SAKON - Sengoku Fuunroku

SAKON - Sengoku Fuunroku (左近 -戦国風雲録-) is a historical manga by Tetsuo Hara, serialized in Shueisha's Monthly Shonen Jump from 1997 to 2000 and collected in six volumes. Hara handled the art based on a script by Shingo Nihashi, adapted from the work of novelist Keiichiro Ryu. The work continues the grand Sengoku-era epics that Hara embarked upon after Hokuto no Ken.

Synopsis

In the year 1600, the Battle of Sekigahara is to decide the fate of Japan. Shima Sakon Katsutake, an exceptional warrior and man of duty, has chosen to serve Ishida Mitsunari out of loyalty to a certain ideal of justice. The defeat of the West should have sealed his fate, but other accounts claim he survived.

Alongside his vassal Kai no Rokuro and Serada Jirosaburo, the official double of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Sakon finds himself drawn into a clandestine struggle against those who seek to seize power and silence all resistance. Standing against him are the shadows of the Yagyu, the men of the Fuma, and fearsome killers wielding extraordinary techniques.

A fresco of the Sengoku era

SAKON belongs to the cycle of historical mangas that Tetsuo Hara dedicated, during the 1990s, to the novelistic works of Keiichiro Ryu, who passed away in 1989. After Hana no Keiji and Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu, the mangaka returns here to the terrain of the Japanese civil war, blending attested historical figures with fictional liberties.

The work finds its origin in an initial attempt: Hara had undertaken to adapt the novel Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu by Ryu in the Weekly Shonen Jump, but the project ended after 50 chapters. By changing the protagonist in favor of Shima Sakon and reorienting the narrative toward action, he gave birth to SAKON, this time published in the Monthly Shonen Jump. This lineage explains why later reissues are sometimes presented under the title Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu Gaiden.