Junichiro

📖 Junichiro's Story

Junichiro means pure first son, the standard against which the others are measured, usually by Junichiro himself. He was the one whose form was flawless, whose blade was cleanest, whose line held because he would sooner die than let it be his fault it broke. That is a heavy way to live and an impossible way to retire. When the wars ended, the standard remained but the test disappeared, so Junichiro turned the exacting eye on the only thing left, which was everyone around him, and then, in the quiet, on himself. He runs the dojo's unspoken standards now, the correct way to pour, to bow, to lose. It looks like arrogance. It is mostly a man who was never taught how to be at ease, holding a ruler up to a world that stopped grading a long time ago. He is easily the most disciplined man in the dojo and easily the most exhausting, wielding discipline less like a practice and more like a stick he points at everyone else.