Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vagabond is a Japanese manga by Takehiko Inoue that follows a fictionalized account of the swordsman Musashi Miyamoto, based on Eiji Yoshikawa's 1935 novel Musashi. The story begins in 1600, after the Battle of Sekigahara, and traces Musashi's journey from a violent, antisocial young man named Takezō Shinmen into a ronin seeking meaning through combat and self-understanding.
Vagabond has had over 82 million copies in circulation worldwide, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time.
Vagabond won the Grand Prize at the fourth Japan Media Arts Festival in 2000, the 24th Kodansha Manga Award in the general category in 2000, and the Grand Prize of the sixth Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2002. The North American release also earned Takehiko Inoue a nomination for the 2003 Eisner Award in the Best Writer/Artist category.
Vagabond has been on indefinite hiatus since the 21st of May 2015, when chapter 327, titled "The Man Named Tadaoki," was published. Prior hiatuses were attributed to health concerns and a need to recover enthusiasm for the series, as Inoue noted in a December 2010 post on his website. No return date has been announced.
Viz Media licenses and publishes Vagabond in North America. They began releasing it in an American comic book format in December 2001, switched to the standard graphic novel format in March 2002, and released all 37 volumes by April 2015. In May 2024 they announced a Definitive Edition in a large-trim format.
Vagabond is based on Musashi, a novel by Eiji Yoshikawa first published in 1935. Takehiko Inoue drew on the novel as a foundation while deliberately departing from it, making the manga darker and more mature and giving the supporting characters different personalities from Yoshikawa's versions.