Samurai Champloo Volume 2 contains episodes five through eight of Shinichirô Watanabe’s Edo-period hip-hop-infused anime series, following the journey of Mugen and Jin, two samurai who are indebted to a klutzy young girl, Fuu, and who are now obliged to help her find a mysterious samurai "who smells of sunflowers". While Samurai Champloo Volume 1 spent most of its four episodes establishing the narrative thrust of this series, and setting up the personalities of its three main characters, it is in volume 2 that Champloo really begins to hit its stride, and in which Watanabe, having laid the groundwork, now has ample room to develop the rambling comedic violent plots he so enjoys.

Central to Champloo is the image of the samurai, which is represented by Jin and Mugen. Jin and Mugen are not dissimilar from the bounty hunters Watanabe created in his hugely popular Cowboy Bebop (1998) anime series, but by placing them in the Edo period (1600-1867), Watanabe is able to explore aspects of Japanese cultural and spiritual life, (in a way that Bebop didn’t allow), without having to make a series that is too self-consciously philosophical, (which Bebop sometimes was). Jin embodies the more traditional samurai image: his connection with the samurai’s ascetic and ritualistic way of life is signaled by his wearing of the daisho (the two swords, one long, one short) that signify samurai status. Watanabe has given Jin a pair of spectacles, which aim to express this warrior’s quieter, more thoughtful nature. Jin’s spectacles can, in fact, be seen as a concise expression of Watanabe’s interests: they constitute a modern symbol of an ancient warrior ideal. They signify the importance that samurai placed on being studious, cultivated, and restrained in behaviour. The ideal samurai was meant to know the proper way to walk and hold his chopsticks as much as he was meant to be a skilled swordsman. Thus, the warlord Hojo Soun would advise his samurai, "Hold literary skills in your left hand, martial skills in your right. This is the law from ancient times." For Watanabe then, Jin’s spectacles provide a point of connection between an ancient way of life and a modern one, and they allow Watanabe create a seamless join between the two by expressing the ancient through  the modern.

In contrast to Watanabe’s characterization of Jin, he has infused Mugen with a decidedly modern tonality. Mugen’s character seems to have been modeled on a modern-day street punk: his hair is a mess of spikes, he wears a trendy earring, and is always looking to cause trouble. Whereas Jin’s wearing of the wakizashi, (the shorter sword used for committing seppuku when one’s honour demanded), allies his character with an attitude of respect for tradition respect for tradition, and with a constant preparedness to sacrifice one’s life for the ideals embodied in that tradition, Mugen’s wearing of only the katana, the longsword, continually emphasizes his status as a ronin, that is, as a sword-for-hire. And this connection between Mugen’s sword and money is not irrelevant: money doesn’t simply corrupt – it modernizes by cutting across traditional kinship and political ties, (as modern writers from the considerable comfort of their technologically-sophisticated democratically-weighted consumerist societies are so fond of pointing out), and by freeing up the movement of individuals within social structures. The different ways in which Jin and Mugen encapsulate tradition and modernity enable Watanabe to set up and play with a series of interactions between the old and the new, between conventionality and unconventionality. To some degree Watanabe is  exploring the relevance of the samurai way of life for modern-day Japan, but the structure of Champloo allows him to imagine a two-way influence, allows him to show modernity influencing tradition as much as tradition influences modernity

Episode six, "Stranger Searching", serves as an example of the lighthearted way in which Watanabe articulates these interests. A famished Fuu, (it is not uncommon in anime for young females to have voracious appetites), insists on entering a food eating contest. (Fuu’s eating powers are in fact quite prodigious. Jin politely concedes defeat after eating his fill; Mugen stuffs himself with a very modern abandon until he passes out, whereas Fuu eats like a bottomless pit, and only looses when she claps at a fly and is mistakenly thought to be bringing her hands together to signify the end of her challenge). When they cannot afford the entry fee, it is suggested that Jin use his daisho as collateral, getting them back if he, (or Fuu or Mugen), win the contest. He protests that he cannot part with his swords as they are an extension of his soul, but before he can finish Mugen has grabbed the swords and handed them in. Mugen’s disrespect, however, is not aimed at the samurai way of life, but merely at the outward forms and symbols of that life. From his point of view, if Jin’s very being is genuinely immersed in samurai philosophy, then he will remain a true samurai even without his swords. Here, Watanabe is using Mugen to humorously deemphasize the historical and now-famous trappings of samurai life, and to suggest that even without these trappings their way of acting remains, a way of acting that Watanabe clearly believes should not exist only in films and history books.

Insights such as this may not be particularly original or surprising. At times, they may amount to little more than a characteristic modern eclecticism which likes to extract the ‘spiritual’ essence of traditional ways of life and discard the rest. But Watanabe isn’t striving to create a series that is deeply  philosophical -- Champloo is entertainment, it is playful, interesting, and often shows a mixture of wisdom and humour that itself seems to have deep roots in traditional Japanese culture. It is a mixture that reminds me of a poem by Sengai which also strikes close to the samurai ethic: "If your time to die has come and you die -- very well! If your time to die has come and you don’t -- all the better!"

To buy Samurai Champloo Volume 2 from Madman Entertainment click here