The pen, they say, is mightier than the sword. There are few lives which seem to illustrate this – or perhaps, just put it up for debate – half so well as that of a certain Zen priest.

Motsugai Takeda was born in the 1700s and died in 1867. Into his 72 years he packed a great deal. He stole my heart with an illustration of an Oni, a hell demon who has laid aside the iron bar with which he was apt to use to thrash entrants to Hades. The Oni meditates, conpemplating the illustrator with stolid solemnity. God has his warriors, and now the Oni is one.

The Japanese priest sketches the demon with love. He is viewed with compassion, even admiration, though his ugliness is undeniable, and his decision to take the right path shines from within. In his world, it is possible even for the demons of hell to find peace.

The only example of this illustration I can find exists here at Tricycle Magazine behind a paywall. It can still be observed , even if it is very small.

Takeda spent less of his time at the drawing board than you might think, however. At the age of 16 he was disowned due to a fight. He became a Soto Zen monk, and travelled around taking alms form people in traditional fashon. He became a Zen priest; was accomplished at poetry, painting, calligraphy and the tea ceremony.

But that was not the thing that won him fame. He was trained in 18 martial arts and word of his strength travelled far and wide – how he could uproot trees, win against whole teams at tug of war, break wooden boards with one hand. This last earned him the name Genkotsu Osho, the Fist Monk. Once, when he managed to offend one of the top warriors in a very powerful cartelle of swordsmen, the man challenged him to a fight. Oh dear, said Motsugain Takeda, monks are not allowed to pick a weapon. So he chose two begging bowls, with which he adeptly trapped his opponent’s sword and sent the man flying over onto his quarrelsome bottom. No one seemed able to defeat him: yet a woman once forced a draw. In Japan there is a class of warrior women, one of whom challenged him to a sojutsu contest (the martial art of the spear). They fought for a day and a night; and at the end, they called it quits without a wonner or a loser.

The sprit of Motsugai hovered nearby yesterday as I took up, for the first time, a ‘dip-pen’ to learn how to write calligraphy. I have only got as far as the first exercise; but as you can see from the above results, his Oni seemed to make its own way onto the page, meditating me that little edge closer to Heaven.