Paper Samurai

My Guardian once said to me: “A Samurai is a person who recognizes their strongest abilities, cultivates those abilities, and serves humanity with those abilities.” He often made his own definitions and I naturally believed all he said, despite his handicap. Yoshigawa was blind but he could talk the wind around himself. In the rural foothills of the South Korean peninsula, the old Japanese man could often be found in the afternoon forest light, sniffing the air to journey thoughtful possibilities. But his past was never far behind him. Society had rejected us both and so we had come to live in nature. I grew up as the hermit he was; his mind became my only window to the outside world. Although he was not my blood, he was my father, my teacher, and my friend. Loss and the seasons bound us to each other. As I grew older, with his nurturing, my hearing grew sharper, but because he was blind, it was my vision that developed the most. Through many days spent sketching, writing, and painting his lessons, the paper I drew on became more. With his guidance, it offered me an opportunity to connect my eyes with the world I longed to know. All the while seeing for two, I learned that vision does not depend on sight alone. His words convinced me of the world’s majesty and what started happening on paper, with a broken pencil, became the magic. Many would wonder how it came to be that Yoshigawa, a well educated Japanese doctor with a privileged upbringing, came to settle in South Korea. More would question how he could have raised me alone and given me the nurturing of any other Korean boy. He would tell these people his life story, and they would cry. The first time I heard that full story was on the last day I saw him. I had just turned seventeen and was about to leave the security of our hermitage to see the world for myself. We were seated in the shade of the pagoda at the cliff edge, where his lessons would usually float out over the valley. On that day however, when he finally explained why he never spoke Japanese or of his past, his words were unusually blunt. He directed them only at me as if he was fearful that the pain they carried would echo in the valley below. He spoke of why he insisted that we live as Koreans, and why the only Japanese word I knew was ‘Samurai’. Although Yoshigawa’s story is very much a part of my life, out of respect for his deep suffering, I will not tell it here. What I will do is offer the story of my awakening and, in doing, share the hope that he harvested as peace in his old age. Yoshi found me as an infant in a bundle on a staircase, between a basement casino and a PC room. He was a drunk. Tragedy led to alcohol abuse which eventually cost him his sight. When the villagers saw how taking care of me was helping the harmless foreigner, they saw no need to interfere with what was obviously an unwanted baby. I was eight when he first told me how he found me. It was around that time that he gave me what I have come to remember as his most profound lesson. He sat in his usual position at the cliff edge with a straight back, his drowned eyes glazed on the horizon, and said: “You are already the man you will become.” He threw a crayon and it hit me in the forehead. I remember being upset and wanting to retaliate, but I was taken aback by how a blind man could be so accurate. “Go on, what are you going to do?” he taunted. I began to cry silently. I did not understand his hostility, it came out of nowhere and I was still recovering from shock when he started to explain. “Sangha. That crayon in your hand became a weapon in mine. You wonder why I threw it at you when you should ask: how could something that you color with become a missile. My lessons now will be questions about your life. How will you use that crayon Sangha? How will you use this life that you are lucky enough to have?” At that moment I was confused. I looked out over the hills washed red in the sunset. For me, the crayon was a tool for drawing; naturally it pointed to the paper in my lap. I drew three incomplete triangles to frame what I saw. Yoshi’s head nodded as he heard the crayon moving. After what seemed like a long time I put the crayon down on the drawing to hold it in place, but the wind blew the paper away. It floated out over the valley below. With the drawing lifted high up on the winds wing, I saw that with the right eyes, the capabilities of all things could be revealed. Yoshi just laughed, “Paper is very compliant when you have its full potential in mind. Now your drawing is of higher consciousness.” The forest and mountains were my classroom; the knowledge and experience of a wise, well traveled man, became my syllabus. I drew everything. I composed with his history lessons. I penciled forms of Genghis Khan and the icy rivers of the Gobi Steppes merged with a lonely Mozart as he wrung the midnight for notes that moved men. I used coal and etched Marie Antoinette’s cold heart to understand the mockery of the Frenchman’s gift to America. We spoke French, English, and Italian. Using his words I scaled Kilimanjaro with a lion’s transplanted heart chased by a platoon of eleven year olds with Russian machine guns. The pencil moved with my desire to see more than just the visions of Yoshi’s experiences. His lessons taught me that man is not always sober; that even misdeeds can have their purpose and beauty. The insights he offered seemed so fantastic that I often felt cheated by the trees and mountains standing forever still. Then one day I learnt about the painting called ‘Mona Lisa’, and her hand, considered the greatest hand ever painted. For months I was obsessed with trying to draw the hand, with the idea that something could be so perfect that the world agreed on it. There were only a few books and I became frustrated when Yoshi could not tell me more. I set off trying to draw the woods and the leaves with the same intensity. Somehow I realised that the manifestation of something on paper was easy, but the spirit of an image was what evoked the real allure.