Episode 437 - The Fist of the Buddhas, Part 2
Added 2022-05-13 15:55:35 +0000 UTCI do have to admit something up front with this episode; I have a student writing a research paper on Gikeiki right now, and so I've been helping them a lot with it and have the text on my mind a great deal. That was part of the impetus for this whole series, as I was dusting off some old books and reading some new ones to help the kid out. I think it worked out fortuitously, though! I'm proud of this two-parter, and glad I had a chance to tackle it.
One thing I wish I'd had more time for is talking about the Gikeiki text itself, actually. It's a really fascinating piece of work, chiefly because it represents a sort of 'fan fiction' of Tale of Heike expanding on the characters and stories contained therein. Tracing that sort of dynamic--and comparing it to other examples from other parts of the world, like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its various sub-works or the Arthurian Romances--could make for a really rich series of episodes one day.
