hakuouki-history

[hakuouki-history]

Volume 1 of Shiba Ryotaro’s Sakamoto Ryoma Novel Is On Amazon NOW.

This is probably the biggest news that’s happened in Bakumatsu-related fandom since I joined fandom. After years of wondering and waiting, Shiba Ryotaro’s Ryoma ga Yuku, his most popular novel and the genesis of the current Ryoma boom, is being translated into English. 

Full story on Japan Forward. The first volume is out, three more volumes slated to be translated by 2020. Amazingly, the entire project has been financed by a Japanese fan who wanted to bring the novel and Sakamoto’s story to English readers. So, I hope we can repay his investment by buying the novel he and the translators have worked so hard to bring us.

Volume 1 is available on Amazon as a Kindle digital edition. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can read it on your computer or other device with a free Kindle app. I’ve linked to the U.S. site but it’s available in 100 countries. I got it for $9.99 CDN: a cheap price for a 526 page volume. There’s no hardcopy available at this point in time.

So, if you’re not already scrambling to buy it, let me sell you on the novel. First of all, it’s good. I haven’t had the chance to read the entire volume yet, but I immediately did the scan-through, reading sections and taking a look at the whole story, and it’s really, really good. It’s funny and exciting, covering Sakamoto Ryoma’s early years till he flees Tosa domain without permission.  There are a lot more purely fictional escapades and hijinks than in previous shorter translated Shiba Bakumatsu works. This is first and foremost a novel, and a very funny one. Here’s Sakamoto meeting Katsura Kogoro for the first time:

Ryoma felt sorry for Katsura. And he was the sort of man who, when he feels sorry for someone, tends to go too far in what he says: "Oh don't be so hard on yourself. You see I am a spy."

Katsura was so surprised to hear this that he could hardly breathe. Here he had cleared the man from the suspicion of being a spy, only to have him proclaim he was a spy and then go on to say, consolingly, "So you don't need to worry about having done some injury to your domain. Your intuition about me was correct, and you acted just as you should have." 

"Is he a simpleton?" wondered Katsura again.

As you read the story, you can really see how Shiba shaped the way these historical figures are characterized in all forms of fiction today. The novel also has an excellent extensive introduction by historian Henry Smith who explores how the novel came to be written, its historical reliability (mixed), its relationship to Marius Jansen’s English research on Sakamoto, and the Ryoma legacy today. 

Definitely will have more to say about this book later. For further reading on Shiba’s significance, check out my previous post:  What We Learned from Shiba Ryotaro: Sakamoto Ryoma and Hijikata Toshizo.

[hakuouki-history]

This is absolutely how it went down . . . 

Well, he did get 13 more votes than Hijikata. The full tally via that Japanese wiki page linked above:

Takeaki ENOMOTO : 156 Taro MATSUDAIRA : 120 Naoyuki NAGAI : 116 Keisuke OTORI : 86 Shirojiro MATSUOKA : 82 Toshizo HIJIKATA : 73 Sadaaki MATSUDAIRA : 55 Saemon KASUGA : 43 Emon SEKIHIRO : 38 Makino Bingo No Kami : 35 Katsukiyo ITAKURA : 26 Nagamichi OGASAWARA : 25 Michiaki ENOMOTO (Tsushima) : 1

The Ezo Elections 1868: This Person Got 86 Votes

A while ago our twitter Bakumatsu squad discussed The Ezo Elections and we got an excellent idea about Otori: I believe that he, such a huge admirer of handkerchiefs Western culture, would totally make some western-like posters for his campaign. A poster with random English words and an obligatory ‘WANTED’ on it, because he didn’t quite get the context. I can imagine Hijikata talking to Enomoto after the elections, like ‘it’s not that i care about this republic thing and the elections and so on, but could it be that he got some more votes than me thanks to his stupid posters??’ Also, it’s funny to imagine possible reactions of the Meiji gouvernment if they got some of these pieces of electoral art.

[hakuouki-history]

April Fool’s Day 2018

If you missed it, this was my April Fool’s Day post on this blog here. I hope I didn’t dash anyone’s hope for Shinsengumi photos too badly. Doing April Fool’s Day posts has become a four year running tradition on this blog. I may let things slide and not post for months, but I’ll get out an April Fool’s Day post, damnit.

My other April 1st project was for Ask Historians’ April Fools’ Event. The theme this year was Clickbait, as long as it was historically accurate clickbait and my Bakumatsu contribution was

READ THESE TOP SAMURAI DEATH POEMS AND TELL ME NUMBER FIVE DOESN'T BLOW YOUR MIND! 

[hakuouki-history]

The Burnt Bauduin Collection - Some Possible Shinsengumi Photographs?

Unfortunately for us, a lot of the famous Shinsengumi members do not have extant photographs, or if they do, they date from much later in life. This is in contrast to the most famous Joui shishi, and may reflect how photographs of the losing side were less likely to be kept and treasured. Lately, however, researchers have began examination of an overlooked source for possible photographs of the Shinsengumi and their allies: the Bauduin collection's fire-damaged photographs. These photographs taken in the 1860s are unsorted, without the identifying records that accompany the rest of the collection. They have been through a fire, and are faded, charred, melted or in scraps. Some of them are way too burnt to identify, but they feature contemporary samurai.

In particular, this photograph may possibly feature members of the Shinsengumi, but much more probably, this is the more elite Mimawarigumi:

But the most intriguing possible identification in the photos is this charred photo of a young samurai invalid:

We can never be completely sure, of course, but researchers have noted a striking resemblance of this young man to other members of the Okita family. Is this a photograph of Okita Souji, taken around the same time as we know Kondou Isami had his own photo taken?

More interesting Bauduin collection photographs under the cut.

No, this isn’t possibly Okita Souji, and that other photograph isn’t the Shinsengumi OR the Mimawarigumi. The burnt photograph section of the Bauduin collection is a real, creepy fun thing to browse, with a lot of unidentified people, but the photographs were taken circa 1865 in Nagasaki, far from the haunts of the Shinsengumi.

Previous April Fool’s Day Jokes on this Blog

2015 - “Ninjutsu” and Yamazaki Susumu: A Possible Link (Yamazaki’s a real ninja?)

2016 - 19th century Japanese Samurai Recognized as Martyr for Peace (Sakamoto Ryoma’s a saint?)

2017 (Japanese) History Has Its Eyes On Him(Edo Period Ukiyo-e print of George Washington ready to cut down the cherry tree)

[hakuouki-history]

On this day in 1868 (Sun., 22 Mar., 2/29/Keiō 4)

Shinsengumi pays 13 ryō 2 bu for “trousers" from Nakamuraya Sahei, completing its transition to Western-style uniforms.

Meanwhile, Sendai vassal Sakamoto Ōi and his travel companions enter Sendai in possession of the imperial banners, for use by Sendai troops.

War in the north continues to grow closer…

(Sources:  Ōishi Manabu, Shinsengumi, p. 189; Yamada Norio, Tōhoku Sensō, p. 219) 

[hakuouki-history]

I was on Buggy and Chris’s podcast a few months ago, and the episode is finally released. The reason I mention it was a few months ago is that unfortunately (or fortunately) we recorded this before any news of Watsuki’s crimes emerged, so we do talk Rurouni Kenshin, which I know for some of you is still a fresh wound. 

Subjects discussed: 

My fav. and least fav. animes

A very brief survey of samurai history in which I may have given the wrong impression that swords were not used in the Sengoku *headdesk*

Bushido

Samurai Fiction: Shiba Ryotaro, Rurouni Kenshin, Gintama, Hakuouki, Samurai Champloo

Why Katanas Are Cool and We Should All Become Swordsmen/women.

If you listen, it’d be nice to leave Buggy and Chris a comment on their blog/rate their podcast.

[hakuouki-history]

Ask Historians Roundup #3

I haven’t posted here for a while, and rather unfortunately, I think I must have turned off my notifications too, so there are some very kind messages I missed. 

I got back to some history stuff, though. I have a “Meiji Restoration/Late Edo Period” flair on the subreddit Ask Historians, and about a month I got an alert from the AH mod team that lured me back to consistent posting. 

The question I got the alert on:   “What exactly were the Japanese Fart Wars?”

Here’s a round-up of other Japanese history questions I’ve answered lately. (Previous round-ups: #1, #2. )

“What were the ranks of officers in Edo Period Japan, in hierarchical order?”

“After the Convention of Kanagawa was there any news or technology that completely shocked or baffled the Japanese public?”

“Japanese barrel coffins?” -  About those barrels people in anime/period dramas sometimes get buried in

“It is to my understanding that people from the warrior class in Edo Japan tended to marry very early. What did these marriages look like, and are there any sources on what the involved children thought of it?” 

“The Tale of the Heike contains a story describing the first official enemy of Japan's imperial court: a long-legged spider with superhuman strength. How would 13th Century Japanese listeners have interpreted this story?”

“Were any visitors to Japan during the "Sakoku" period punished or executed?”

A reminder that Bushido is Bullshit. 

A Valentine Day’s Special -  The terrible tabloid story of an Edo Period  ménage à trois  gone wrong, some reflections on adultery law and divorce, and a more amusing story about a pair of lovers who promise to stop stealing the wronged husband's clothes.

And a Shinsengumi question!

To what extent did the Shinsengumi play a role in the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate?

[hakuouki-history]

The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi - Detective Stories of Old Edo

Books about Japan are sometimes really hard to get hold of, and not everyone has a library system as generous as my province’s. So, without further self-justification for the piracy involved, here’s a pdf of an absolutely marvelous collection of detective stories set in Edo around the time of Hakuouki.

The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi - Detective Stories of Old Edo by Okamato Kido. Translated by Ian Macdonald.

I really can’t recommend a better and more pleasant way to get the feeling for regular, ordinary life in late Edo period society than to dip into these short stories with their cast of town watchmen, samurai, shopkeepers, courtesans, apprentices, servants, priests, beggars, all going about their lives.

These cases are often exactly contemporary with Hakuouki. But they take place in the peaceful undisturbed streets of Edo where the violence in Kyoto is far away. 

Kido’s father was actually a pro-Bakufu samurai from one of the northern domains who fled Edo during the Boshin War. Kido was very interested in learning about the old Edo of his father’s day and heavily researched/interviewed older people to recreate that world for his stories. 

[hakuouki-history]

~ ELLA FITZGERALD AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG ~ "They Can`t Take That Away From Me"

In general, I post here about history and historical connections in fiction but I’m making an exception tonight to write a post for a fandom. For the ugly details of what has brought this on, check this article. For an excellent tumblr post on how to deal with this, as either a fan or non-fan, I recommend this post from @greed-the-dorkalicious

Dear Rurouni Kenshin fandom, 

The song above has been stuck in my head today. 

The way you wear your hat.  The way you sip your tea.  The memory of all that.  No, no, they can't take that away from me. 

I’ve been on the fringes of Kenshin fandom, a late-comer to the anime/manga who mostly enjoyed and lurked on the edges of an immensely talented and fun fandom while being primarily in other fandoms. I remember explaining to a friend, “Kenshin fandom doesn’t write just fanfic, they write full-blown historical novels!”

You’re all great, and no matter where you go now, if you choose to take a break from fandom, turn to other interests, or live out your enjoyment of the story on your terms, I’m grateful to have been so often enriched by your friendships, your creativity, and your interest and support of my own adventures in history. 

Nothing can take that away from me.

[hakuouki-history]

Inspired by @animaniacal ‘s tag on that Hijikata post. “#i like me some of them goofy looking ones ^^ “

[hakuouki-history]

OK, WELL FINE. THERE YOU GO. Number One Hunk of the Bakumatsu. 

Shinsengumi! Tidbits

I have a confession to make. I have not watched Shinsengumi! I firmly believe all my friends who say it is a great series. I know I should watch it, all 49 episodes, plus the short sequel about Hijikata.  But well, it’s 49 episodes. And I did watch the first episode once and … let’s not get into my Choshu trash bias. I promise I’ll watch it some day.

However, since it’s Shinsengumi!Day, I’m contributing from my store of random stuff I know about the taiga drama.

1. 

During a review of NHK’S budget in 2004, Matsuoka Masuo, the Upper House representative for Yamaguchi Prefecture attacked the NHK’s portrayal of the Shinsengumi, which he called a ‘terrorist group,” labeling the program a “variety show” rather than a historical drama. 

- Michael Wert, pg. 153, Meiji Restoration Losers 

The context that makes this story hilarious: Yamaguchi = Choshu. Some grudges are never forgotten.

2. Philip Seaton has written an open-access paper, Taiga dramas and tourism: historical contents as sustainable tourist resources which looks at the effects of the taiga dramas Shinsengumi! and Ryomaden on tourism to historical sites. The entire article is interesting, but here’s one snippet.

There are more specific data available at the nearby Yagi Residence, which is where Serizawa was assassinated. This old house is remarkable only for the violent events that occurred within its walls and the sword damage to pillars caused during the incident remain to this day. Up until the late 1990s, the Yagi Residence received twenty to forty visitors a day. During the 2004 Shinsengumi! boom, there were 600 to 800 visitors, rising to 1,000 on very busy days. After the drama, visitor numbers tailed off to 100 to 200. But, when repeats of Shinsengumi! or other related dramas are aired, these numbers rise to 300 or 400 (interview with the tour guide, 20 May 2012). These figures indicate how some tourist sites benefit in the long term by becoming better known and more established on heritage tourism itineraries. Shinsengumi! ratcheted up standard visitor levels by three to four times. 

3. One result of the Shinsengumi! mania was the manga Gintama.

When I was preparing for serialization, my editor told me to hop on the Taiga drama “Shinsengumi!” bandwagon, but the problem with historical fiction is that I’m limited by what I can write because of the historical content. I can’t use current events, and Shimura Ken doesn’t exist, and I can’t even use the phrase “I’m screwed!” This is like clipping the wings of my creative freedom, and I wind up saying “I’m screwed!” Setting this during Bakumatsu and changing the foreigners to aliens, I’ve somehow managed to create a crazy world where I can use historical and current topics. It’s not that I did it on purpose. It just happened. - Sorachi Hideaki,Quick Japan 2009 interview.

Also, according to Sorachi, his plan was to cash in with a Harry Potter clone.

Uh, yeah.  So, I’d like to talk nakedly about how Gintama was born.  It all started with a single thing my editor Monchicchi Onishi said to me.  "You know, next year, Taiga dramais going to do Shinsengumi, right?  Well, you could jump on the coattails of that.”

I had been thinking up a manga to be serialized…  had it in my head to skim bits from Harry Potter, which I had never even seen, whip it up Japanese-style, and make a killing with a story about some kind of school for demon dispellers.  

 (Full amusing story of how his editor beat him into submission here.) 

[hakuouki-history]

Shinsengumi! Tidbits

I have a confession to make. I have not watched Shinsengumi! I firmly believe all my friends who say it is a great series. I know I should watch it, all 49 episodes, plus the short sequel about Hijikata.  But well, it’s 49 episodes. And I did watch the first episode once and . . . let’s not get into my Choshu trash bias. I promise I’ll watch it some day.

However, since it’s Shinsengumi!Day, I’m contributing from my store of random stuff I know about the taiga drama.

1. 

During a review of NHK’S budget in 2004, Matsuoka Masuo, the Upper House representative for Yamaguchi Prefecture attacked the NHK’s portrayal of the Shinsengumi, which he called a ‘terrorist group,” labeling the program a “variety show” rather than a historical drama. 

- Michael Wert, pg. 153, Meiji Restoration Losers 

The context that makes this story hilarious: Yamaguchi = Choshu. Some grudges are never forgotten.

2. Philip Seaton has written an open-access paper, Taiga dramas and tourism: historical contents as sustainable tourist resources which looks at the effects of the taiga dramas Shinsengumi! and Ryomaden on tourism to historical sites. The entire article is interesting, but here’s one snippet.

There are more specific data available at the nearby Yagi Residence, which is where Serizawa was assassinated. This old house is remarkable only for the violent events that occurred within its walls and the sword damage to pillars caused during the incident remain to this day. Up until the late 1990s, the Yagi Residence received twenty to forty visitors a day. During the 2004 Shinsengumi! boom, there were 600 to 800 visitors, rising to 1,000 on very busy days. After the drama, visitor numbers tailed off to 100 to 200. But, when repeats of Shinsengumi! or other related dramas are aired, these numbers rise to 300 or 400 (interview with the tour guide, 20 May 2012). These figures indicate how some tourist sites benefit in the long term by becoming better known and more established on heritage tourism itineraries. Shinsengumi! ratcheted up standard visitor levels by three to four times. 

3. One result of the Shinsengumi! mania was the manga Gintama.

When I was preparing for serialization, my editor told me to hop on the Taiga drama “Shinsengumi!” bandwagon, but the problem with historical fiction is that I’m limited by what I can write because of the historical content. I can’t use current events, and Shimura Ken doesn’t exist, and I can’t even use the phrase “I’m screwed!” This is like clipping the wings of my creative freedom, and I wind up saying “I’m screwed!” Setting this during Bakumatsu and changing the foreigners to aliens, I’ve somehow managed to create a crazy world where I can use historical and current topics. It’s not that I did it on purpose. It just happened. - Sorachi Hideaki,Quick Japan 2009 interview.

Also, according to Sorachi, his plan was to cash in with a Harry Potter clone.

Uh, yeah.  So, I’d like to talk nakedly about how Gintama was born.  It all started with a single thing my editor Monchicchi Onishi said to me.  "You know, next year, Taiga dramais going to do Shinsengumi, right?  Well, you could jump on the coattails of that.”

I had been thinking up a manga to be serialized…  had it in my head to skim bits from Harry Potter, which I had never even seen, whip it up Japanese-style, and make a killing with a story about some kind of school for demon dispellers.  

 (Full amusing story of how his editor beat him into submission here.) 

[hakuouki-history]

Today is Kondou Isami’s birthday, born 183 years ago - 1834 - in a village now within modern Tokyo. The English Shinsengumi! taiga drama fandom has chosen his birthdate as Shinsengumi! day.

Happy Shinsengumi! day!!!

And happy birthday to Kondo :D

The center one looked like something for a movie poster so it escalated form there. And I had to add Katsura because he had such a villain pose. 

[hakuouki-history]

The picture above is a vintage photograph of an onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of the upper social classes in feudal Japan.

Often mistakenly referred to as “female samurai”, female warriors have a long history in Japan, beginning long before samurai emerged as a warrior class. However, they did fight alongside of samurai warriors. They were wives, widows and daughters who answered the call of duty to protect their families, households and honor in times of war.

Onna Bugeisha were the exception, rather than the rule, but they still played an important role nonetheless. One famous example is empress Jingu, who reportedly lead a successful conquest against Korea in 200 AD without shedding a single drop of blood (or so the legends say).

[hakuouki-history]

Now, there’s an outfit that’d be a drag to wear in 1868 battle. ;-)

Btw, Does anyone know when and in what context “onna bugeisha” was used?Has it existed all along for all the women it’s applied to? Is it an old word that’s been popularized? A newer word that’s been applied backwards? Literary? Historical? Historical-literary? I’ve wondered but not been able to find any information without reading Japanese.

The picture above is a vintage photograph of an onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of the upper social classes in feudal Japan.

Often mistakenly referred to as “female samurai”, female warriors have a long history in Japan, beginning long before samurai emerged as a warrior class. However, they did fight alongside of samurai warriors. They were wives, widows and daughters who answered the call of duty to protect their families, households and honor in times of war.

Onna Bugeisha were the exception, rather than the rule, but they still played an important role nonetheless. One famous example is empress Jingu, who reportedly lead a successful conquest against Korea in 200 AD without shedding a single drop of blood (or so the legends say).

[hakuouki-history]

A Discord server for all fans of the Shinsengumi and the Bakumatsu era in general. Any Shinsengumi-related media welcome. Nothing fancy, just discussion and terrible angst fun. 

Join the fun!

[hakuouki-history]

Kawai Kisaburo - 2010 Japanese Wiki Entry

From the Japanese-English Bilingual Corpus of Wikipedia’s Kyoto Articles . This is a translation from Kawai Kisaburo’s Japanese wiki entry, exactly as it was in 2010. It is taken from PNM00214 in that collection.

For information on the database and how to use it, please check this post.

Just like English wikipedia, none of this information is guaranteed to be accurate. It’s not a current version of the Japanese article either.

An anon sent me an ask:  

What is the real story of Kawai Kisaburo? How did he exactly die?

and I realized there isn’t any good information on Kawai Kisaburo in English, so here’s his 2010 Japanese wiki article. Unfortunately, there’s no good answer to this question. Kawaki Kisaburo,  the Shinsengumi’s accountant, died of seppuku, and he was sentenced to seppuku for a shortfall in the Shinsengumi’s finances. The article presents a lot of the theories and stories around his death, but most of them are dramatic inventions for storytelling purposes. 

The simplest explanation, that he was indeed skimming money for his own use, seems to me most likely, but there’s no way to know the truth now. 

The translated sentences used in this service contain English contents which are translated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) from Japanese sentences on Wikipedia. My use of these translated sentences is licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. Please refer to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ or http://alaginrc.nict.go.jp/WikiCorpus/ for details.

Kisaburo KAWAI

Kisaburo KAWAI (1838 - March 28, 1866) was a Shinsengumi Accountant (a group who guarded Kyoto during the end of Tokugawa Shogunate).

Personality

He was from Takasago City, Harima Province, and his parents' home was a wealthy Kuramoto (rice wholesaler). His sister, who married into Shoka (mercantile house) in Osaka recommended him to Shinsengumi, which caused Shinpachi NAGAKURA to refer that Kawai was from Osaka.

He played an active role in the accounting of expenses for the group as an accountant, utilizing his skills at arithmetic. Some people believe that he was behind the spear works (military exploits) of other members since he was an accountant. However, some people say that he was as good as the other members since he received rewards for his performance in the Ikedaya Incident; he was active as a 'fighting accountant.'

In March in 1866, he was made to commit Seppuku (suicide by disembowelment).

Mystery behind his Seppuku (the followings are the assumed reasons)

Because he couldn't manage to raise the expense for redeeming Miyuki Dayu, the concubine of Isami KONDO (It seems that there is no link between two issues; redeeming Miyuki Dayu was attempted at the different time from Kawai's purge).

Because he failed account processing under the process of redeeming another geisha other than Miyuki Dayu.

Because he showed his reluctance or gave Kondo critical comments against Kondo's lavish expenditure for his women as the person responsible for to control expenses of the group, which led to Kawai's being purged.

Because Kawai misused Shinsengumi's money for unknown reasons.

The reason which was adopted in the historic drama of NHK (to be described later).

Because Kawai's plot to carry out a rebellion was identified.

Because he merely used Shinsengumi's money for himself.

It is unmistakably true that Kawai was purged and died; What happened before Kawai's death has not yet been identified.

In the historic drama of NHK 'Shinsengumi!' in 2004, the reason for Kawai's purge was that he lent Kanryusai TAKEDA, the leader of the fifth group, money for him to buy military science texts without Kondo's permission.

According to another story, Kawai sent an emissary to his parents' home to borrow money to cover the money for Shinsengumi to avoid committing Seppuku. At that time, there was a trouble at his parents' home, by which the money from his parents had been delivered just after Kawai's Seppuku. His parents, having heard of Kawai's Seppuku, became extremely angry and had a great tomb built in Mibu-dera Temple to worship their son, apart from the tomb which was built by Shinsengumi.