With each and every passing day comes another hardship. A family of farmers accompanied by genin (outcast) assistants are working in the fields. A young genin child shares his dream of owning land to the young daughter of the farmers, to which she says he has it easier because genin aren't burdened by taxes. Disgusted by such a nonchalant answer, the child asks, “would you rather be a genin and sleep with the horses, be despised by everyone, and always work for someone else?”

The minute those words escape the young child's lips, the plow horse tilling the field gets its ribs horribly crushed in an accident. The poor beast is beyond medical help and is left to die, forcing the family to separate since it's against the law for farmers to be without livestock. The daughter must now sell herself into servitude while the men are forced to drag the dead horse's carcass out to burial. As the men do, the villagers scream at the top of their lungs, “Outcasts! Filthy murderers! Dirty beasts! Maggots! Dogs! Animals!”

This is one of many injustices that happen within the pages of The Legend of Kamui, also known as Kamui-den, the epic manga by Sanpei Shirato (born Noboru Okamoto) that ran for seven years in Garo magazine. Despite its cult popularity and being a Garo mainstay, Shirato's manga had never before left Japan. Now that it has finally hit North American shores through Drawn & Quarterly's fine translation, English readers can bury themselves deep into the first chapter of Shirato's brutal historical epic.

Taking place during the Edo period, Shirato uses his story about social discrimination to draw parallels between the injustices of that time and a 1960's Japan fueled by anger towards the Vietnam War and the after effects of the American occupation. Shirato's own childhood memories of fleeing from persecution from his family is evident as well. The man came from an artistic background and it shows--his father, Toki Okamoto, was a painter whose radically proletarian beliefs led to him and his family being pursued by the law. Things would eventually settle down for Toki, as he later would go on to teach a young Akira Kurosawa how to oil paint. As they say, the apple never falls far from the tree; Shirato would become a hardened Marxist like his father, laying his beliefs bare in Kamui's pages.

Shirato is unflinching in his efforts to show an Edo-era Japan rife with social and violent conflict, even inserting his own notes and commentary to add context regarding Japanese history and the story we are seeing unfold. The farmers and outcasts of Kamui are left to suffer lest they be ignored, while the upper samurai classes rule with a ruthless sense of totalitarianism. The mangaka's disdain towards the bourgeoisie is evident in a very early chapter of the manga where samurai kill domesticated dogs for their own amusement. In a later scene, another samurai flat-out murders a peasant simply because the peasant's loud work caused the samurai to get distracted while fishing. Other scenes involving crucifixions, sexual assaults, and the like are devoted to violence and cruelty so painstakingly detailed that while they may not be for the faint of heart, they are undeniably effective and memorable in the way they drive home Sanpei's message of inequality.

Artistically speaking, my favorite part of The Legend of Kamui was the passage where they focused on a lone wolf pack. It's a long passage only tangentially related to the main story, and while Shirato's notes say it isn't meant to draw a metaphor between nature's discrimination with that of humans, it still does wonders in providing a metaphor for the survivalism that occurred in Japanese society at the time. Backed by minimal narration and a rugged sense of atmosphere, Shirato crams in as much artistic, if not violent, flourish as possible. Shirato's pen is mighty here, with one scene bringing out the theme of survival through a lone wolf cub's struggle to defend itself against a bloodthirsty hawk.

Even if it is the first part of a longer manga, the first volume of Kamui feels mostly self-contained with its own beginning, middle, and end. Despite what the Wikipedia plot summary will tell you, the bulk of the initial volume unfolds more as a period drama than a grisly adventure series, and doesn't contain as many big action scenes as you'd think. Kamui himself isn't even properly introduced until nearly a third of the way through the manga. He is clearly the title character and author surrogate character here, with his call to arms against oppression clearly being reflective of Shirato's leftist ideology. But he's not the main character in the traditional sense, having his tale juxtaposed with fellow genin Shosuke, the warrior-in-training Ryunoshin, and a handful of minor characters that altogether display Kamui's tale of social abandonment. This works to the story's advantage; Shirato is not telling a traditional plot and characters as he is weaving together a tapestry of a bygone, uncivilized time where the division between the powerful and powerless was clear and commonplace. Even as a manga, there's a radiance that shines through the pages of Kamui that is as brilliant and involving as it is graphic.

The era from which The Legend of Kamui emerged from is bygone, yet none of the manga feels dated. The timing of this manga's English release is both unfortunate and precise now that the world is experiencing a surge of new-age authoritarianism. But that's exactly what makes it such a necessary read today. With social and economic conflict ever-present and tyranny knocking right at the door, Kamui's message of survivalism and oppression has aged impeccably well.