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Kwai Chang Caine () is a fictional character and the protagonist of the ABC 1972–1975 action-adventure western television series ''Kung Fu''. He has been portrayed by David Carradine as an adult, Keith Carradine as a younger Caine and Radames Pera as the child Caine, and Stephen Manley as the youngest Caine. In the late 19th century China, Kwai Chang Caine was the orphaned son of an American man and a Chinese woman. He was raised in a Shaolin Monastery in Hunan Province, and was trained by the monks to be a Shaolin master. ''Kung Fu'' follows his adventures as he travels to the American Old West (armed only with his skill in martial arts) as he seeks his half-brother, Danny Caine. Although it was his intention to find his brother Danny in a way which would escape notice, the demands of his training as a priest in addition to the sense of social responsibility, which was instilled within him during his childhood, forced Caine to repeatedly come into the open to fight for justice. He would then leave his new surroundings in a further search for anonymity and security. In the Shaolin arts, monks live in temples and most stay their entire life. Once they become masters and leave the temple, they are referred to as Priests. In real world Shaolin, both monks and priests shave their heads and remain celibate. Western audiences might have expected that such a character had taken a vow of chastity, but that was apparently not true in Caine's case as he frequently had intimate relations with women throughout the series. ==Synopsis== Orphaned after his maternal grandfather's death, Caine eventually found himself outside the local Shaolin temple along with other hopeful candidates. After waiting patiently for several days, Caine and the few other remaining candidates were taken inside the temple where only Caine passed a subtle test in manners. Although taking a student of mixed parentage into the order was unprecedented, the head monk Master Kan (Philip Ahn) sagely noted, "There is a first for everything," and welcomed Caine. Following his induction into the order, Caine then lived in the temple until adulthood, mastering many of the fighting forms and lessons taught by the Shaolin monks (Crane, Snake, Praying Mantis, Tiger, and Dragon). At one point during his training he was shown the various forms and Master Kan explained that it may take half a lifetime to master one of the forms. Later, while in America, when asked by a student which forms he teaches, Caine's response was, "All of them" (a tribute to Master Kan, who had answered young Caine similarly when asked the same question). One of his first instructors was the blind master named Po (Keye Luke). Po considered Caine his favorite pupil and behaved more like an elderly grandfather. Caine was given the nickname "Grasshopper" by Master Po; the reference was from an exchange where the still ignorant young Caine asked the old blind master how he could function without seeing. Po asked Caine to close his eyes and describe what he could hear. Caine explained that he could hear the water flowing in a nearby fountain and birds in a nearby cage. Po then asked if Caine could hear his own heartbeat or the grasshopper at his feet (Caine hadn't noticed the insect until that moment). Incredulous, Caine asked Po, "Old man – how is it that you hear these things?" Po's reply was, "Young man, how is it that you do not?" From that point on, Po affectionately called Caine "Grasshopper". Years after his graduation, Caine traveled to the Forbidden City to meet Po, whose lifelong ambition was to travel to the city on that date. While they were talking together in the street, the Emperor's nephew and his entourage came along and an altercation ensued when a guard tried to push Po aside and was sent sprawling by the blind Shaolin. While defending himself from the other guards, Master Po was shot by the Emperor's nephew. Before the nephew could reload his pistol, the enraged Caine seized a guard's fallen spear and killed the Imperial nephew. With his dying words, Po gave Caine his pouch containing his few worldly possessions and instructed Caine to flee from China as there would be both no place to hide and a price on his head. Before he fled China, Caine returned to the temple to confess his deed to Master Kan. Later, Imperial guards attacked and stormed the temple, only to find it deserted (the monks having fled before the army's arrival); in retaliation, they burned the temple to the ground. At first, Caine tried to flee to Tibet but was unsuccessful. He then escaped to the American Old West and in the first season episode "Dark Angel" discovered from his grandfather Henry Caine (Dean Jagger) that he had a half-brother named Daniel. While he searched for Danny, he was on the run from a steady stream of bounty hunters and Chinese agents, some of whom were also Shaolin priests like himself, searching for him. In the pilot episode when another priest arrives to take him into custody, telling Caine that he had been searching for him for many weeks and that it had long been known he had fled to America, Caine says to him, "For Money? A Shaolin monk does not sell himself for a handful of rice." The monks reply was, "You are more than a handful of rice" (the price placed on Caine's head by the Imperial government being $10,000 alive, $5,000 dead). Caine's gi is seen as gold with a red belt and the symbol of an open hand on the back (indicating that he is a master of all five forms), while his opponents gi is black with a maroon belt and the symbol of a snake on the back. In the ensuing fight, Caine kills the monk. The conflict between a desire for anonymity and a sense of social responsibility is conveyed through the frequent use of flashbacks. In these flashbacks, the adult Caine (Carradine) recalls a particular lesson during his training in the monastery, taught to him by Master Po and Master Kan. During the concluding four episodes of the third and final season ("Barbary House", "Flight to Orion", "The Brothers Caine", and "Full Circle") Caine finds not only his brother Daniel but his nephew Zeke as well. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kwai Chang Caine」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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