely difficult. More often than not, they caused trouble for many homes and families, which at the time was necessary with Japan changing more and more as the decades went on. 

                                                          Greed

The great irony of his character is his obsession with wealth and power. His aspirations is to overthrow the Meiji government and to rule so that way he could have more money and control over people's lives. To Kanryuu, money talks. Money is the key driving factor to every enjoyable aspect of life. It buys pleasures most Meiji era commoners couldn't dream of: he can dine out wherever he choses, munch on watermelons, buy off the police department so they overlook his drug trafficking ring, hire illustrious fighters from the Bakumatsu such as Aoshi and his group (Jin-e, Gein, Banjin in the film). His character is a commentary on the way we live our lives in the West.

The dude is the friggin' Japanese Al Capone. No one can really bring him down. Legally he owns all the lawyers and police; if someone poses a threat, he can send Jin-e to assassinate them. He profits from drug trade and abuses a woman under his "care" to make him opium and essentially destroy lives, all for the sake of profit. He views human lives as a dollar (or Yen) sign, expendable and meant to be used. This is also, coincidentally, what makes him interesting. 

See, these things are not new to the new era, but he revealed the precise reason many farmers joined the imperialist cause. The new era was lauded as a time for peace and equality. The ideal was that human beings would now be on equal standing to forge their own happiness. You weren't to be given handouts simply because you're the son of a samurai and the Shogun favors you. Peasants were now protected and barbaric men were no longer able to carry swords. Swordsmiths who forged tools of destruction and death that inspired beauty and awe now make common household cutlery for the common man to use. All these qualities were great!...except they also come at a price: They breed men like Kanryu, the staple of his character being the enough is never enough. 

Conversely, the old era, while being one bathed in violence and blood, where evil was rampant and the weak were taken advantage of, bred men like Kenshin and Saito. These men could not be bought. They could not be bent or swayed. They follow their own brands of justice, one forged in fairness and the defeat of evil. This is where the conflict in the story comes from, really. It's a story of what happens when the best of the old world clashes with the worst of the new one. 

                                                       Left Behind 

This brings us to our most tragic reality as well. It's a sort of First Blood: Rambo situation to a lot of Samurai. Many samurai were left behind by the times and honestly...many of them would've preferred to die in battle then live like dogs in the new era. They had their entire world and way of life taken away from them, one cemented in hundreds of years and date back nearly a millennium. Even the samurai who renounced their ways and fought in assistance of the Empire, like Takamori Saigo were quickly left behind. 

As Kanryuu mentioned in the film brothels were lined with samurai wives and daughters. Their sons sold into service to pay debts. Warriors were now forced to take service under men like Kanryuu. Shikijo, Beshimi, Hanya...these were all freaks. Aoshi, being relatively normally looking and well-read could easily adapt to the new world and embrace his role as the Okishira of one of the most powerful intelligence networks in Japan, but his friends couldn't: They were freaks. They didn't know how to do anything else in the new world. Their lives were built trying to fight and now they have to be employed by an honorless and unjust man just to survive and be able to eat who eventually slaughtered them ruthlessly with a tool of the New Age: a gatling gun. They died with honor, protecting their leader and friend and the worst part? They were happy because they finally found an honorable way to die. 

In the film, Jin-e's character is kept extremely subdued and rather subtle, but he does utter a line after meeting Kenshin, "Maybe living through this boring life will be worthwhile afterall." Without talking too much about it (since he will get his own analysis), he also seeks a death befitting of a warrior. Gein, scarred and broken, sold his soul to Kanryuu because he had no other choice. The world had no place for him, thanks to Ishin Shishi. 

Because of this, Kanryu is able to hire them to do his dirty work, giving them usefulness and purpose, even if they don't necessarily agree with it. This was Aoshi's reasoning for pairing up with him in the first place.                                            

                                               Guns against Sword

There's only so much I can say before I begin to repeat myself but everything I've said was symbolically personified in the final showdown, where in both the manga and the film, Kanryuu arrives with a gatling gun and promptly mows down the most elite fighters in Japan with ease. The cruel and mechanical efficiency in which this gun dispatches the Oniwaban group is especially alarming as these fighters are shown to be able to go toe to toe with Kenshin-gumi and in Aoshi's case, hold his own and even nearly get the edge on him. These men literally stood no chance against the ferocious gatling gun and this is where the theme comes into deepest fruition: Kanryu killed the most elite fighters and nearly killed Kenshin and Aoshi, not with skills he earned through years of disciplined training and surviving life and death battles countless times, but by using a weapon he BOUGHT. 

The Gatling Gun was a symbol of the worst of the new age and by proxy, it was a manifestation as to how money and technological efficiency edge out over skill. He even says it himself in the manga, "why spend your life training when you can buy one of these?" This enrages Kenshin not just because it directly conflicts with his belief that life is precious above all else, but because it directly disrespects every single person Kenshin ever struck down. It shits on every man who gave his life for their cause, who dedicated their life to the sword and used those swords to fight and subsequently die for those beliefs. 

Kenshin winning out over the gatling gun was to show that no amount of money can replace human tenacity and skill and most importantly, money can't buy the one thing Kanryu begged for: his life. In the end, Takeda Kanryu is arrested, his syndicate and opium empire destroyed and his arms dealership dismantled. But that doesn't change his role as the first villain in RK to ever challenge Kenshin's very way of life...and the scary part is, just because he lost, doesn't mean he didn't win. His way of life and thinking is one that real people in the world actually think that way and in the end, Kenshin's philosophy and Kanryu's face a tie. Kanryu is a reflection of the worst parts of the world we live in today.

SPECIAL THANKS to White-Plum as always and you guys. Hope you enjoyed it and sorry I’m late!

Kanryu/Autolatry

Autolatry - The worship of one’s self.

This was misspelled so I’m going to assume that you meant Autolatry, which is very much a Kanryu trait.  Should note that this is movie!verse Kanryu, I can do manga!Kanryu on request. :)

——

There was a saying in the west that Kanryu found amusing.  Money is the root of all evil.  It came from the bible, or so he was told.  Despite a fondness for foreign things, that book had never really appealed to him.  The fact that it had been illegal for many years wasn’t the deterrent, he didn’t care about laws either under the Shogunate or the Meiji government.  It was simply boring.

Words on paper shouldn’t tell a man how to live, he thought a cigar from across the ocean between his lips.  He inhaled, deeply.

What god was there in the world that he could not buy?  What spirit, what old world ideal existed that he couldn’t find a modern way to conquer.  After all, everyone had believed the Samurai untouchable, and now they scurried around his estate like rats, happy for any scraps he deemed worthy to throw them.

It was funny to watch; Kanryu made a point to do so daily.  Moving their meals around was also an experiment in amusement.

This world, everything within it was his.  His money made it so, but the money was nothing without him.

And now, he stood on the cusp of extending his own personal empire even further.  The opium was simply a spring board, there was so much more out there to get his hands in.

When history looked back, it wouldn’t be the age of Meiji.  It would be the age of Kanryu.

JE being accused of ripping off Kpop lol

http://www.cyzo.com/2011/08/post_8300.html

I get bits and pieces of it but it'd be cool if you guys translated the gist of it :D 

The gist of the article is that JE can't even escape the K-pop boom, citing that JE groups with less than stellar selling power (V6, KUNTT) are borrowing K-pop flava hard for their new singles:

Somebody seemed to really enjoy Big Bang.

No seriously, it was painful to watch them perform on Mste. And to make matters worse, 2PM went on right after them. Well, at least they have a new single which is more than we can say for NEWS amirite? Watch news come back with some single where they all wear black strong shouldered suits with no undershirt in the midst of fire and slow mo dancing on top of flour. 

Oh wait sorry, that idea has basically been already taken up by KUNTT.