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Being A Leader? All You Need Is A Little Yoshitsune (20th Century Boys)
When you think about leaders, you think about how strong and powerful they generally are. However, there comes a point where leaders eventually fall. If the leader was passionate and charismatic, the group without its head often falls into ruin. There are times when someone else decides to step up. Now what happens if the person stepping up isn’t someone who may not look the part, but ends up possibly a person who manages to do a good, possibly even better, job than his/her predecessor. This happens to be quite the case with Yoshitsune, a major supporting character from Naoki Urasawa’s Eisner-Award winning (and once again nominated) “20th Century Boys”. Yoshitsune is someone who makes you believe that we all can be leaders and that we can step up to the task with proper support.
Yoshitsune’s past involved growing up with a group of kids (including the main protagonist, Kenji Endo) playing “heroes and villains” in Japan during the late 1960s’. The kids playing heroes created a secret base to play at and came up with some ideas/scenarios of villainous acts the kids would overcome. They put the scenarios on a notebook entitled “The Book of Prophecy”. It wasn’t until 1997 that events detailed in “The Book of Prophecy” were brought to life by a mysterious cult leader named the Friend, who happened to be associated with the kids in the past. Kenji, who is appalled at seeing his childhood fantasies become horrible reality, forms a group consisting of the childhood friends he played “heroes and villains” with to stop Friend. Despite not having a tough personality, Yoshitsune sacrificed his normal life to join Kenji. The group took a stand against Friend in 2000, but lost and Kenji went missing. Since then, Yoshitsune became the leader of his own rebel group to continue the fight against Friend. Despite being a leader, Yoshitsune feels that he is not quite adequate to be one.
It is very enlightening to see Yoshitsune’s growth from being timid to inspirational. Yoshitsune may not see it, but he has six qualities that make him a great leader.
Decisiveness - Yoshitsune stands firm in his decisions to protect the people around him and to discover the truth about Friend. He actually worked as a janitor in enemy territory to rescue people who have been victimized by Friend.
Competence - Yoshitsune manages to create and maintain his own secret base for his group and provide members with the welcoming-comfort of safety.
Integrity - Yoshitsune’s followers believe in him and respect whatever he chooses to do. The trust between Yoshitsune and his men is developed because of Yoshitsune’s continued heroics.
Vision - In Volume 12, Yoshistune gave a speech to his followers at a New Year’s party he hosted and proclaimed that in 2015, the goals were to prevent further events detailed in the Book of Prophecy from happening by researching more about the mystery of Friend and to finally end Friend’s reign.
Modesty - Despite working extremely hard, Yoshitsune feels he isn’t as great a leader as people think he is and will praise others that he feels are better/smarter than him.
Persistence - For the last 14+ years since 2000, Yoshitsune just kept on fighting against the Friend despite the Friend’s worldwide celebrity status and never gave up hope that the Friend would one day be stopped.
As Ed Sizemore of Comics Worth Reading pointed out in a review of Volumes 12-13 of the manga, people often confuse charisma with leadership. It doesn’t hurt to have charisma, but it’s not the ultimate solution to being an effective leader. Having a huge sense of focus while being supportive is the best way to go to have a chance of getting people to follow you.
Yoshitsune represents the type of leader who’s not always featured in the spotlight. He’s a leader that doesn’t completely focus so much attention on himself and is more about actually get things down. What’s also special about Yoshitsune is that he chose to lead his own life into a specific path that would help cultivate future leaders. The way Yoshitsune is modest about himself is similar to the way some people believe their efforts aren’t special. We’ve all been through moments where we believe we don’t deserve credit for our efforts, but forget the fact that we tried means something. Trying something is a huge step forward and is something to be really proud of. If you never go out and try, then you might feel even worse and nothing will change.
Need some more motivation? Here’s a quote from Teruyuki Kagawa, the actor for Yoshitsune in the live-action movie adaptation of 20th Century Boys, about the character.
“Yoshitsune may appear insignificant and may never excel in a working environment, but I think his character evokes an important message about taking responsibility for our own life because each of us is the star of our own lives.”
We are all leaders, believe it.
This entry is part of the VIZ Signature Imprint Manga Movable Feast. More wonderful articles covering the vast titles under the imprint can be found at the page linked above.
