#tanyuu

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Mushishi week, day 6! Footsteps / Hidden

Currently I'm incredibly nostalgic for my time in Kawaguchiko last year, so for this prompt I drew Tanyuu walking up mount Haneko.

I made a pencil sketch (below the cut) that I wanted to colour digitally like the other Mushishi week drawings, but I'm not great at drawing landscapes like this digitally, so I put her in the picture I took when I walked up mount Haneko :')

It's got such a good view of mount Fuji ughhh I wish I was there..

 “I want to go travelling with you. I want to see all the Mushi you talk about.” -Tanyuu to Ginko

“A sea of Ink”

Tanyuu Karibusa from Mushishi

Welcome, new followers! Sorry this one took a while. I took a lot of care with it.

So, there are two major subjects to discuss in this deceptively quiet little story, and multiple Daoist concepts within them. There is, of course, Ginko and Tanyuu’s relationship, and there is also the use of language. I’ll talk about the second first, and the first second. 

Part 1: The binding power of words

The first part of "Sea of Writing” deals with the “forbidden mushi” contained in Tanyuu’s body—one that seeks to eradicate all other life—and with the strange method by which she removes and binds it. This mushi is contained by writing—specifically, by writing about the deaths of other mushi. Though Tanyuu’s teacher / mushishi / guard dog, Tama, tells her that the deaths of other mushi are “a curse to the forbidden one,” she doesn’t explain why, and we’re left wondering why a mushi that only sought to kill would be cursed by the idea of death.

The power of words is heavily discussed in the foundational writings of Daoism. The very first line of the Dao De Jing reads, “Way-making (dao) that can be put into words is not really way-making” (source, pg. 77).  Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu) also writes about the power of words. “Things are so,” he says, “by being called so,” warning that these labels may limit our understanding of what really is. The use of language draws concepts from our minds and binds them, separating them from other ideas. It divides our perceptions—and to comprehend dao, the flow of life, the oneness of things, and the changes that arise from their interactions, we’re advised to divide our ideas as little as possible. Say Ames and Hall in their commentary on the Dao De Jing:

“The philosophical problem that provokes the Daoist mistrust of language lies in the possibility that a misunderstanding of the nature of language has the potential to promote the worst misconceptions about the flux and flow of experience in which we lives our lives. There is an obvious tension between the unrelenting processual nature of experience and the function of language to separate out, isolate, and arrest elements within it” (emphasis added) (source, pg. 113).

Interfering with the flow of things and ideas is, in the Daoist mindset, to be avoided as much as practically possible, and Daoist foundational writing warns repeatedly against the ability of language to do just this. 

But, to separate out and bind a universally dangerous element—say, a mushi that seeks to kill everything else—confining it within a human body, drawing it out through the formation of ideas, and containing those ideas within words is a uniquely Daoist control method. And to bind a mushi of death, one would need words bearing the concept of death. 

As with other metaphors in Daoism, Yuki Urushibara uses this one literally. Tanyuu doesn’t just write. She pours out words through her body, letting us see that the formation of ideas and words in her mind alone is what draws the mushi outside of her and contains it. That these ideas are of death is underlined by Taynyuu’s own words: “These are all records of death.” 

Unfortunately for Tanyuu, as the story’s title implies, being surrounded by these words also confines her in a world defined by death. Its constant conceptualization shapes the reality that surrounds her. Fortunately, Ginko is a counterbalancing life-force.

Part 2: A Daoist love story

True to everything I just said about language above, I often find myself groping for the right words when talking about Mushishi. There’s so much in it that can’t be verbalized, and so much that can be but probably shouldn’t. In the case of Tanyuu and Ginko’s relationship especially, what isn’t said carries so much more weight than anything that can be. In that spirit, I’ll stay close to the analytical, and outline my thesis that Ginko and Tanyuu’s is a perfectly Daoist love story. 

It’s spiral-shaped: In the Daoist worldview, everything is in motion, not so much in a cycle as in a spiral of constant interchange and newness. The seasons change, but the arrival of each is different from its last. Ginko and Tanyuu’s relationship mirrors this universal spiral—they can’t always be together any more than it can always be daytime or spring, but they meet within a cycle as Ginko travels and returns, gathering new stories.

It’s a union of opposites: Everything arises interdependently and is one with its opposite, and Tanyuu and Ginko’s relationship is shaped as much by their differences as by what they have in common. Tanyuu is immobilized by mushi from within and surrounded by death. Ginko is kept from settling anywhere by mushi from without, and is surrounded by life. Paradoxically (and because Daoists view the world in unions of opposites, they love paradox), what draws them together is the same as what keeps them apart. If not for mushi and the situations in which the mushi have put them, they wouldn’t have met; if not for their shared love of the creatures that disrupt their lives and keep them apart, they wouldn’t continue to meet. Paired opposites and paradox are layered throughout their relationship, becoming the very thing that pushes it into its spiral shape, reminiscent of a Taiji—or a yin-yang, a diagram of the Daoist view of how the universe works.

It’s life-affirming: Like Ginko and Tanyuu, Daoism upholds the value of all things. In the words of Zhuangzi, “[W]hatever might be [from some perspective] strange, grotesque, uncanny, or deceptive, there is some course that opens them into one another, connecting them to form a oneness” (pg. 13). All things, even creatures as strange as the mushi, have a part in the world—Mushishi’s unequivocal message, and a belief Ginko and Tanyuu both held deeply before they ever met.

Not only do they both affirm the value of mushi, they affirm life for each other. Ginko and his stories bring life into Tanyuu’s death-bounded world, and she in turn makes it clear that she wants Ginko to survive. This is no small thing; Mushishi repeatedly draws attention to humans’ need to have their right to live upheld—another connection, perhaps, to the weight Zhuangzi places on our use of language to declare what is and is not right and acceptable (pg. 13). And while Ginko already knows his life is valuable, the fact that another human affirms it is far from meaningless.

It’s accepted for what it is: Because contrasts and change are constant and necessary, the Daoist outlook accepts things as they are. This goes for both unalterable circumstances and the nature of things, and Tanyuu and Ginko exemplify this (as does much else in Mushishi). They feel no need for their situation to change, or for their natures or each other’s to change. They might acknowledge a preference that things were otherwise, but critically, they know that they almost certainly never will be, and nothing rides on their becoming so. This peaceable acceptance is deeply in contrast to the Western attitude we usually expect, wherein nothing is resolved until it gratifies absolutely—especially in a love story. Ginko and Tanyuu demonstrate the key Daoist principles of wuwei and wuyu—respectively, action in accordance with the nature of things, and desire for experience that seeks neither possession nor control. Their relationship is as it is, and it need not be anything more. 

There you have it: as near as I can come, the totality of my thoughts on Ginko and Tanyuu and “Sea of Writing.” I hope I’ve done well by it, though there’s no doing it justice. Tune in next time for, ah... I haven’t decided yet; probably one that won’t earn so long a post. 

I’ve had this on my desktop for a couple days now and only just realized Tanyuu is letting Ginko smoke near the scrolls; where the hell is Tama?