Role: First Instructor — second in command of the monastery at Siddhartha’s Peace
The Abbot’s second, and the ranking authority in the colony now that Ben Shirayuki has been taken up the space elevator. Fugen wears a headdress and formal cloaks — considerably less gaudy than the Abbot’s robes — and kept his composure through the assault on the colony office better than most of the people in it.
He found the crew on the roof while they were repairing the shuttle’s landing gear and told them flatly that they had to rescue the Abbot: he had been taken. He was evacuated with the rest of the colony staff and is now aboard The Second Chance, still asking, along with roughly twenty other refugees the crew has no supplies for and no contract covering.
Docked at the terraforming station (Session 5: Welcome, Traveler), Fugen told Jon flatly that they could not stay — Bishamonten is out of control — and refused to ask his people to risk themselves on the salvage, though he let Jon ask them. When Marge sent him a picture of a rebar shrine to Bishamonten from the docking ring, he admitted the monastery had never taken the cult seriously enough: they had taken the converts for angry colonists, but these people believe Bishamonten’s teaching of rebirth — of casting off this life for the next — and if they truly believe it, he doubts they are sane.