Before the loyal giant, the temple demon. You can already see the adult Benkei in the collection — the warrior-monk who died standing for his master at the barrier. This is his origin. Long before that, he was Oniwakamaru, "young demon": a monstrous, ungovernable boy at the great monastery complex of Mt Hiei, in the cluster of halls known as the Western Pagoda. He was too big, too strong, too wild — more oni than child, a terror to the monks charged with raising him.

The legend that fixes him is a fight with a fish. In a temple pool, the young Oniwakamaru does battle with an enormous carp, seizing and mastering the thrashing giant bare-handed — a feat of raw strength that promises the superhuman warrior to come. It's a loaded image: the carp that fights its way upstream and up the waterfall is, in East Asian myth, the fish that transforms into a dragon, the very emblem of a boy destined for greatness. Yoshitoshi catches the boy-monster and his monstrous fish in a print from his Ikkai zuihitsu series. The demon-child who becomes the paragon of loyalty — the whole arc of Benkei is already there in a kid strangling a carp.

This is Saitō Oniwakamaru (西塔鬼若丸, Oniwakamaru of the Western Pagoda) from the series Ikkai zuihitsu (一魁随筆, Miscellaneous Writings by Ikkai) 1872.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年, 1839-1892)