November 24, 2014
Ryomaden
I've long hoped that NHK would start distributing its Taiga historical dramas on streaming sites. Well, NHK Cosmomedia took a big step in that direction with dLibrary Japan, but then didn't renew any of the Taiga drama licenses when they expired. So we're back to square one.
Played by Fukuyama Masaharu (Galileo), Sakamoto Ryoma was one of the most influential figures of the mid-19th century. Japan's version of Alexander Hamilton, he founded Japan's first private corporation and drafted the outlines of the Meiji constitution.
Ryoma was assassinated by government agents in 1867, a year before the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown. His story is entwined with that of Iwasaki Yataro (Kagawa Teruyuki), a fellow Tosa countryman who would build on Ryoma's work to create Mitsubishi in 1870.
An intense and engaging character actor, Kagawa delivers a bravura performance as a disenfranchised samurai pulling himself up by his bootstraps with every ounce of his strength. These lower-class samurai were the principal agents of change in the Meiji Restoration.
The Perry Expedition to Japan in 1853 was the turning point both in Ryoma's life and that of the nation. Ryoma's reaction to the mind-bending technology of a steamship was: "I want one of those."
He would eventually get one.
Quite unintentionally, the depiction in Ryomaden of this clash between East and West, between feudalism and modernism, and tradition and technology (especially weaponry), well captures how an actual encounter with "advanced" aliens might affect the human race.
The challenge is to accommodate the new without becoming unmoored from the past, because what's already there isn't going anywhere (and would stick around for decades).
The authoritarian regime that had ruled for 250 years simply couldn't keep up, and was overwhelmed by the change bubbling up from the provinces. Alas, in only 75 years the new regime would grown just as sclerotic and ultimately fail even more catastrophically.
But following the barely-contained chaos of the Meiji Restoration, for a few short years wistfully remembered as the "Taisho democracy" (1912–1926), Sakamoto Ryoma's vision of a New World came true.
Though he might be more surprised that the political factions he helped birth in Tosa (his home province), Satsuma, and especially Choshu (the original rebel province) had such outsized influence today. Prime Minister Abe was, in fact, a Choshu man.
Played by Fukuyama Masaharu (Galileo), Sakamoto Ryoma was one of the most influential figures of the mid-19th century. Japan's version of Alexander Hamilton, he founded Japan's first private corporation and drafted the outlines of the Meiji constitution.
Ryoma was assassinated by government agents in 1867, a year before the Tokugawa shogunate was overthrown. His story is entwined with that of Iwasaki Yataro (Kagawa Teruyuki), a fellow Tosa countryman who would build on Ryoma's work to create Mitsubishi in 1870.
An intense and engaging character actor, Kagawa delivers a bravura performance as a disenfranchised samurai pulling himself up by his bootstraps with every ounce of his strength. These lower-class samurai were the principal agents of change in the Meiji Restoration.
The Perry Expedition to Japan in 1853 was the turning point both in Ryoma's life and that of the nation. Ryoma's reaction to the mind-bending technology of a steamship was: "I want one of those."
He would eventually get one.
Quite unintentionally, the depiction in Ryomaden of this clash between East and West, between feudalism and modernism, and tradition and technology (especially weaponry), well captures how an actual encounter with "advanced" aliens might affect the human race.
The challenge is to accommodate the new without becoming unmoored from the past, because what's already there isn't going anywhere (and would stick around for decades).
The authoritarian regime that had ruled for 250 years simply couldn't keep up, and was overwhelmed by the change bubbling up from the provinces. Alas, in only 75 years the new regime would grown just as sclerotic and ultimately fail even more catastrophically.
Though he might be more surprised that the political factions he helped birth in Tosa (his home province), Satsuma, and especially Choshu (the original rebel province) had such outsized influence today. Prime Minister Abe was, in fact, a Choshu man.
Labels: dlibjapan, history, japan, japanese tv, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, sakamoto, taiga drama
April 28, 2014
Reliving the past
The ongoing chaos in the Ukraine, with Putin stirring the pot from afar, reminds me of the tactics of Saigo Takamori, commander of the Satsuma and Choshu forces battling the Tokugawa regime in the middle of the 19th century.
From early in the campaign, Saigo directed a network of agents provacateur operating behind the lines in Edo (Tokyo). They initiated a series of brazen arsons,
These incidents provoked the shogunate into acting prematurely and convinced the populace that the government couldn't even control the capital in which it was ensconced.
By the time the rebel army, now bearing the standard of the emperor, swept up the Tokaido and reached Edo, resistance had mostly melted away. After a brief skirmish at Ueno (where a statue of Saigo now stands), he secured the unconditional surrender of the city.
And speaking of the past merging with current events, the last known letter written by Sakamoto Ryoma was recently discovered on a Japanese version of Antiques Roadshow.
Call him Japan's Alexander Hamilton. Sakamoto Ryoma was a political philosopher who founded Japan's first independent corporation (and dared sue the government when one of its ships damaged one of his). Like Hamilton, he died before his time, assassinated in 1867.
Ryoma negotiated the secret alliance between Choshu and Satsuma that eventually spelled the end of Tokugawa rule. He used his shipping company to smuggle British arms from Satsuma to Choshu, while in public Satsuma pretended to still be backing the regime.
He then helped engineer a silent coup d'etat, convincing the Tokugawa government to yield sovereign authority to the emperor ("like the European powers"). As soon as Satsuma made known its true intentions, the emperor issued an edict abolishing the shogunate.
At that point, the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, threw up his hands and quit (and as a result outlived most of his contemporaries).
Like Lincoln, Sakamoto Ryoma is one of the great "what-ifs" in Japanese history. What if he had lived? Could he have restrained Saigo Takamori's destructive demands for territorial expansion? Could he have established a more republican form of government?
In the newly-discovered letter, Ryoma discusses what structure the new government should take, and how it should replace the existing feudal order (which wasn't truly eradicated until the American Occupation eighty years later).
In any case, I have to believe that Ryoma-the-businessman would be highly amused that a letter worth pennies in materials at the time, purchased for ten bucks at an antique store thirty years ago, has an estimated worth of $150,000. Now that's a profit margin.
From early in the campaign, Saigo directed a network of agents provacateur operating behind the lines in Edo (Tokyo). They initiated a series of brazen arsons,
starting with the burning of the outerworks of Edo Castle, the main Tokugawa residence. This was blamed on Satsuma ronin, who on that day attacked a government office. The next day shogunate forces responded by attacking the Edo residence of the [governor] of Satsuma, where many opponents of the shogunate, under Takamori's direction, had been hiding and creating trouble.
 |
| Courtesy Wikimedia Commons |
By the time the rebel army, now bearing the standard of the emperor, swept up the Tokaido and reached Edo, resistance had mostly melted away. After a brief skirmish at Ueno (where a statue of Saigo now stands), he secured the unconditional surrender of the city.
And speaking of the past merging with current events, the last known letter written by Sakamoto Ryoma was recently discovered on a Japanese version of Antiques Roadshow.
Call him Japan's Alexander Hamilton. Sakamoto Ryoma was a political philosopher who founded Japan's first independent corporation (and dared sue the government when one of its ships damaged one of his). Like Hamilton, he died before his time, assassinated in 1867.
Ryoma negotiated the secret alliance between Choshu and Satsuma that eventually spelled the end of Tokugawa rule. He used his shipping company to smuggle British arms from Satsuma to Choshu, while in public Satsuma pretended to still be backing the regime.
He then helped engineer a silent coup d'etat, convincing the Tokugawa government to yield sovereign authority to the emperor ("like the European powers"). As soon as Satsuma made known its true intentions, the emperor issued an edict abolishing the shogunate.
At that point, the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, threw up his hands and quit (and as a result outlived most of his contemporaries).
Like Lincoln, Sakamoto Ryoma is one of the great "what-ifs" in Japanese history. What if he had lived? Could he have restrained Saigo Takamori's destructive demands for territorial expansion? Could he have established a more republican form of government?
In the newly-discovered letter, Ryoma discusses what structure the new government should take, and how it should replace the existing feudal order (which wasn't truly eradicated until the American Occupation eighty years later).
In any case, I have to believe that Ryoma-the-businessman would be highly amused that a letter worth pennies in materials at the time, purchased for ten bucks at an antique store thirty years ago, has an estimated worth of $150,000. Now that's a profit margin.
 |
| Courtesy Asashi Shimbun |
Related posts
Dances with Samurai
The magic door
No way to wage a war
October 01, 2012
Revolution from below
In a recent column, David Brooks quotes from The End of Men by Hanna Rosin, who argues that "like immigrants who have moved to a new country," women adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants "who have kept their minds in the old one."
If nothing else, here is more proof of Ann Althouse's maxim that any "research into the differences between men and women must portray women as superior."
Moreover, in his effort to be topical, Brooks misses a huge part of the equation, namely the unintended consequences of well-intentioned government interference in the free market, especially student loans and unemployment insurance.
Unemployment "insurance" incentivizes holding out for job opportunities that significantly exceed existing benefits. And pricey tuition has long been sold to gullible students as an "investment" guaranteed to return high returns in the form of wages.
Without a healthy income, a hundred grand in full-recourse student loans will become a Sisyphusian burden by the time the graduate hits middle age. The IRS owning his soul might have a lot to do with what employment choices a man tends to make.
However, Brooks thankfully gets to a more substantial point, that
As a case in point, the Meiji Restoration was a "revolution from below" led by lower-ranked samurai. Shut out of opportunities to climb the political or economic ladders past their assigned station in life, these samurai struck out in new directions.
As Seth Roberts puts it, they chose exploration over exploitation, many seizing the opportunity to travel abroad, even risking death (leaving Japan's territorial waters was considered treason) to secure passage, or stow away, on American warships.
In Satsuma province, rather than fighting the currents of change, the provincial governor reached down into the ranks of the lower-ranked samurai to fuel his own revolutionary aspirations.
In Tosa province, they fomented open insurrection. The most remarkable of them, Sakamoto Ryoma, forged an alliance between Choshu and Satsuma that would bring down the regime, while creating Japan's first privately-held corporation.
The dissolution of the feudal class system occurred during enormous disruptions to the status quo, with the regime overwhelmed by western technology and unable to prevent the forcible opening of Japan.
Up until then, however, the shoguns had ruled without significant opposition for two centuries. The era is still remembered with great nostalgia. Human beings are, without a doubt, strongly attracted to the reassurances of state paternalism.
A government that can appease the populace by handing out "free" goodies will be embraced until, like the Tokugawa shogunate, it gets run into the ground by an "extractive elite" unwilling to risk their own sinecures with real solutions.
Or as Alexis de Tocqueville put it, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
During the Edo period, samurai didn't run around like the Three Musketeers. The vast majority of them were government bureaucrats who inherited their positions and formed a nation-wide system of permanent political patronage.
A brief and bloody counterrevolutionary challenge to the early Meiji government (historically mangled and distorted beyond all recognition in The Last Samurai) was fought by samurai disgruntled about the loss of their feudal status and stipends.
The government could no longer afford to pay them simply for being born samurai because it was flat stinking broke. This is one of those "learning from the past" things, though I don't think many politicians are getting the lesson.
If nothing else, here is more proof of Ann Althouse's maxim that any "research into the differences between men and women must portray women as superior."
Moreover, in his effort to be topical, Brooks misses a huge part of the equation, namely the unintended consequences of well-intentioned government interference in the free market, especially student loans and unemployment insurance.
Unemployment "insurance" incentivizes holding out for job opportunities that significantly exceed existing benefits. And pricey tuition has long been sold to gullible students as an "investment" guaranteed to return high returns in the form of wages.
Without a healthy income, a hundred grand in full-recourse student loans will become a Sisyphusian burden by the time the graduate hits middle age. The IRS owning his soul might have a lot to do with what employment choices a man tends to make.
However, Brooks thankfully gets to a more substantial point, that
this theory has more to do with social position. When there's big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to cling to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They're going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.
As a case in point, the Meiji Restoration was a "revolution from below" led by lower-ranked samurai. Shut out of opportunities to climb the political or economic ladders past their assigned station in life, these samurai struck out in new directions.
As Seth Roberts puts it, they chose exploration over exploitation, many seizing the opportunity to travel abroad, even risking death (leaving Japan's territorial waters was considered treason) to secure passage, or stow away, on American warships.
In Satsuma province, rather than fighting the currents of change, the provincial governor reached down into the ranks of the lower-ranked samurai to fuel his own revolutionary aspirations.
In Tosa province, they fomented open insurrection. The most remarkable of them, Sakamoto Ryoma, forged an alliance between Choshu and Satsuma that would bring down the regime, while creating Japan's first privately-held corporation.
The dissolution of the feudal class system occurred during enormous disruptions to the status quo, with the regime overwhelmed by western technology and unable to prevent the forcible opening of Japan.
Up until then, however, the shoguns had ruled without significant opposition for two centuries. The era is still remembered with great nostalgia. Human beings are, without a doubt, strongly attracted to the reassurances of state paternalism.
A government that can appease the populace by handing out "free" goodies will be embraced until, like the Tokugawa shogunate, it gets run into the ground by an "extractive elite" unwilling to risk their own sinecures with real solutions.
Or as Alexis de Tocqueville put it, "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
During the Edo period, samurai didn't run around like the Three Musketeers. The vast majority of them were government bureaucrats who inherited their positions and formed a nation-wide system of permanent political patronage.
A brief and bloody counterrevolutionary challenge to the early Meiji government (historically mangled and distorted beyond all recognition in The Last Samurai) was fought by samurai disgruntled about the loss of their feudal status and stipends.
The government could no longer afford to pay them simply for being born samurai because it was flat stinking broke. This is one of those "learning from the past" things, though I don't think many politicians are getting the lesson.
November 17, 2011
The Dragon Princess
Sen (千) means "one thousand." Princess Sen (千姫) was the daughter of the second Tokugawa shogun. She was married to her cousin, Toyotomi Hideyori, in an effort to unite the Toyotomi and Tokugawa clans.
The effort failed. These martial connotations may explain why Ryô and Sen are rare names for girls these days. The modern kanji for "dragon" (竜), pronounced ryû, is a boy's name.
The kun'yomi (Chinese reading) of 千 (chi) is more widely used in kanji compounds. In Spirited Away, Sen is the name the witch gives to Chihiro (a common name). The kanji is the same.
The subject of numbers as names for girls immediately brings to mind "Thirteen" and "Seven of Nine." As we'll see later on, numbers remain more popular in names for Japanese boys than girls.
Labels: japanese culture, sakamoto, serpent notes, serpent of time
December 06, 2010
The magic door
I previously mentioned the delightful romantic dramedy I'll Still Love You in Ten Years.
To summarize: imagine that Leonard Hofstadter and Penny (but make her a young editorial assistant) from Big Bang Theory get married. She de-geekifies him, he becomes rich and famous, they end up loathing each other. So he borrows his old professor's time machine and goes back to when they first met in order to break up the relationship.
(Incidentally, I identify completely. This is exactly how geeky introverts think.)
The restrained NHK style gets it exactly right, pushing the physical relationship off to the side and focusing on what makes people fall in love despite themselves, without getting too full of its philosophical self. Ten years ago, it would have made a great Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan vehicle. As a stage play, it'd be a nice answer to Saturday's Warrior.
There's only one small special effect in the whole series--a 1000 yen coin from 2020 disappears when the disrupted timeline is restored. We never see the actual time machine. We're only shown a small theoretical prototype in the professor's lab. It's simply stipulated that the time machine exists.
In other words, it's a magic door. That's all we need.
The "magic door" approach comes from an episode on Red Dwarf where the crew discovers a "space-time portal" that will permit them to travel back in time in order to warn themselves of the disaster that will befall them a few weeks hence.
Call it the Goldilocks problem in science fiction and fantasy: explaining too much or explaining too little. Fantasy with pretensions to "hard SF" often succumbs to the former (Star Trek). A good example of the latter is Jin, an otherwise excellent time travel drama from Tokyo Broadcasting System.
Dr. Jin Minakata (Takao Osawa) is a 21st century surgeon who gets caught in a "time slip" (as it's called in Japanese) and saves the life of Saki's (Haruka Ayase, on the left) brother before fully realizing where he is, and before realizing that he has just done something thought utterly impossible back then.
(Incidentally, Osawa and Ayase also pair up in Ichi, a pretty good Zatoichi spin-off, with Ayase playing against type as the blind-but-lethal swordswoman.)
Following the iron-clad rule that time travelers must travel to interesting times and immediately meet interesting people, as soon as he figures out he's in 1860's Edo (Tokyo), he promptly runs into Sakamoto Ryoma (exuberantly played by Seiyou Uchino, Rika's time-traveling husband from I'll Still Love You in Ten Years).
The episodic conflicts involve Dr. Minakata figuring out how to use his skills with mid-19th century technology. Though Japan had yet to go through its industrial revolution, it still had some of the best specialty steel, silk and ceramics makers in the world. So Minakata could have many of his surgical instruments custom made.
He next sets out to invent penicillin. Granted, the most drastic improvements in health over the past two centuries came from public sanitation. But the Edo government was about to collapse, so a major public works project wasn't in the cards. It's a clever choice, as is having a soy sauce factory handle the mass production.
Although the plots have to be manhandled a bit to set up the medical case for each episode, they're well-researched (at least I found them convincing) and completely fascinating. It makes for a good basic course in pharmacology and emergency medicine. I'd like to see what Dr. House could do in a Civil War-era hospital with 21st century knowledge.
The series conflict involves Minakata's 21st century fiancee, who is in a coma after an operation he convinced her to undergo. He has a photograph of the two of them, taken at her bedside. As he begins to treat one particular patient (the geisha on the right, who's the splitting image of his fiance), the photograph begins to change.
In time, his fiance appears to return to health. And then starts to disappear. Minakata concludes that if he cures his patient, a series of cause and effect will cause her to vanish from history. Add to this his knowledge that Ryoma was assassinated in 1867. Does he act in the present or preserve the future he knows?
It's an interesting set of conflicts and dramatically very well done. There's only one problem with the series: there's no magic door.
A magic door is vaguely implied in the pilot episode. But later, what was implied doesn't seem to exist. The premise gets shuffled off stage with a bunch of literary handwaves and pretty cinematic flourishes and a WTF metaphor about a fetus in a bottle that never made any sense (I don't think it made any sense to the director either).
Maybe Minakata hit his head and he's the one in the coma. Maybe he's not a man dreaming he's a butterfly, but a butterfly dreaming he's a man. Whatever. However clever it looks on paper, this "We're too good for concrete fantasy" business gets my goat. My magical realism better have magic. If here be dragons, I expect real dragons.
Though in this case I suspect they're trying to keep all their options open by not committing to any one plot device. Unfortunately, when it comes to the integrity of a narrative, that kind of halfheartedness never serves storytelling well.
The series is good enough that you can answer their hand wave with one of your own and keep watching. But lacking a physical hook on which to hang the premise--an earthquake, say, or an errant MRI machine--despite the satisfying conclusion, the protagonist's lack of other options detracts from the dramatic impact.
Perhaps the manga on which the television series was based handles it differently. And because most series television in Japan consists of a dozen episodes and that's it (or a dozen episodes a year, very frustrating with ongoing series), it's possible they could come back for a season two (and TBS has just announced there will be).
But they'd still have to come up with a magic door.
To summarize: imagine that Leonard Hofstadter and Penny (but make her a young editorial assistant) from Big Bang Theory get married. She de-geekifies him, he becomes rich and famous, they end up loathing each other. So he borrows his old professor's time machine and goes back to when they first met in order to break up the relationship.
(Incidentally, I identify completely. This is exactly how geeky introverts think.)
The restrained NHK style gets it exactly right, pushing the physical relationship off to the side and focusing on what makes people fall in love despite themselves, without getting too full of its philosophical self. Ten years ago, it would have made a great Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan vehicle. As a stage play, it'd be a nice answer to Saturday's Warrior.
There's only one small special effect in the whole series--a 1000 yen coin from 2020 disappears when the disrupted timeline is restored. We never see the actual time machine. We're only shown a small theoretical prototype in the professor's lab. It's simply stipulated that the time machine exists.
In other words, it's a magic door. That's all we need.
The "magic door" approach comes from an episode on Red Dwarf where the crew discovers a "space-time portal" that will permit them to travel back in time in order to warn themselves of the disaster that will befall them a few weeks hence.
"What is it?" Cat wants to know.
Lister offers up the typical technobabble explanations of it being a "interstellar dimensional space-time continuum" or whatnot. But with every explanation, Cat only gets more confused and keeps repeating, "But what is it?"
Finally Lister says, "It's a magic door."
And Cat says, "Oh, a magic door! Why didn't anyone say so!"
Call it the Goldilocks problem in science fiction and fantasy: explaining too much or explaining too little. Fantasy with pretensions to "hard SF" often succumbs to the former (Star Trek). A good example of the latter is Jin, an otherwise excellent time travel drama from Tokyo Broadcasting System.
Dr. Jin Minakata (Takao Osawa) is a 21st century surgeon who gets caught in a "time slip" (as it's called in Japanese) and saves the life of Saki's (Haruka Ayase, on the left) brother before fully realizing where he is, and before realizing that he has just done something thought utterly impossible back then.
(Incidentally, Osawa and Ayase also pair up in Ichi, a pretty good Zatoichi spin-off, with Ayase playing against type as the blind-but-lethal swordswoman.)
Following the iron-clad rule that time travelers must travel to interesting times and immediately meet interesting people, as soon as he figures out he's in 1860's Edo (Tokyo), he promptly runs into Sakamoto Ryoma (exuberantly played by Seiyou Uchino, Rika's time-traveling husband from I'll Still Love You in Ten Years).
The episodic conflicts involve Dr. Minakata figuring out how to use his skills with mid-19th century technology. Though Japan had yet to go through its industrial revolution, it still had some of the best specialty steel, silk and ceramics makers in the world. So Minakata could have many of his surgical instruments custom made.
He next sets out to invent penicillin. Granted, the most drastic improvements in health over the past two centuries came from public sanitation. But the Edo government was about to collapse, so a major public works project wasn't in the cards. It's a clever choice, as is having a soy sauce factory handle the mass production.
Although the plots have to be manhandled a bit to set up the medical case for each episode, they're well-researched (at least I found them convincing) and completely fascinating. It makes for a good basic course in pharmacology and emergency medicine. I'd like to see what Dr. House could do in a Civil War-era hospital with 21st century knowledge.
The series conflict involves Minakata's 21st century fiancee, who is in a coma after an operation he convinced her to undergo. He has a photograph of the two of them, taken at her bedside. As he begins to treat one particular patient (the geisha on the right, who's the splitting image of his fiance), the photograph begins to change.
In time, his fiance appears to return to health. And then starts to disappear. Minakata concludes that if he cures his patient, a series of cause and effect will cause her to vanish from history. Add to this his knowledge that Ryoma was assassinated in 1867. Does he act in the present or preserve the future he knows?
It's an interesting set of conflicts and dramatically very well done. There's only one problem with the series: there's no magic door.
A magic door is vaguely implied in the pilot episode. But later, what was implied doesn't seem to exist. The premise gets shuffled off stage with a bunch of literary handwaves and pretty cinematic flourishes and a WTF metaphor about a fetus in a bottle that never made any sense (I don't think it made any sense to the director either).
Maybe Minakata hit his head and he's the one in the coma. Maybe he's not a man dreaming he's a butterfly, but a butterfly dreaming he's a man. Whatever. However clever it looks on paper, this "We're too good for concrete fantasy" business gets my goat. My magical realism better have magic. If here be dragons, I expect real dragons.
Though in this case I suspect they're trying to keep all their options open by not committing to any one plot device. Unfortunately, when it comes to the integrity of a narrative, that kind of halfheartedness never serves storytelling well.
The series is good enough that you can answer their hand wave with one of your own and keep watching. But lacking a physical hook on which to hang the premise--an earthquake, say, or an errant MRI machine--despite the satisfying conclusion, the protagonist's lack of other options detracts from the dramatic impact.
Perhaps the manga on which the television series was based handles it differently. And because most series television in Japan consists of a dozen episodes and that's it (or a dozen episodes a year, very frustrating with ongoing series), it's possible they could come back for a season two (and TBS has just announced there will be).
But they'd still have to come up with a magic door.
Labels: criticism, introversion, japan, japanese tv, japanese tv reviews, kate, magic, sakamoto, science fiction, television, television reviews, thinking about writing
October 18, 2010
Three good reasons to watch NHK
Sometimes the picture really is worth a thousand words of entertainment value. And the stories are good too! But the additional pleasures of watching an attractive woman act them out is undeniable.
Yeah, I know, it's not terribly "realistic." When it comes to art, "reality" need not be "real." Just as the most "natural" food isn't at all "natural." It's painstakingly created by experts in ways that nature never intended, with a singular, sensory objective.
Now and then I do have to wonder why--other than a million years of evolution and social conditioning--my brain gets off on something so abstract. Not just attractive women, but attractive women in evolutionarily novel contexts, and the less "made-up" the better.
Satoshi Kanazawa argues that the more intelligent you are, the more you are drawn to "evolutionarily novel" things.
Following Kanazawa's thesis (which could rationalize just about anything), evolutionarily "familiar" fashion is simply a way of accentuating primitive mating cues. So appreciating an "un-dolled-up" look requires more brains. Hey, I can be an evolutionary psychologist too!
Or in Aya Ueto's case, she sports a "young urban professional" look (evolutionarily unique) that's actually "professional." Her character in the flash-forwards is more Cosmo. But we're supposed to assume she's become more dissolute. Ah, stereotypes make for such good shorthand.
Google these three young women and you'll find oodles of cheesecake. But nothing that looks half as good as the "plainer" versions. The best contemporary photo of Yoko Maki I could find is the one below taken for a magazine interview. A little goes a long way in my book.
1. Aya Ueto (上戸彩)
As Rika Onozawa, an earnest young editorial assistant, in the romantic dramedy, I'll Still Love You in Ten Years. Co-star Seiyou Uchino plays the geeky physicist who loves her, loses her, and then uses a time machine to make things right.
2. Yui Ichikawa (市川由衣)
As Dr. Katsura in the period melodrama, Chizuru Katsura's Casebook, about an Edo Period woman doctor. Her chopsocky's good enough to not make you furiously roll your eyes (though, seriously, any man could hoist her by the scruff of her neck).
3. Yoko Maki (真木よう子)
As Ryo Narasaki, the gun-toting wife of Ryoma Sakamoto, hero of the Meiji Restoration, in the historical drama, Ryomaden. Sakamoto wore western-style boots and carried a Smith & Wesson. There's no evidence his wife did, but it's a fun thought.
Yeah, I know, it's not terribly "realistic." When it comes to art, "reality" need not be "real." Just as the most "natural" food isn't at all "natural." It's painstakingly created by experts in ways that nature never intended, with a singular, sensory objective.
Now and then I do have to wonder why--other than a million years of evolution and social conditioning--my brain gets off on something so abstract. Not just attractive women, but attractive women in evolutionarily novel contexts, and the less "made-up" the better.
Satoshi Kanazawa argues that the more intelligent you are, the more you are drawn to "evolutionarily novel" things.
Following Kanazawa's thesis (which could rationalize just about anything), evolutionarily "familiar" fashion is simply a way of accentuating primitive mating cues. So appreciating an "un-dolled-up" look requires more brains. Hey, I can be an evolutionary psychologist too!
Or in Aya Ueto's case, she sports a "young urban professional" look (evolutionarily unique) that's actually "professional." Her character in the flash-forwards is more Cosmo. But we're supposed to assume she's become more dissolute. Ah, stereotypes make for such good shorthand.
Google these three young women and you'll find oodles of cheesecake. But nothing that looks half as good as the "plainer" versions. The best contemporary photo of Yoko Maki I could find is the one below taken for a magazine interview. A little goes a long way in my book.
1. Aya Ueto (上戸彩)
As Rika Onozawa, an earnest young editorial assistant, in the romantic dramedy, I'll Still Love You in Ten Years. Co-star Seiyou Uchino plays the geeky physicist who loves her, loses her, and then uses a time machine to make things right.
2. Yui Ichikawa (市川由衣)
As Dr. Katsura in the period melodrama, Chizuru Katsura's Casebook, about an Edo Period woman doctor. Her chopsocky's good enough to not make you furiously roll your eyes (though, seriously, any man could hoist her by the scruff of her neck).
3. Yoko Maki (真木よう子)
As Ryo Narasaki, the gun-toting wife of Ryoma Sakamoto, hero of the Meiji Restoration, in the historical drama, Ryomaden. Sakamoto wore western-style boots and carried a Smith & Wesson. There's no evidence his wife did, but it's a fun thought.
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Labels: deep thoughts, japan, japanese tv, pop culture, sakamoto, social studies, taiga drama, television
February 18, 2010
The world ends (and I feel fine)
This year's NHK historical docudrama is about Ryouma Sakamoto, Japan's most brilliant and charismatic 19th century revolutionary (in the traditional sense of being open to new ideas and then seeking pragmatic ways of implementing them).As the program vividly illustrates, the arrival of Commodore Perry's "Black Ships" was no less shocking to both the populace and the powers-that-be than an invasion from outer space.
Two centuries earlier, Japan could boast of having one of the most advanced societies in the world. But in 1853, Perry's steam-powered warships confronted the Japanese with technology beyond anything they could imagine.
A mere fifteen years later, after ruling uncontested for 250 years, the Tokugawa regime was crushed and swept from power in a civil war that lasted a matter of months.
Add to that regular earthquakes, volcanoes, and typhoons, the occasional suicidal end-time cult, two atomic bombs and losing a world war, and it's no surprise that the apocalypse has become part of the national consciousness.
Japanese F&SF writers love apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic plots. And perhaps perversely, Japanese love being entertained by them. They come in all shades and varieties. To name a few of the sub-genres off the top of my head:
- Japan sinks into the Pacific (Japan Sinks).
- Japan (or parts thereof) is destroyed by rampaging monsters. Or robots. Or aliens. The Gozilla series covered all of these at some point.
- A secret conspiracy destroys Japan (or parts thereof) to keep an even bigger conspiracy secret (Vexille). Attempts to explain said conspiracy usually result in much tangled logic and head scratching in the denouement (Evangelion).
- More specifically, Tokyo gets destroyed. Repeatedly (Akira).
- Instead of destroying Tokyo, aliens park the whole city in a different dimension (RahXephon).
- The oceans rise, threatening to inundate most of metropolitan Japan (Patlabor). Toss in a mutant sea monster (Patlabor: W-13).
- Earthquakes, with both natural and supernatural causes and effects, wreak havoc (Demon City Shinjuku).
- The planet is rendered unlivable by external astronomical events, like the Moon exploding (Cowboy Bebop).
The apocalyptic event is often an excuse to wreck the current social order (Burst Angel). Japan is such an orderly society that if you want to inject a Mad Max element—or postulate that everybody's as well-armed as Americans—you need an upheaval first to make it believable.
The cheesy but fun (and even poignant at times) anime version of Witchblade combines a Tokyo-wrecking conspiracy with supernatural earthquakes, rising seas, and law & order so gone to hell that superhero gunfights (among barely-dressed babes) can break out at any moment.
The best defeat of extraterrestrial invaders occurs in Magic User's Club, wherein the heroine turns the alien spaceship into a giant flowering cherry tree.
My favorite post-apocalyptic series is the Yokohama Shopping Log (not available in English). A combination of natural disasters and rising oceans has destroyed most of the "post" in postmodern Japan. But all things considered, life didn't turn out half bad.
Think of Little House on the Prairie with modern plumbing and an android as the protagonist. Seriously, reading this manga is better than an antidepressant. Maybe the world ought to end on a more regular basis.
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Labels: anime, anime lists, apocalyptic fiction, demon city, environmentalism, geology, japan, movies, pop culture, robots, sakamoto, superhero, ww2
November 27, 2005
Chapter 16 (A Thousand Leagues of Wind)
The climactic scene in the chanbara eiga (samurai action movie) Ronin Gai depicts a "drawing and quartering" almost exactly as described here. (Of course, the good guys arrive just in time.)
During the Tokugawa Era, sumptuary laws were promulgated in the name of moral values, public decorum and respect for the government. But it largely came down to enforcement of the feudal order and was a handy way to check the influence of the growing merchant class. The lowest of the four feudal classes (samurai, farmers, artisans, merchants), the merchants were often the most powerful, due to the profligate borrowing and spending habits of high government officials, who were not above using sumptuary laws as an excuse to default on their debts.
In Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation, written in the late Meiji period, Lafcadio Hearn notes how it is
Sumptuary laws were also an excuse to scrimp on the stipends paid to samurai, who were supposed to lead "austere" lives. As depicted in the movie Twilight Samurai, by the 19th century, the samurai system had become economically unviable. Crippling taxes were required to sustain the samurai class, yet most lower-echelon samurai, forbidden to engage in trade or manual labor, lived in poverty. Along the way, many illegally sold their swords and turned to farming or commerce, or, as in The Seven Samurai, kept their swords and became mercenaries or enforcers for the yakuza.
Ironically, at the same time, merchants often used their wealth to acquire samurai status. Sakamoto Ryouma, one of the founders of modern Japan, came from a family of sake brewers who purchased the rank of "merchant samurai." Not surprisingly, Sakamoto recognized early on the need to end the feudal system of inherited class.
During the Tokugawa Era, sumptuary laws were promulgated in the name of moral values, public decorum and respect for the government. But it largely came down to enforcement of the feudal order and was a handy way to check the influence of the growing merchant class. The lowest of the four feudal classes (samurai, farmers, artisans, merchants), the merchants were often the most powerful, due to the profligate borrowing and spending habits of high government officials, who were not above using sumptuary laws as an excuse to default on their debts.
In Japan, an Attempt at Interpretation, written in the late Meiji period, Lafcadio Hearn notes how it is
difficult for the Western mind to understand how human beings could patiently submit to laws that regulated not only the size of one's dwelling and the cost of its furniture, but even the substance and character of clothing[;] not only the expense of a wedding outfit, but the quality of the marriage-feast, and the quality of the vessels in which the food was to be served[;] not only the kind of ornaments to be worn in a woman's hair, but the material of the thongs of her sandals[;] not only the price of presents to be made to friends, but the character and the cost of the cheapest toy to be given to a child.
Sumptuary laws were also an excuse to scrimp on the stipends paid to samurai, who were supposed to lead "austere" lives. As depicted in the movie Twilight Samurai, by the 19th century, the samurai system had become economically unviable. Crippling taxes were required to sustain the samurai class, yet most lower-echelon samurai, forbidden to engage in trade or manual labor, lived in poverty. Along the way, many illegally sold their swords and turned to farming or commerce, or, as in The Seven Samurai, kept their swords and became mercenaries or enforcers for the yakuza.
Ironically, at the same time, merchants often used their wealth to acquire samurai status. Sakamoto Ryouma, one of the founders of modern Japan, came from a family of sake brewers who purchased the rank of "merchant samurai." Not surprisingly, Sakamoto recognized early on the need to end the feudal system of inherited class.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, sakamoto, wind, yakuza