“I don’t just cut off people’s heads. I think I cut them off from their crimes as well…The executioner, understanding the heart of the executed, praying for them in the world beyond, cuts them off from their crimes in this world.”
People are sometimes surprised to hear that Japan still has a death penalty. It isn’t used nearly as often as it is in the United States (it’s generally reserved only for those found guilty of multiple murders), but just like the U.S., the condemned in Japan may wait for years on death row—for example, Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that committed the 1995 nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway, is still in prison awaiting execution. Unlike the U.S., the sentence, when it is finally carried out, typically happens with little advance notice, and the method used is hanging. Just as in the days of the samurai, the law delivers the blow to the kubi—the neck.
Samurai Executioner is a manga series from Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, the creators of Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s set in the same world as Lone Wolf and Cub, but whereas Yamada “Decapitator” Asaemon is a minor character in LW&C, he is the protagonist of Samurai Executioner. The quote at the top of the article is his, said in Book Three of the Samurai Executioner Omnibus, out this week.
Asaemon is a man of both considered thought and brutal violence, a not uncommon combination in a Kazuo Koike hero. But the execution of criminals can take on different philosophical implications in Japan than it does in the United States. If you sincerely believe in concepts within Buddhism such as karma and reincarnation, it can be argued that it does the murderer no favor to spare their life; if they do not pay for their crimes in this existence, they will just have to do so in the next one—whereas if they repent and accept the penalty, they can start their new incarnation with a cleansed soul.
This is one of the reasons why Samurai Executioner’s stories often revolve around Decapitator Asaemon’s attempts to reconstruct and understand the crimes before he carries out the sentence. I doubt Koike could conceive of such a character as a hero if he fit the traditional image of an executioner, who conceals his identity or role from the public. Just as Asaemon expects criminals to take personal responsibility for their crimes, he takes personal responsibility for his executions, and he can’t bring himself to simply hide his life-taking behind words like “justice” or “the law.” He knows that he too is a killer. He accepts his face being known on the street, being hated and feared, being unable to have a family and having precious few friends.
Because the other reason Asaemon attempts to understand the crime is that he believes every condemned soul was nevertheless born into a world poisoned by poverty, class, and power. In Book Three, he says “Every time I raise my sword…I ask, will it come? A day when people respect each other and build a better world? I answer yes, and swing…Hoping the day will come when history curses me, I cut off heads. Praying that my acts today will make it end tomorrow, I cut off heads…Thus I, too, am a demon. Now and forever.” A man who executes prisoners, a hero? Itto Ogami was a man who killed people for 500 pieces of gold, and took his son along that same dark road. Koike and Kojima’s manga are fiction, of course. But I think for them, a hero must be someone who would never try to wash the blood from their own hands.
—Carl Horn
Manga Editor
“I don’t just cut off people’s heads. I think I cut them off from their crimes as well…The executioner, understanding the heart of the executed, praying for them in the world beyond, cuts them off from their crimes in this world.”
People are sometimes surprised to hear that Japan still has a death penalty. It isn’t used nearly as often as it is in the United States (it’s generally reserved only for those found guilty of multiple murders), but just like the U.S., the condemned in Japan may wait for years on death row—for example, Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that committed the 1995 nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway, is still in prison awaiting execution. Unlike the U.S., the sentence, when it is finally carried out, typically happens with little advance notice, and the method used is hanging. Just as in the days of the samurai, the law delivers the blow to the kubi—the neck.
Samurai Executioner is a manga series from Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, the creators of Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s set in the same world as Lone Wolf and Cub, but whereas Yamada “Decapitator” Asaemon is a minor character in LW&C, he is the protagonist of Samurai Executioner. The quote at the top of the article is his, said in Book Three of the Samurai Executioner Omnibus, out this week.
Asaemon is a man of both considered thought and brutal violence, a not uncommon combination in a Kazuo Koike hero. But the execution of criminals can take on different philosophical implications in Japan than it does in the United States. If you sincerely believe in concepts within Buddhism such as karma and reincarnation, it can be argued that it does the murderer no favor to spare their life; if they do not pay for their crimes in this existence, they will just have to do so in the next one—whereas if they repent and accept the penalty, they can start their new incarnation with a cleansed soul.
This is one of the reasons why Samurai Executioner’s stories often revolve around Decapitator Asaemon’s attempts to reconstruct and understand the crimes before he carries out the sentence. I doubt Koike could conceive of such a character as a hero if he fit the traditional image of an executioner, who conceals his identity or role from the public. Just as Asaemon expects criminals to take personal responsibility for their crimes, he takes personal responsibility for his executions, and he can’t bring himself to simply hide his life-taking behind words like “justice” or “the law.” He knows that he too is a killer. He accepts his face being known on the street, being hated and feared, being unable to have a family and having precious few friends.
Because the other reason Asaemon attempts to understand the crime is that he believes every condemned soul was nevertheless born into a world poisoned by poverty, class, and power. In Book Three, he says “Every time I raise my sword…I ask, will it come? A day when people respect each other and build a better world? I answer yes, and swing…Hoping the day will come when history curses me, I cut off heads. Praying that my acts today will make it end tomorrow, I cut off heads…Thus I, too, am a demon. Now and forever.” A man who executes prisoners, a hero? Itto Ogami was a man who killed people for 500 pieces of gold, and took his son along that same dark road. Koike and Kojima’s manga are fiction, of course. But I think for them, a hero must be someone who would never try to wash the blood from their own hands.
—Carl Horn
Manga Editor