Buddha (manga)

AUTHOR: Tezuka, Osamu

ARTIST: Osamu Tezuka (illustrator); Chip Kidd (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: Ushio Shuppansha (Japanese); Vertical (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Budda, 1972-1983

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1974-1984 (English translation, 2003-2005)

Publication History

Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha was first published in the Japanese manga periodicals Kibo no Tomo, Shonen Warudo, and Komikku Tomu from September, 1972, to December, 1983. Multivolume collected editions were published in Japan beginning in the mid-1970’s and have continued to be reprinted in multiple sizes and formats. The series was introduced to Western audiences comparatively recently. A ten-volume edition entitled Buda was published in Spanish by Planeta De-Agostini in 2002-2003. An English-language version was published by Vertical in eight hardcover volumes from 2003 to 2005, followed by a paperback edition in 2006-2007.

Plot

Buddha is a sprawling saga of sixty-six chapters and nearly three thousand pages. At its core, the series is a heavily fictionalized biography of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. Interwoven into Siddhartha’s story are dozens of well-developed secondary characters, both historical and entirely fictional, whose narrative trajectories unfold over the course of the series. Slaves, kings, crooks, giants, ghosts, demons, princesses, prostitutes, and even the creator-god Brahma all play roles in shepherding the story toward its inevitable conclusion.

Buddha begins just prior to the birth of the Siddhartha Gautama, and over the course of its eight volumes the story follows the protagonist’s biography as it is traditionally told: He is born the son of a minor king in northern India; grows up in luxury, learning only in late childhood about the presence of death and disease; rejects his home and family in young adulthood and spends eight years undergoing various trials as a wandering ascetic; finds enlightenment under the bodhi tree; and passes his remaining decades preaching the dharma.

Interspersed in this relatively faithful account of Siddhartha’s life are several wholly fictional subplots, some of which are rather brief and others which span nearly the length of the series. Foremost among the subplots is the story of Tatta, a pariah child whose family is killed by a neighboring tribe prior to the Buddha’s birth. Tatta begins adult life as an infamous thief and murderer but comes to renounce violence as a disciple of the Buddha. In the end, however, he is unable to resist an opportunity to seek revenge and dies in battle, fighting the tribe that slew his family. His ultimate failure to come to terms with the Buddha’s message of peace and forgiveness speaks to the conflicted nature of Tezuka’s work, fraught as it is with difficult choices and fateful outcomes for so many of its characters.

Volumes

• Buddha: Kapilavastu (2003). Contains the twelve chapters of part 1, which takes place prior to, during, and shortly after the Buddha’s birth. Introduces Tatta.

• Buddha:The Four Encounters (2003). Contains the ten chapters of part 2, in which the Buddha grows to young adulthood and rejects his family to become a wandering ascetic.

• Buddha:Devadatta (2004). Contains the first five chapters of part 3. Introduces Devadatta, Migaila, and Asaji.

• Buddha: The Forest of Uruvela (2004). Features the remaining chapters of part 3, in which the Buddha finally attains enlightenment.

• Buddha: Deer Park (2005). Contains the seven chapters of part 4, in which the Buddha gives his first sermon.

• Buddha:Ananda (2005). Features the first eight chapters of part 5. Introduces Ananda, a murdering thief who finds redemption in the Buddha’s teachings.

• Buddha:Prince Ajatasattu (2005). Features the remaining two chapters of part 5 and the first seven chapters of part 6. The Buddha, now aged, returns to the place of his birth.

• Buddha:Jetavana (2005). Contains the remaining chapters of part 6 and part 7. Tatta falls in battle, and Shakya is destroyed; the Buddha dies and passes into nirvana.

Characters

• Siddhartha is the protagonist of the series. He is based on the historical Buddha, a prince of the Shakyamuni clan who rejects luxury at an early age to become a wandering ascetic. The narrative of his life in Buddha largely follows accepted legend. Unlike traditional representations of the character, however, Tezuka’s Buddha is a very human presence throughout the series, showing fear, frustration, and anger—even after his enlightenment experience. Throughout Buddha, he changes visually in dramatic fashion—at the series’ end, aged and bearing the traditional marks of the Buddha (elongated ears, cranial protrusion, curled hair, circular “eye of wisdom” mark on forehead), he is virtually unrecognizable from the young monk of the middle chapters.

• Tatta is a pariah child with the uncanny ability to enter into the minds of animals, a power he loses when he matures and becomes a bandit leader. Married to Migaila, he renounces his murdering ways and joins the royal guard of the kingdom of Magadha, a rival of the clan that killed his friends and family years before. He later joins the Buddha as a disciple. Other than the Buddha, Tatta is the most featured character in the series.

• Migaila is Tatta’s wife. A subcaste thief who develops romantic feelings for the Buddha early in the series, she is blinded by the Buddha’s father in order to discourage their relationship. She then finds lasting companionship with Tatta, bearing him several children and joining him as a disciple of the Buddha.

• Devadatta, based on the actual disciple of the Buddha, is said to have instituted the rules of monastic life into Buddhism. He also created a schism in the early monastic community and even attempted to kill the Buddha out of jealousy. Tezuka fictionalizes aspects of the character, including his being raised in the forest by wolves and spending much of his childhood living in nature.

• Ananda is, true to legend, the Buddha’s devoted attendant and helper. In Tezuka’s version, he begins life as an angry orphan, his mother having been killed by troops from Kosala. With the help of the evil spirit Mara, he becomes a murdering bandit invulnerable to physical harm. Later, he renounces his thieving ways, breaks free of Mara’s influence, and becomes the Buddha’s most loyal servant and disciple.

• Dhepa is an ascetic forced by the adult Tatta and Migaila to blind himself in one eye to earn his release. He accompanies the Buddha in his spiritual quest and encourages him to undergo severe ascetic trials.

• Asaji, loosely based on the historical disciple, is a comically diminutive and meek young monk who tags along after the Buddha and Dhepa. He develops the power of prophecy and lives calmly for years knowing the precise time and date of his own death. At the appointed hour, he lies down next to a pack of starving wolves and is torn apart by their mother to provide sustenance for her cubs.

• Crystal Prince is a prince of the Kosala tribe who vows to eliminate the Shakya clan because they sent a slave woman to marry the Kosalan king, his father. The slave woman, the Crystal Prince’s mother, is for him a source of great humiliation and suffering, as he had been raised to believe he was of pure and noble birth. With the help of the Buddha’s teaching, he comes to regret his attacks, but in the end he is unable to quell his desire for revenge and destroys the entire Shakya tribe.

• Ajatasattu is a prince prophesized by Asaji to kill his father, King Bimbisara, in twenty years’ time. To avoid this fate, Ajatasattu is imprisoned in a tower, where he falls in love with a slave girl, who is subsequently put to death by Bimbisara to terminate their illicit relationship. Upon release, he makes his prophesized revenge, usurping the throne and imprisoning his father, who eventually starves to death.

• Naradatta, one of the first characters introduced in the series, is an inexperienced young monk sent by his master on a pilgrimage to find a great holy man. He is punished by his master for squandering the life of several animals to save a human life and is sent into exile in the forest, where he spends his remaining decades in a mute, bestial existence. He briefly raises Devadatta before forcing the boy to return to the human world. At the close of the series, he meets the Buddha and dies peacefully, the goal of his pilgrimage having been realized at long last.

Artistic Style

A pioneer in graphic storytelling in the manner of Walt Disney or Jack Kirby, Tezuka virtually invented the visual vocabulary and grammar of the manga genre. As Tezuka had been writing and drawing professionally for more than two decades when the Buddha series began in 1972, his talents were in full maturity. Tezuka’s so-called cinematic style, for example, is much in evidence in the series, as he uses a variety of angles, far and long shots, and close-ups to dynamically capture motion and mood.

A hallmark of Tezuka’s visual aesthetic—cute, cartoonish art standing side by side with adult graphic violence and nudity—may be off-putting to Western readers, who are greeted in the series’ opening pages with the self-immolation of a doe-eyed bunny drawn à la Disney. Finally, along with the artist’s cartoonish images are numerous jokes and anachronisms: E.T., Yoda, and even Tezuka are among the Buddha’s monkish followers, and the text makes reference to then-current events.

Themes

As is the case with Tezuka’s other masterworks (such as Phoenix, published in English from 2003 to 2008), the overarching theme of the Buddha series is humanism. Tezuka had a great respect for the dignity and value of human life, and the work confronts this issue directly, as its young protagonist seeks to find the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence. Before, during, and even after his enlightenment experience, the Buddha constantly questions what purpose human lives serve in the overall scheme of the universe. “Why do humans suffer Why do they live Why should a world such as ours exist” The Buddha finally awakens to the answer late in the series, when he sees Ajatasattu smile after three years of torment. “It is in the Heart of Man that God exists!” he exclaims, forswearing the need for rigorous training and ascetic practices in favor of profound empathy for one’s fellow man.

Other themes in Buddha deepen and expand upon Tezuka’s concern with the human condition. The Buddhist notion of the interconnectedness of all living things, for example, and the role that sacrifice plays in providing for the greatest good are featured prominently in the Buddha series. In fact, the series begins and ends with the same anecdote (a rabbit that immolates itself to provide food for a starving man), first related by the Brahman master Asita and later by the Buddha in one of his final sermons. This fate is echoed in the character of Asaji, a prophetic monk who performs a similar sacrifice.

Another recurring motif is the suffering and injustice caused by caste difference, a subject central to the historical Buddha’s teachings. Early in his ascetic wanderings, the Buddha rejects Brahmanic concepts of the fundamental and inviolable difference between social classes. The Buddha’s friendship and intimacy with persons of the lowest classes speak to his belief in equality—a belief that extends beyond humans to all life-forms.

Impact

Along with Phoenix, Buddha remains one of Tezuka’s best-known and best-regarded works. In Japanese, it has been reprinted numerous times since the 1970’s. The planned film trilogy also highlights the series’ continued resonance in Japan. Vertical’s hardcover English translation (coupled with a Spanish-language release during the same time period) brought a truly global audience to the series. In the United States, Buddha elicited high praise from both mainstream American sources, such as Time magazine, the New York Times Book Review, and the American Library Association, and the comic book industry, which bestowed the series with prestigious Harvey and Eisner awards from 2004 to 2006. A subsequent paperback release of the eight volumes remains in print.

Films

Buddha: The Great Departure. Directed by Kozo Morishita. Tezuka Production Company/Toei Animation Company, 2011. This animated film is the first of a planned trilogy based on the Buddha series. The first film covers Siddhartha’s youth.

Further Reading

Chopra, Deepak. Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment (2007).

Tezuka, Osamu. Ode to Kirihito (2006).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Phoenix (2003-2008).

Bibliography

MacWilliams, Mark Wheeler. “Japanese Comic Books and Religion: Osamu Tezuka’s Story of the Buddha.” In Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, edited by Timothy J. Craig. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000.

Power, Natsu Onoda. God of Comics: Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.

Swanson, Paul L. “Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha.” Review of Buddha, by Osamu Tezuka. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 31, no. 1 (2004): 233-240.