Manga artist Makoto Ogino, the author of the Japanese religious mythological manga "Peacock King", died of illness on April 29 last year at the age of 59. "The Peacock King" is a classic masterpiece of the wonderful new field of "religious manga craze" in the Heisei era, but it also angered the Buddhist sect because of it.
The name manga artist Makoto Ogino may not be so familiar to most of my friends, but when it comes to his famous work "Peacock King", everyone should immediately have a "oh oh oh" reaction. "Peacock King" is also famous in Japan, and it is a masterpiece of the "religious manga boom" that set off a wonderful new field in the Heisei era.
Influenced by the Peacock King, there was also a very similar theme of the "Biography of the Ming King", in short, at the end of the 20th century when the supernatural trend was in full swing, "The Peacock King" in addition to inheriting this strange trend, is also a legend in the mythological comic, for only one reason: because its setting is too classic.
Compared with the whimsical characters of ordinary mythological manga, "Peacock King" shows that the protagonist is a monk of Shingon Occult Sect, and comes from Koyasan, the holy land of The Shingon Sect in Japan. It's just that this group of monks with high mana and who can print and shoot out all kinds of magical laser lights at any time is not from the "Koyasan Shingon Sect", but from the "Rikano" in the manga, that is, the occult battle group that is hidden behind the scenes of Koya Mountain and silently fights to defend the light.
Compared with the whimsical characters of ordinary mythological manga, "Peacock King" shows that the protagonist is a monk of Shingon Occult Sect, and comes from Koyasan, the holy land of The Shingon Sect in Japan.
The famous "Nine-Character Mantra" and Mudra in the Peacock King: Derived from Chinese mantras, they later became the mantras of Japanese tantric teachings and the Path of Cultivation. It is also commonly found in various Japanese cultures related to ninjutsu and mythology.
This setting alone can make the teenagers' blood boil. And being able to turn the bald heads who are wearing robes and whose eyes are always half-closed and don't know what they are reading into fresh meat Dharma warriors with a single cobalt pestle in their hands in their works, this imagination alone is worthy of being called a master of Ogino - although this master later broke out that the actual content plot copied the work of another fantasy novel everyone dream pillow tapir.
"Peacock King" has been serialized in weekly YOUNG JUMP since 1985, and was also the debut of Makoto Ogino, one of the representatives of the so-called "Demon Demon Manga" at that time, and won the Shueisha Youth Manga Award in its first year. Until the end of the first film in 1989, it was so popular that it was adapted into an animated version and a live-action film version.
The narrative method of "Peacock King" initially adopts a unit drama method similar to the novel "Yin And Yang Division" or the comic book "City Hunter", and sometimes some stories of uglier truths in the world will be discovered.
For example, what impressed me was that in the early story of "The Peacock King", a peacock encountered a resurrected dead man, and the dead man turned out to be a young girl who was killed by her mother. Through the peacock to uncover the truth, it is learned that the girl is committing adultery with her stepfather, and only then was she killed by her mother and then performed the dead man's resurrection. The peacock transformed the girl back into the original form of a carrion corpse, forced her stepfather to go crazy, and finally was brought home by the girl's mother in shame — in any case, this kind of human tragedy story was too hot for me at that time.
The 1988 film version of "The Peacock King" was played by Hiroshi Mikami (center), Yuan Biao (left) played the original character Auspicious Guo, and Ye Yunyi played the as the asura saint.
1990
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > ▌ "Peacock King" that angered Koyasan
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However, in addition to these characteristics of juvenile comics with both erotic violence and rotten elements, "Peacock King" began to appear different from the general monster comics after the long story, that is, the complete basic setting. Of course, the plot of "The Peacock King" is still inseparable from the smorgasbord of Oriental and Western mythology, the story of Taoists and occult monks fighting together against the Nazi army for the Holy Grail of Jesus.
But the infrastructure of the story is still completely based on the esoteric worldview, so the righteous side is based on the Koyasan Shingon Sect of "Rikaya", and the evil side of the six-way leaders are also a dark version of the "Yaba-in Temple" based on the "Nakadai Yaba-in" in the center of the Tibetan mandala; the allusions come from the concept of Buddhist tantra.
The Shingon Sect, which belongs to the esoteric system, originally has an extremely complex worldview and various practices, as well as a gorgeous group of plastic arts. Under the unity of the genius of Kaizu Kukai, tantra, which is mixed with many elements of Hindu local beliefs, has become a Shingon sect in Japan where thought and practice, and even art, shine a brilliant light on cultural history.
This sect, which has been established in Japan for more than a thousand years, may have become the "purpose" of Japanese families throughout the ages, or a folk phenomenon like the belief of the masters. So for most Japanese people, occultism (because other sects such as tendai buddhism have also added occult elements) is as everyday as we worship the emperor and believe in Mazu.
However, if you carefully study the relevant materials, you will know that the Shingon Sect is basically a treasure house of cultural creation. Makoto Ogino discovered this and gave birth to this heterochromatic work in the history of manga. Of course, this initiative is not without sequelae in addition to making Hagino's fame and fortune both.
With the popularity of "The Peacock King", the world's view of Koyasan has also been affected. In particular, the author sets the Okuno-in Temple of Mt. Koya, the huge mausoleum group in the legendary Kukai-in, as Japan's "largest place of blockade of evil spirits", and describes the sacred Okuno-in Temple as if it were a spooky entrance to the demon world.
Moreover, in the religious view of the Shingon Sect, Kukai is not only still not dead, but only settles in the spiritual temple of the O-no-in Temple, and sometimes travels around to save sentient beings, but the Kukai in the work "The Peacock King" not only becomes a mummy, but also connects with the legend of Maitreya's incarnation, making it the key lock to open the world, and then to open this key lock, the way is to find a woman of noble blood to intercourse with this mummy.
In Sima Liaotaro's famous work "The Landscape of Kukai", it was mentioned that Kukai himself's rich vitality and creativity may be related to his exuberant sexual desire and distress. In the story of the Pure Land True Sect's ancestor Luan Shangren, there is indeed such a record.
However, this speculation caused a great backlash from the Shingon Sect at that time, not to mention the fact that Ogino Makoto was also disrespectful of the manga setting of master Shōnen (the honorific title of Kukai), and of course, the Shingon Sect was greatly ignited, and at one point it was also rumored that Takayayama had ordered Ogino Makoto to "get out of the ban" - that is, to prohibit entry and exit.
However, this did not affect the value of the work itself, and Makoto Ogino also reached a consensus with Takayasan in the future, with Takayayama as the supervising director of the work; Makoto Ogino also continued to paint many related sequels after the end of "Peacock King".
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > ▌ The Peacock King and the Occult Enlightenment
The name of "Peacock King" is taken from the "Peacock Ming King" in occult religion, in the Indian indigenous belief, because the peacock has an elegant posture and can also peck at poisonous snakes but will not be poisoned to death, and is regarded as a symbol of divine power, and then sanctified into the Ming King.
In the work, Ogino used this allusion to design the role of the protagonist Peacock's sister "Tensnake King", and portrayed the Peacock Ming King as the fallen angel Lucifer in Western mythology. In fact, the whole work has no shortage of this kind of whimsical plot of Zhang Fei beating Yue Fei, but because it is based on the solid setting of the occult world view, readers are willing to accept the author's arrangement to continue to watch.
This work may be the occult enlightenment work of many Japanese friends in their youth, but it is undeniable that it also makes many teenagers who have no basic knowledge of Buddhism have a wrong idea. For example, I didn't know until I was in my twenties that the people living in the Yakuba-in Temple in Zhongtai were not evil villains who wanted to conquer the world, but practitioners such as Dairi Rulai and Amitabha Buddha in the mandala of the Tibetan realm.
However, the Peacock Ming King really occupies a very important position in Japan's religious history, such as the Kaizu Gong Xiaojiao, who has a unique belief in Japan, "Cultivating the Tao", and in the account of the "Japanese Spiritual Book", it is written that he practiced the "Peacock Ming King Method" and obtained the ability to fly, and was able to freely serve ghosts and gods.
Because the practitioners of the path of cultivation often need to climb the mountain, they will have handsome equipment such as hand armor, leggings, and buckets, and this style will be inherited by various wandering religious people such as "saint" and "nihilistic monk" in the future.
The Rikon field exorcists in The Peacock King are dressed not so much as Shingon monks as they are a combination of yamato and tantric robes. And the teachings of the Shudo Path are indeed mixed with many occult elements, which can be said to be the perfect secondary creation of Ogino.
But like most teenage manga artists, Makoto Ogino tried many other SF-style creations after the popularity of Peacock King, but none of them had the same success as Peacock King. In the end, Makoto Hagino had to come back and re-fry the cold rice, once again depicting the various sequels and series of the Peacock King.
But I don't know why, Makoto Hagino, who originally took the realistic style route, drew larger and larger the head of the character and the proportion of the body became more and more cartoonish. Even he himself wanted to return to his original style, but he "couldn't go back."
Although the likes and dislikes of the painting style are personal subjective issues, many readers like me who have read the original work since then have no way to accept this change and retreat. And most importantly, at the end of the 20th century, when the era was no longer the peak of the spirit world, Makoto Hagino slowly changed from a popular master to one of many manga artists. Hearing the news that he was ill-healthed and hospitalized a few years ago, he reappeared in the media a few years later, and it was already an obituary that he died at the age of 59.
An era is over. But when we were young, we should not forget the shock that "Peacock King" brought to us. Before the peacock king appeared, most people probably did not know that Japanese Buddhism and Shingon Buddhism, a sect that had once flourished in China in the past, had completely disappeared from Chinese Buddhism as if it had never existed.
The Kanji transliteration of the Japanese Esoteric Mantra, "Indra Yeshaha", and "All the Soldiers are In front of the Warriors", which sound handsome and explosive, feel unclear, but are really Esoteric Shingon, are also the enlightenment for many people to become interested in Japanese culture.
Of course, we all grew up and knew that the protagonists in "Peacock King" could make the monster explode with a single seal, which was the creation of the manga; then Rikano did not exist in this world. This work may not open the entrance to the demonic world, but it does open the door to my study of Japanese religious culture.
Two years ago, I had the privilege of traveling to Japan and finally visited Mt. Koya, the "religious city of the sky." Standing in front of the Shingon Sect's Chief Benshan Jingangfeng Temple, I couldn't help but smile when I remembered that the teenager had seriously felt that if he practiced the Seal Mantra, he could spew out the fire of the Immovable Ming King from his hands like a peacock to deal with the bastards in the class. Then, unconsciously, he muttered a sentence in his mouth: "Om MahasaGiRodiShaha" (Peacock Ming King Mantra)
The work "The Peacock King" may not open the entrance to the demon world, but it does open the door to my study of Japanese religious culture. Photo: Official FB of Koyasan Kumbo-ji Temple