The Self-Made Man: Cho Hakkai
Character: Cho Hakkai
Series: Saiyuki
Title: The Self-Made Man
Author: mistressrenet
Spoilers: Pretty complete for Hakkai's background, kept vague otherwise
Comments: If you'd like more on Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki (and you do, oh yes you do), some excellent links are at the end of the essay. All opinions are just that; apologizes for any errors in my shoot-from-the-hip interpretations of Buddhism and my love of inappropriate humor. Feel free to debate in the comments!
All Saiyuki quotes are from the manga; wherever manga and anime canon have differed, I've gone with the manga for simplicity's sake (though some differences have been noted). Translations are either from the offical TokyoPop release or Aestheticism.
Unlike the other characters in Saiyuki, Cho Hakkai was not born but made.
Hakkai, caught somewhere between his human and youkai appearances.
The Background: Man and Youkai
"What's it like to be one of us...the youkai who violated your beloved?" --Chin Yisou
When his lover was kidnapped, mild-mannered schoolteacher Cho Gonou went on a rampage-- killing half the village that had given her to the youkai (which can be roughly translated as 'demon') lord Hyakugan Maoh, Hyakugan Maoh himself, and almost all the other youkai in the lord's castle.
He finally found his sister and lover Kanan in a cell in the castle. She seemed rather taken aback at the sight of her lover-- which seems reasonable, given that the halls were filled with dead youkai and Gonou looked pretty bad himself-- then stole his knife, revealed she was pregnant with the youkai's child, and took her own life.
The devastated Gonou was found by the massacre's only survivor, Chin Yisou, Hyakugan Maoh's son. He attacked Gonou, landing a near-mortal blow, and tormented him with the death of his sister and his knowledge of their incest. Yisou knew of the legend that a man who bathes in the blood of a thousand youkai becomes one himself; he dripped blood from his own arm onto Gonou to taunt him, making himself the thousandth youkai and triggering Gonou's transformation. (Clearly Yisou had not read enough manga.) It's fair to speculate that Cho Gonou really 'died' in that castle, and that it was some kind of ghost-- or perhaps the weak beginnings of Cho Hakkai-- that Sha Gojyo saved, fed, and eventually let go.
At any rate, Cho Gonou was declared dead, and the man he had been was renamed Cho Hakkai by the Three Apects (who may or may not have been working under orders from the Divine Bodisihvatta Kanzeon Botatsu hirself). They gave him a second chance at life, and one of the world's most thankless jobs: driver, healer, cook and 'mother figure' to the rest of the Sanzo party-- good-natured lech Gojyo, hyperactive, sweet Son Goku, and bitchy more-or-less leader Genjo Sanzo. Possessed of a nearly limitless reserve of patience, armed with energy blasts and an almost omnipresent smile, Hakkai is at first glance the calmest and more reasonable of the group, and for most intents and purposes he is.
But the smile is just a mask; there's something much darker he's hiding.
The Anger Behind the Smile
"Was your victims' blood warmer than a woman's skin?" --Chin Yisou, through a puppet
Hakkai's rage, though well-hidden, might be his defining characteristic; it's certainly his greatest flaw. It's possible that the power-- which is notable-- he possesses as a youkai comes from that hidden anger. When he drops the mask, it can be very disconcerting-- it's worth noting that the few times Goku is rattled by someone's behavior it's usually Hakkai's.
And unlike the more predictable Goku-- where the contrast between his limited and unlimited selves is like looking at a split personality-- the violent side of Hakkai's personality comes part and parcel with the rest of him. Gonou had over a thousand murders to his name before he became youkai; the violence in him has been there all along. When you start looking for it, it's easy to spot, lurking at the edge of a smile, the knife edge in his sarcasm. There's something dark and angry in Hakkai, a part of him that's simply cracked that no friend or lover may quite be able to fix.
And that darkness within is no small part of his appeal.
The Other Faces of Cho Hakkai
"Oh, we're thorough-going terrorists." --Tenpou Gensui
In his most memorable previous incarnation, Cho Hakkai was Tenpou Gensui, a Field Marshal of the Western Army as distracted and sloppy as Hakkai is neat and meticulous. In Buddhist reincarnation, a new incarnation is hardly a carbon copy of the old; one metaphor describes the passing of a soul from one body to another as a candle flame passing from wick to wick, and a lot can change in five hundred years of rebirth. (The rest of the Sanzo party was kicked out of heaven at about the same time).
Tenpou and Hakkai do share commonalities, however; a love of books and learning, a razor-sharp mind, gentle patience with children, a tendency to want to control any given situation by doing all necessary work himself, a dry and cutting wit-- and, most notably, that violent streak that shows up whenever someone close is hurt or threatened. Kenren (Gojyo's previous incarnation, and practically Tenpou's 'wife') warns Goku that Tenpou is more reckless than he is under the right circumstances, and Tenpou's actions in Gaiden lend weight to that opinion.
Another step further from Minekura's Saiyuki is the original Journey to the West on which the manga is based. There, Cho Hakkai's character is quite different, and altogether more unpleasant. In Chinese, his name is
Zhu Wuneng, an unpleasant womanizer (Zhu and Cho both indicate 'pig' or 'boar'). Hakkai's personality is more like Sha Wuhjing's, the kappa in the original story.
To an outside reader, it almost looks like Minekura put Zhu and Sha's personality traits in a box, shook it hard, and picked different aspects to create Sha Gojyo and Cho Hakkai. There's a certain logic to this; Zhu's original personality is...a difficult one at best, and mixing and matching the characters gives a little more mystery to the quartet's destiny (in the original, the kappa, monkey and monk are all returned to heaven, while the pig remains on Earth due to his dissolute ways).
And Cho Hakkai does have some boar-like traits of his own.
Eden: Gonou and Kanan
"To think your first woman was your older sister. Is it really healthy for siblings to be doing such things?" --Chin Yisou, who really does have a point
It's impossible to talk about Cho Hakkai without talking about Cho Gonou and Kanan. But there's so little we know, really, about either of them, it's difficult to do too much beyond speculation. They were very happy; they looked really cute together; they were brother and sister-- though they were raised separately-- and they both knew it, and they chose to live together as lovers.
The happiest time in Cho Hakkai's life was something that strikes most of us on instinct as abhorrent. And it wasn't a mistake or a momentary lapse of judgement; they lived together, and clearly planned to for the rest of their lives (though Kanan acknowledges they couldn't get married, and I would guess from her reaction to her pregnancy that they had not planned to have children-- she's pretty damn sure it's Hyakugan Maoh's baby).
Kanan and Gonou both have clear violent streaks; not every woman chooses to end an unwanted pregnancy with a knife, though Kanan's circumstances were inarguably extreme.
This is where the 'boar' in Hakkai's name comes in-- though he acts the most refined of the lot, Hakkai threw morality out the window without hesitation when it came to Kanan. He sinned not out of vanity but out of his own appetites, pure and simple-- for lust, for vengance. (Surely he could've only killed, say, a quarter of the village before trying to free his one true love?)
About That Name, and Hakkai's Identity
"It's better'n your last name." --Goku
Hakkai's new name relates to the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, which relate to wisdom, ethical conduct, and spiritual development (a nice explanation is here). Generally, they're intepreted to forbid intoxication (and sometimes even the consumption of alcohol), killing, as well as providing positive guidance. Interestingly, Sanzo says in the manga that you'll never see Hakkai drunk, and he's resistant to at least one sleep drug. This may be more than a power; it may be something to do with his penance. Perhaps he had to give up intoxication of all kinds?
(nightfallrising has a brief breakdown of all the Saiyuki names here.)
Hakkai hated youkai-- possibly a result of his Christian upbringing at the orphanage (Westerners, including many modern Western translators, seem to equate all youkai with the 'demons' of their own mythology, and it's not that simple), and starts out hating himself, both for what he's done, and what he is. His life with Gojyo (who is half-youkai) and the rest of his party has softened that hatred, though, and he seems to both accept his youkai-ness and to be willing to defend other youkai-- though he seeks no forgiveness for his own actions, and is still extremely uncomfortable with his youkai form.
The Rest of the Sanzo Party
"Hakkai looks at Sanzo like he can fix anything, and Hakkai is Gojyo's whole world." --emungere
Hakkai's relationship with Son Goku is perhaps the most straightforward of the lot. it is with Goku that we see the gentle schoolteacher Gonou was, using fruit and attacking youkai to teach math and giving Goku advice when the boy needs it. But no relationship in Saiyuki is simply one-sided, and Minekura often uses 'mirror-image' relationships-- teachers learn from their students, the protected defend their protectors, and friends see each other as their strength or salvation. And Goku, in his own way, becomes teacher and protector to Hakkai-- sensing some good in him when they first meet, and snapping him out of madness soon afterward. While Goku's lessons often come in the form of violence or challenges, they are no less valuable or memorable.
Sha Gojyo and Hakkai are tied together like lovers, all but married in the past life, roomates and whatever else they are now. They've spent several years living together before their journey, and it shows in their instinctive comfort around each other-- Gojyo may be the only person on Earth capable of sneaking up on Hakkai, and they each know each other's weaknesses and pet peeves a little too well. It's clear that, at first, Gojyo's blood-colored hair reminded Hakkai of his sins, and served as a reminder of his penance; what that hair means to him now is far less clear. They generally act as each other's emotional support, and though Gojyo grates at times at Hakkai's 'mothering,' it's clear he values it deeply. Hakkai would quite literally be dead were it not for Gojyo, and Gojyo's clearly devoted to Hakkai (whose wounds and needs he tended to for weeks without daring to jeopardize the relationship by asking the stranger's name). But that devotion isn't purely one-sided, and Gojyo's love is hardly unquestioning or blind.
It does feel, sometimes, that there's a little bit of resentment on Hakkai's part that Gojyo did save him; and Gojyo, we are told quite clearly, was trying to save himself as much as Hakkai on the lonely night he found him. But...they are still tied together, for better, for worse. No matter who you 'ship in Saiyuki, their bond cannot be denied.
And then we come to Genjo Sanzo, who, we are told, argued Hakkai's case before the Three Aspects. Anyone who's watched more than five minutes of Saiyuki, or read more than a few pages, will realize that this is not typical Sanzo behavior. Was it Goku's trust that moved him? His own instincts? An echo from their shared past? Something like love? Sanzo plays his cards too close to his chest to give us any obvious clues, and it's likely that not even he knows all his reasons. But there is a certain affinity of mind between the two; something subtle and comfortable. While all three of them argue-- vigorously-- with Sanzo at times, Hakkai's arguments are rarer and more serious, and are usually taken more seriously. (Hakkai also takes a rather vicious delight at times when Sanzo's bad decisions come back to haunt him.) And they are both haunted by the rain.
There's a strange dance of trust and not-quite trust between them; they both manipulate each other in a way they'd never attempt with the others, and yet they both trust each other more implicitly as well. And at one point, Sanzo says that Hakkai would 'sooner bite his tongue and die' than kill him (if anyone has any cultural light to shed on that phrase, please do so). Edit: More enlightenment on that point can be found here.
There's also Jeep (Hakuryuu, or 'white dragon,' in the anime), Hakkai's little dragon who is not quite a pet. Jeep acts their vehicle (he quite literally transforms into a Jeep), and is willing to defend and protect Hakkai at risk of his own safety, and Hakkai is quite fond and protective of the dragon. (Jeep, we are told, was the Dragon King Goyjun, Tenpou Gensui's commanding officer, in a previous incarnation. While we know the Sanzo party was thrown out of Heaven, the circumstances of Gojyun's departure are not at all clear, and no one knows if Jeep has any memories of Tenpou.)
On some primal, basic, level, all of the Sanzo party hold each other together, and Hakkai's travelling companions seem vital to Hakkai's continued sanity, at least under the focused stress of their journey. Hakkai says his heart is too small for anything else to enter; apparently there is only room for four.
***
Author's Note, or how this is all emungere's fault
Though all blame really falls to Kazuya Minekura, one of my earliest memories of Hakkai love is emungere, telling me about the moment in Volume 2 of the manga where Hakkai threatens someone with death-- with little hearts in his dialogue balloon. What can I say? It was endearing.
And after nine volumes of watching Hakkai beat himself the hell up for what he's done (not that it's an unjustified thing), almost go completely off his rocker, and transform into his youkai self for the sake of a friend, there's nothing more to say: I simply love him, for his anger, incest and snarky little attitude as much as in spite of it (well, maybe not so much the incest).
As for ships-- everyone always seems to want to know this one-- I write Gojyo/Hakkai most often but have a huge soft spot for Hakkai/Sanzo and Gojyo/Hakkai/Sanzo, and I don't even mind Hakkai/Yaone that much, though I think they're too like each other for any kind of a lasting relationship. My longstanding advice for new readers to Saiyuki is simply to read anything with an '8' in it-- 8 is the fannish number code for Hakkai's name.
Saiyuki Websites
Gensomaden Saiyuki, an information site and archive of fanfic and art. This site has a great overview of the series here.
Another great overview of the series, more yaoi-friendly and spoilery but well worth reading.
Aestheticism has, among other goodies, translations of Saiyuki Gaiden.
Smokes and Sake, a dual shrine to Hakkai and Sanzo.
Journey to the Rest, a fun site that perhaps has more information on Saiyuki doujinshi than you ever wanted to know.
Fanfic
There's a lot so I kept it brief. Check my memories and try_this_fic for more stuff to fill your needs, as some of my favorites aren't here. Echoes From the West is a good archive as well.
Reconciled
Why Hakkai doesn't carry a rake like in the original book. more good stuff at her site here http://www.site-bg.com/nightfall/nest.html
Gonou by MJJ, another story about Hakkai before the Three Aspects, is very popular, but I like Youkai better.
Break of Day by Hth. Hakkai, the astonishing beauty of Gojyo, and complicated memories of Kanan.
Loss by roseargent, a dark take on Hakkai's fragile sanity.
Godsend, a small fic about what life in the Saiyuki-verse might be like without Cho Hakkai.
Miscellany
My Gojyou/Hakkai/Sanzo essay for ship_manifesto.
A long and interesting discussion of the 585 dynamic on ciceqi's journal.
The Kanan/Gonou FST, by me (you must be a member of FST to see the post).
An excellent essay on Buddhism in Gensomaden Saiyuki.
Genzo Sanzo's reflections_2 essay, more good reading.
A comment about Hakkai in another's journal.
And if you've made it all this way, one of my favorite pictures of Hakkai is here. Thanks for reading!
Series: Saiyuki
Title: The Self-Made Man
Author: mistressrenet
Spoilers: Pretty complete for Hakkai's background, kept vague otherwise
Comments: If you'd like more on Kazuya Minekura's Saiyuki (and you do, oh yes you do), some excellent links are at the end of the essay. All opinions are just that; apologizes for any errors in my shoot-from-the-hip interpretations of Buddhism and my love of inappropriate humor. Feel free to debate in the comments!
All Saiyuki quotes are from the manga; wherever manga and anime canon have differed, I've gone with the manga for simplicity's sake (though some differences have been noted). Translations are either from the offical TokyoPop release or Aestheticism.
Unlike the other characters in Saiyuki, Cho Hakkai was not born but made.
Hakkai, caught somewhere between his human and youkai appearances.
The Background: Man and Youkai
"What's it like to be one of us...the youkai who violated your beloved?" --Chin Yisou
When his lover was kidnapped, mild-mannered schoolteacher Cho Gonou went on a rampage-- killing half the village that had given her to the youkai (which can be roughly translated as 'demon') lord Hyakugan Maoh, Hyakugan Maoh himself, and almost all the other youkai in the lord's castle.
He finally found his sister and lover Kanan in a cell in the castle. She seemed rather taken aback at the sight of her lover-- which seems reasonable, given that the halls were filled with dead youkai and Gonou looked pretty bad himself-- then stole his knife, revealed she was pregnant with the youkai's child, and took her own life.
The devastated Gonou was found by the massacre's only survivor, Chin Yisou, Hyakugan Maoh's son. He attacked Gonou, landing a near-mortal blow, and tormented him with the death of his sister and his knowledge of their incest. Yisou knew of the legend that a man who bathes in the blood of a thousand youkai becomes one himself; he dripped blood from his own arm onto Gonou to taunt him, making himself the thousandth youkai and triggering Gonou's transformation. (Clearly Yisou had not read enough manga.) It's fair to speculate that Cho Gonou really 'died' in that castle, and that it was some kind of ghost-- or perhaps the weak beginnings of Cho Hakkai-- that Sha Gojyo saved, fed, and eventually let go.
At any rate, Cho Gonou was declared dead, and the man he had been was renamed Cho Hakkai by the Three Apects (who may or may not have been working under orders from the Divine Bodisihvatta Kanzeon Botatsu hirself). They gave him a second chance at life, and one of the world's most thankless jobs: driver, healer, cook and 'mother figure' to the rest of the Sanzo party-- good-natured lech Gojyo, hyperactive, sweet Son Goku, and bitchy more-or-less leader Genjo Sanzo. Possessed of a nearly limitless reserve of patience, armed with energy blasts and an almost omnipresent smile, Hakkai is at first glance the calmest and more reasonable of the group, and for most intents and purposes he is.
But the smile is just a mask; there's something much darker he's hiding.
The Anger Behind the Smile
"Was your victims' blood warmer than a woman's skin?" --Chin Yisou, through a puppet
Hakkai's rage, though well-hidden, might be his defining characteristic; it's certainly his greatest flaw. It's possible that the power-- which is notable-- he possesses as a youkai comes from that hidden anger. When he drops the mask, it can be very disconcerting-- it's worth noting that the few times Goku is rattled by someone's behavior it's usually Hakkai's.
And unlike the more predictable Goku-- where the contrast between his limited and unlimited selves is like looking at a split personality-- the violent side of Hakkai's personality comes part and parcel with the rest of him. Gonou had over a thousand murders to his name before he became youkai; the violence in him has been there all along. When you start looking for it, it's easy to spot, lurking at the edge of a smile, the knife edge in his sarcasm. There's something dark and angry in Hakkai, a part of him that's simply cracked that no friend or lover may quite be able to fix.
And that darkness within is no small part of his appeal.
The Other Faces of Cho Hakkai
"Oh, we're thorough-going terrorists." --Tenpou Gensui
In his most memorable previous incarnation, Cho Hakkai was Tenpou Gensui, a Field Marshal of the Western Army as distracted and sloppy as Hakkai is neat and meticulous. In Buddhist reincarnation, a new incarnation is hardly a carbon copy of the old; one metaphor describes the passing of a soul from one body to another as a candle flame passing from wick to wick, and a lot can change in five hundred years of rebirth. (The rest of the Sanzo party was kicked out of heaven at about the same time).
Tenpou and Hakkai do share commonalities, however; a love of books and learning, a razor-sharp mind, gentle patience with children, a tendency to want to control any given situation by doing all necessary work himself, a dry and cutting wit-- and, most notably, that violent streak that shows up whenever someone close is hurt or threatened. Kenren (Gojyo's previous incarnation, and practically Tenpou's 'wife') warns Goku that Tenpou is more reckless than he is under the right circumstances, and Tenpou's actions in Gaiden lend weight to that opinion.
Another step further from Minekura's Saiyuki is the original Journey to the West on which the manga is based. There, Cho Hakkai's character is quite different, and altogether more unpleasant. In Chinese, his name is
Zhu Wuneng, an unpleasant womanizer (Zhu and Cho both indicate 'pig' or 'boar'). Hakkai's personality is more like Sha Wuhjing's, the kappa in the original story.
To an outside reader, it almost looks like Minekura put Zhu and Sha's personality traits in a box, shook it hard, and picked different aspects to create Sha Gojyo and Cho Hakkai. There's a certain logic to this; Zhu's original personality is...a difficult one at best, and mixing and matching the characters gives a little more mystery to the quartet's destiny (in the original, the kappa, monkey and monk are all returned to heaven, while the pig remains on Earth due to his dissolute ways).
And Cho Hakkai does have some boar-like traits of his own.
Eden: Gonou and Kanan
"To think your first woman was your older sister. Is it really healthy for siblings to be doing such things?" --Chin Yisou, who really does have a point
It's impossible to talk about Cho Hakkai without talking about Cho Gonou and Kanan. But there's so little we know, really, about either of them, it's difficult to do too much beyond speculation. They were very happy; they looked really cute together; they were brother and sister-- though they were raised separately-- and they both knew it, and they chose to live together as lovers.
The happiest time in Cho Hakkai's life was something that strikes most of us on instinct as abhorrent. And it wasn't a mistake or a momentary lapse of judgement; they lived together, and clearly planned to for the rest of their lives (though Kanan acknowledges they couldn't get married, and I would guess from her reaction to her pregnancy that they had not planned to have children-- she's pretty damn sure it's Hyakugan Maoh's baby).
Kanan and Gonou both have clear violent streaks; not every woman chooses to end an unwanted pregnancy with a knife, though Kanan's circumstances were inarguably extreme.
This is where the 'boar' in Hakkai's name comes in-- though he acts the most refined of the lot, Hakkai threw morality out the window without hesitation when it came to Kanan. He sinned not out of vanity but out of his own appetites, pure and simple-- for lust, for vengance. (Surely he could've only killed, say, a quarter of the village before trying to free his one true love?)
About That Name, and Hakkai's Identity
"It's better'n your last name." --Goku
Hakkai's new name relates to the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, which relate to wisdom, ethical conduct, and spiritual development (a nice explanation is here). Generally, they're intepreted to forbid intoxication (and sometimes even the consumption of alcohol), killing, as well as providing positive guidance. Interestingly, Sanzo says in the manga that you'll never see Hakkai drunk, and he's resistant to at least one sleep drug. This may be more than a power; it may be something to do with his penance. Perhaps he had to give up intoxication of all kinds?
(nightfallrising has a brief breakdown of all the Saiyuki names here.)
Hakkai hated youkai-- possibly a result of his Christian upbringing at the orphanage (Westerners, including many modern Western translators, seem to equate all youkai with the 'demons' of their own mythology, and it's not that simple), and starts out hating himself, both for what he's done, and what he is. His life with Gojyo (who is half-youkai) and the rest of his party has softened that hatred, though, and he seems to both accept his youkai-ness and to be willing to defend other youkai-- though he seeks no forgiveness for his own actions, and is still extremely uncomfortable with his youkai form.
The Rest of the Sanzo Party
"Hakkai looks at Sanzo like he can fix anything, and Hakkai is Gojyo's whole world." --emungere
Hakkai's relationship with Son Goku is perhaps the most straightforward of the lot. it is with Goku that we see the gentle schoolteacher Gonou was, using fruit and attacking youkai to teach math and giving Goku advice when the boy needs it. But no relationship in Saiyuki is simply one-sided, and Minekura often uses 'mirror-image' relationships-- teachers learn from their students, the protected defend their protectors, and friends see each other as their strength or salvation. And Goku, in his own way, becomes teacher and protector to Hakkai-- sensing some good in him when they first meet, and snapping him out of madness soon afterward. While Goku's lessons often come in the form of violence or challenges, they are no less valuable or memorable.
Sha Gojyo and Hakkai are tied together like lovers, all but married in the past life, roomates and whatever else they are now. They've spent several years living together before their journey, and it shows in their instinctive comfort around each other-- Gojyo may be the only person on Earth capable of sneaking up on Hakkai, and they each know each other's weaknesses and pet peeves a little too well. It's clear that, at first, Gojyo's blood-colored hair reminded Hakkai of his sins, and served as a reminder of his penance; what that hair means to him now is far less clear. They generally act as each other's emotional support, and though Gojyo grates at times at Hakkai's 'mothering,' it's clear he values it deeply. Hakkai would quite literally be dead were it not for Gojyo, and Gojyo's clearly devoted to Hakkai (whose wounds and needs he tended to for weeks without daring to jeopardize the relationship by asking the stranger's name). But that devotion isn't purely one-sided, and Gojyo's love is hardly unquestioning or blind.
It does feel, sometimes, that there's a little bit of resentment on Hakkai's part that Gojyo did save him; and Gojyo, we are told quite clearly, was trying to save himself as much as Hakkai on the lonely night he found him. But...they are still tied together, for better, for worse. No matter who you 'ship in Saiyuki, their bond cannot be denied.
And then we come to Genjo Sanzo, who, we are told, argued Hakkai's case before the Three Aspects. Anyone who's watched more than five minutes of Saiyuki, or read more than a few pages, will realize that this is not typical Sanzo behavior. Was it Goku's trust that moved him? His own instincts? An echo from their shared past? Something like love? Sanzo plays his cards too close to his chest to give us any obvious clues, and it's likely that not even he knows all his reasons. But there is a certain affinity of mind between the two; something subtle and comfortable. While all three of them argue-- vigorously-- with Sanzo at times, Hakkai's arguments are rarer and more serious, and are usually taken more seriously. (Hakkai also takes a rather vicious delight at times when Sanzo's bad decisions come back to haunt him.) And they are both haunted by the rain.
There's a strange dance of trust and not-quite trust between them; they both manipulate each other in a way they'd never attempt with the others, and yet they both trust each other more implicitly as well. And at one point, Sanzo says that Hakkai would 'sooner bite his tongue and die' than kill him (if anyone has any cultural light to shed on that phrase, please do so). Edit: More enlightenment on that point can be found here.
There's also Jeep (Hakuryuu, or 'white dragon,' in the anime), Hakkai's little dragon who is not quite a pet. Jeep acts their vehicle (he quite literally transforms into a Jeep), and is willing to defend and protect Hakkai at risk of his own safety, and Hakkai is quite fond and protective of the dragon. (Jeep, we are told, was the Dragon King Goyjun, Tenpou Gensui's commanding officer, in a previous incarnation. While we know the Sanzo party was thrown out of Heaven, the circumstances of Gojyun's departure are not at all clear, and no one knows if Jeep has any memories of Tenpou.)
On some primal, basic, level, all of the Sanzo party hold each other together, and Hakkai's travelling companions seem vital to Hakkai's continued sanity, at least under the focused stress of their journey. Hakkai says his heart is too small for anything else to enter; apparently there is only room for four.
***
Author's Note, or how this is all emungere's fault
Though all blame really falls to Kazuya Minekura, one of my earliest memories of Hakkai love is emungere, telling me about the moment in Volume 2 of the manga where Hakkai threatens someone with death-- with little hearts in his dialogue balloon. What can I say? It was endearing.
And after nine volumes of watching Hakkai beat himself the hell up for what he's done (not that it's an unjustified thing), almost go completely off his rocker, and transform into his youkai self for the sake of a friend, there's nothing more to say: I simply love him, for his anger, incest and snarky little attitude as much as in spite of it (well, maybe not so much the incest).
As for ships-- everyone always seems to want to know this one-- I write Gojyo/Hakkai most often but have a huge soft spot for Hakkai/Sanzo and Gojyo/Hakkai/Sanzo, and I don't even mind Hakkai/Yaone that much, though I think they're too like each other for any kind of a lasting relationship. My longstanding advice for new readers to Saiyuki is simply to read anything with an '8' in it-- 8 is the fannish number code for Hakkai's name.
Saiyuki Websites
Gensomaden Saiyuki, an information site and archive of fanfic and art. This site has a great overview of the series here.
Another great overview of the series, more yaoi-friendly and spoilery but well worth reading.
Aestheticism has, among other goodies, translations of Saiyuki Gaiden.
Smokes and Sake, a dual shrine to Hakkai and Sanzo.
Journey to the Rest, a fun site that perhaps has more information on Saiyuki doujinshi than you ever wanted to know.
Fanfic
There's a lot so I kept it brief. Check my memories and try_this_fic for more stuff to fill your needs, as some of my favorites aren't here. Echoes From the West is a good archive as well.
Reconciled
Why Hakkai doesn't carry a rake like in the original book. more good stuff at her site here http://www.site-bg.com/nightfall/nest.html
Gonou by MJJ, another story about Hakkai before the Three Aspects, is very popular, but I like Youkai better.
Break of Day by Hth. Hakkai, the astonishing beauty of Gojyo, and complicated memories of Kanan.
Loss by roseargent, a dark take on Hakkai's fragile sanity.
Godsend, a small fic about what life in the Saiyuki-verse might be like without Cho Hakkai.
Miscellany
My Gojyou/Hakkai/Sanzo essay for ship_manifesto.
A long and interesting discussion of the 585 dynamic on ciceqi's journal.
The Kanan/Gonou FST, by me (you must be a member of FST to see the post).
An excellent essay on Buddhism in Gensomaden Saiyuki.
Genzo Sanzo's reflections_2 essay, more good reading.
A comment about Hakkai in another's journal.
And if you've made it all this way, one of my favorite pictures of Hakkai is here. Thanks for reading!