Buddha, Volume 1: Kapilavastu
Categories: Kindle Store, Kindle eBooks, Biographies & Memoirs

Osamu Tezuka’s vaunted storytelling genius, consummate skill at visual expression, and warm humanity blossom fully in his eight-volume epic of Siddhartha’s life and times. Tezuka evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha’s ideas; the emphasis is on movement, action, emotion, and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home, travels across India, and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity, Tezuka’s Buddha predicates enlightenment upon recognizing the interconnectedness of life, having compassion for the suffering, and ordering one’s life sensibly. Philosophical segments are threaded into interpersonal situations with ground-breaking visual dynamism by an artist who makes sure never to lose his readers’ attention. Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse’s novel or Bertolucci’s film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka’s approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.


Publisher: Vertical Comics; 1st edition (November 1, 2017)
Publication date: November 1, 2017
Language: English
File size: 282318 KB
Text to Speech: Not enabled
Enhanced typesetting: Not Enabled
X Ray: Not Enabled
Word Wise: Not Enabled
Sticky notes: Not Enabled
Print length: 400 pages