Author's Post: Interview with Jubei

Author:  Are you happy with your role so far in this story?

Jubei:  To tell you the truth, No. I am not happy.  I broke Sakamoto out of prison, but other than showing up at crime scenes, I haven't had much action.

Author:  I know you want to confront Kageura, but I don't know quite how to set it up for this book, yet.

Jubei:  I understand being an author present difficulties in manipulation. The other characters would agree.

Author:  How do you want to confront Kageura?

Jubei:  I'd like to run into him, have a spar session - maybe more than one before the end of the book.

Author:  What have you been doing the past 150 years since the last battle.

Jubei:  Keeping a low profile.  Hunting demons.

Author: And Sakamoto, do you plan to tell him about Van Helsing?

Jubei:  Yes, when the time is right.

Author: How about yor plans for now, that you have broken Sakamoto out of jail.

Jubei:  I have a place out in the desert - he can rest there and we can work on strategy.

Author: I didn't know that. I thought you ad a place in Hollywood.

Jubei:  I do, but I also have a hideout in the desert, where I train. 

Author: Thank you for this interview, Jubei.  It has been quite helpful.

Jubei:  You are welcome.

Jubei Yagyu Entry: Breaking Ron Sakamoto out of Jail

The detective, Ron Sakamoto was arrested for killing his girlfriend and was arrested.  He was placed in a holding cell and awaiting his bail hearing.

It was a set up by the vampires.  I had to rescue him - but I had to do it without seriously hurting any of the policemen.

The only way to do it was to use a wooden sword, and to barge in. 

Fortunately, I have developed some supernatural strength since being afflicted witht his curse, as well as some stealth abilities.

I snuck into the jail and let the air direct me to Sakamoto's cell. When I got to it, he was in a cell with a dozen other people.  Was there a way to get him out without the others escaping also?  I made myself invisible to all except Sakamoto, then asked him to come to the cell door.  I opened the lock using some magic, and the door opened. Sakamoto slowly slid out.  Soon, the guards and the prisoners knew he was outside the cell.  Here is where we made a run for it.

As the prisoners jeered and cheered, the guards came running.  Carrying Sakamoto on my side, I ran through the guards knowcking them over with my arm, or hitting them on the side with my kendo stick, until we were outside - then I took to the air.

Jubei's Entry: On Kageura

Kageura is difficult to analyze. While alive, he was an honorable man, yet he was a lord. By nature, warlords are ambitious, but he and his clan were not overly so. 

His thirst for power came as he felt betrayed by the Tokugawas, but also with the transformation to being a vampire.  Even though the Tokugawas were no longer in power when he moved to the United States, he struggled with himself  - much of his struggles are internal, his honorable human self, with the dishonorable vampire self.

In Japan, in recent times, before he moved to the United States, he was pretty much content just existing, but his he has been resurrected now, in modern times, I can feel his ambitious spirit in the air.  Maybe I am wrong, but I think I am right.

Ron Sakamoto Entry: ???

I had the scanner on on my way home.  A robbery had just taken place nearby and I swung over to see if I could catch the culprit.  But the patrol men were already there.  I got out and talked to the victim and the officers, and started back to my car. I looked into an alley as I passed by one, and saw a human figure on top of another.

I went closer to break it up.  The one on top looked at me.  She had an evil look to her. Blood dripped from her mouth.  I stepped back.  The vampire slowly crawled towards me, seductively and menacingly.  Suddenly she shrieked, turned around and disappeared.  A hand tounched my shoulder.

It was Jubei. 

"That was Maria,"  I stammered. 

"I know," he said. Flatly, without emotion, he said, "You must now destroy her."

Ron Sakamoto Entry: Ran into Jubei

I ran into the mysterious samurai today.  Or, rather he probably arranged it so that I'd run into him.  All the supernatural possibilities are overloading me: vampires, immortal beings.

"You are the famous Yagyu Jubei aren't you?" I asked, directly.

"My name is Yagyu Jubei, yes, but famous, I do not know."

"Of course you are.  You've been portrayed in countless movies."

"Those are all fiction."

"If you are 400 years old - this reality is more unbelievable than anything I've seen of you in movies."

"You've found your family records."

"Yes."

"Then you know about Kageura?"

"Kind of.  I didn't find the complete journal. Just bits, and I had to piece it together.  I would still like to hear it from a primary source."

Jubei proceeded to tell me the whole story, of course some of it was heresay, for there were periods where he was not involved in the tale.

This is getting stranger by the minute.  All my vampire knowledge came from the movies, and now Jubei tells me that this vampire cannot be staked, but must have his stomach slit and beheaded, like a ritual hara-kiri.

He asked me about Maria. I said that I had not seen her for a few days.  He said he had a strange feeling about her, but cannot pinpoint it, and perhaps i should she that she is all right.

I asked him how I can contact him, and he said, that he will know.  Whatever that means. 

Kageura v Jubei, pt 3

Continuing the account of the duel between Jubei and Kageura, Van Helsing wrote:

"The two men circled each other.  Yagyu waited for kageura to move first. Kageura swung at Yagyu's stomach. Yagyu deflected it.  Yagyu let Kageura initiate the attacks, deflecting each swing, countering only when he felt he could hit Kageura back. Kageura became impatient.  His swings gradually became less controlled. One one swing, Kageura sliced the fabric of Yagyu's kimono, but Yagyu deflected the blow and countered it with his own horizontal blow to the stomach. Yagyu's blow cut kageura, but not deep enough. Kageura charged at Yagyu, sword above his head.  Yagyu defelcted the oncoming blow, and in one motion, slcied horizontally against the stomach, and up across the neck. Kageura's head flew off and onto the floor."

I changed a word or two, but the above paragraph is an excerpt from the book, "Sword of the Undead," (lost in Sakamoto's world, but inour world, it is available on Amazon, and other online bookstores.)

Ron Sakamoto Entry: Kageura versus Jubei, circa 1872 pt. 2

It appears that the vampire, Kageura, kidnapped Harker's wife, Mina.  Van Helsing, with a group of people, including Jubei, confronted Kageura inside the castle, which I gather is kind of around where Dodger Stadium now stands.

A compilation of Van Helsing's writings to come up with the battle:

"The two men stared at each other.  This wasn't a duel between man and monster, it was between two master swordsmen.  They respected each other.  In this moment, Kageura's humanity came out.  He stated that he is the one who is cursed, not Jubei.  Jubei only wore a kimono, but Kageura was in full armor. Kagura took off his armor to make the fight fair."

"Yagyu Jubei Mitsuyoshi," proclaimed Jubei.

"Kageura Hidetora," replied back Kageura.

Ron Sakamoto Entry: Kageura versus Jubei pt. 1

It took all day, and although the full story of the battle with the Japanese vampire is not in one place, I think I've pieced together a fairly comprehensive story.

An attorney named Jonathan Harker had gone to Japan to finalize a real estate deal with a Japanese warlord.  Van Helsing mentored one of the early pioneers of mental health by the name of John Seward.  Seward and Harker were mutual friends of a woman named Lucy Westerna.  Lucy had been taken ill. Van Helsing concluded that it was the work of a vampire.

A mysterious Japanese samurai immigrant from Japan appeared.  Van Helsing wrote, "a stake through the heart won't kill these type of vampires, rather, the stomach must be slit, and then the body beheaded."  I couldn't find any other references to "these types of vampires," but I assume that there are differen types and different ways of destruction - not just the one few same way they show in movies.

Look at me, thinking vampires are real. What's scary is that after reading these things, and witnessing what I did at that party, I am starting to believe the existence of these creatures.

Van Helsing also described the Japanese samurai. Said his name was Jubei Yagyu. Hey, wait, wasn't that the famous samurai who disappeared back in the early-mid 1600's? (In real life, Jubei died in his  in his own village when he was 43 years old).   He described this samurai being tall, thin, with a forlorn lockof hair.  Why does this description sound so familiar?

Ron Sakamoto Entry: No, it couldn't be

Van Helsing's description of  Jubei fits that Japanese guy I keep running into.  But that is impossible. It would have been impossible in Van Helsing's time. Jubei was born in 1607. He would have been over 250 years old in Van Helsing's time, and he'd be over 400 years old, now. 

But vampires live forever.  What if Jubei was a vampire, also?

Jubei and the vampire fought. What if it was a battle between two vampires?  Or maybe Jubei is a vampire hunter.

This is just too much.  

I cam across Van Helsing's account of the sword fight - but I'd like to put together other writings that put that fight into context.

Ron Sakamoto Entry: Abraham Van Helsing

Abraham Van Helsing was my great great grandfather on my mother's side.  Old family tale says that he fought a vampire back int he late 19th century.  The vampire was a Japanese warlord, named Kageura.  Abraham Van Helsing was a medical doctor, but also a scientest and researcher.  He kept a journal.

One such journal was titled, "Sword of the Undead,"  Supposedly, this chronicles his fight against the vampire.  I've never seen this journal, but it is talked about a lot at family get-togethers.  There are some of his writings I have seen, which reference this journal. 

I need to find these writings.  Perhaps it will help me with this case. 

Great grandpa Van Helsing had other journals, in which he wrote about other supernatural beings, but those are currently missing, as well.

I also want to talk to that Japanese character with the anime haircut. I think he might provide me with some clues also.

The incident at that vampire party really freaked me out.  I am beginning to believe that maybe these creatures do exist for real.

Jubei's Entry: It's a Large City

When I first moved to Los Angeles, the city had a population of only 5,000.  San Francisco, at that time had about 100,000 residents.  Even so, that is a small amount compared to modern day Los Angeles.  I did not move back to Japan after battling Kageura, along with Van Helsing, Seward, Harker and Holmwood. In fact, Van Helsing and I would meet up a few more times during his lifetime. 

I live as I have the past 300 years - drifting out of people's lives before they suspect the fact that I do not age.  I eat, but do not need daily, or even weekly nourishment, so it is easy for me to be out of sight.  While mortal, I was the oldest child of a high ranking clan - I had money money to begin with, and I still have money that was minted when I first arrived here.  I hid from the public during the war between Japan and the United States, but those times were among the busiest for me for the carnage brought out the  monsters.  Kageura had told Harker that he felt Japan would revert back into a dictatorship - and indeed it did - But Kageura, in that state he was in, I wonder if he secretly planned on being that dictator.  His current state was created out of an evil essence - one he has tried to fight, but cannot, as I have fought off.

I do not think he merely plans on an existence of killing innocents just to survive.  He was a lord in his day, he is ambitious.  He must have a plan for those he transforms.

In a city of 5,000 he was easier to trace.  But nearly 4,000,000, and compared to the last time, extremely more noisy, and developed, and smellier - it will be a difficult task in this environment.

Jubei's Entry: He's Back

I know I destroyed him over 100 years ago, and 250 years before that. But he keeps resurrecting. Since he placed his cursed injury onto me, I, too, must walk among the living after my time, but differently.  I must do battle with those who feed off the souls of the living.  It was at an intersection of a desolate area of Los Angeles.  I was drawn there, but didn't know why at the time.  Yellow police tape.  I saw the victim - drained of blood.  And I knew. It wasn't any other vampire - I instinctively knew - Kageura is back.