Hibari and Mukuro

So, I was thinking about Hibari and Mukuro, and their philosophical or symbolic furniture, and figured I’d better scribble it all down before it got away.

Poking at the way Hibari changes over time, it seems to me that he’s got two major influences in what we might call his philosophy or mind-set: Naturalist and Traditional. These are my own terms for them, of course.

The Naturalist aspect is the ‘nature red in tooth and claw’, carnivore/herbivore, survival of the fittest or at least rule of the strongest gig that is his stronger influence earlier on. For a high-profile example of how this philosophy manifests in modern Japan, look up Fukuzawa Yukichi.

The Traditional aspect shows up in his devotion to the school, tendency to wear his school uniform exclusively, and later in his design of his Foundation, and tendency to wear kimono at home. All of these suggest an investment in the values of form and conformity, and, as time goes on, in the aesthetics of wabi and iki.

Pause for translation: Both of those are pretty broad concepts, and Hibari is nothing if not selective in how he adopts Traditional ideas, so let me gloss the aspect of wabi he seems most engaged with as “the beauty of imperfections that arise from a thing being what it is” (e.g. liking a corny anthem because, well, it’s the school anthem and those are pretty much supposed to be corny). I would not say he’s much into the “humility” aspect, for example. Iki is usually translated as “refinement”, which is fine as far as it goes. Getting into the further connotations, I’d say Hibari is most engaged with the aspects of simplicity and what we might call “perfection of manner”, witness the classically sparse arrangement of his future quarters.

These things don’t actually contradict each other, provided we assume Hibari is at the top of the food chain, which Hibari clearly does assume.

And then we have Mukuro. Mukuro draws on the concept of Samsara, Buddhist flavor, the cycle of reincarnation through the Six Realms. To have been through this cycle is not an unusual thing to claim, but remembering each life and being able to draw on the nature of each realm certainly is. Despite having all those strengths at his beck and call, of course, Mukuro is clearly not enlightened, has not escaped the cycle. Indeed, based on his current life’s emotions and actions, he’s probably bound straight for Hell again.

The human state is, however, supposed to be the one from which enlightenment can be best achieved, and I find it very interesting that, after his fight with Tsuna, Mukuro starts using a new signature illusion: lotus flowers. Those are one of the prime symbols of enlightenment. An illusion of a lotus has some rather curious connotations, too. On the one hand, Buddhism does suggest that the world around us is, indeed, illusion, from a spiritual point of view. The illusion of the lotus could be the very purest expression of this, showing that all the symbols of this world we use to explain enlightenment are inadequate. It could just as well be the ultimate symbol of Mukuro’s denial of enlightenment.

I suspect we won’t be able to resolve the ambiguity until we find out what Mukuro’s new agenda really is.

Feed journals send no comments

*waves to all her LJ friends* Hey, just wanted to make sure people knew, rss feed journals don't send comments.

So, if anyone comments on branchandrootij, or similar, I won't see those comments unless I happen to go look at the feed journal in person (which I don't unless someone mentions it). Feeds aren't associated with anyone, so there are no notifications.

Personally, I think LJ would do a lot better to see about sending notifications to the source of the feed, instead of uglifying the user info page, but that's just me. *grins*

So if you want to comment so I can see it, click on the url at the top of the entry and leave the comment here on IJ. (See also OpenID commenting so you can get notifications of replies to your comments over here.)