In Shogun, James Clavell's Blackthorne, standing in for the real Will Adams, is shipwrecked in Japan in the year 1600. He encounters an entirely different culture from his own, but one at a similar level of social and economic development. He would have recognized the feudal structures of the society from the start.

The warlords of the Sengoku period made the most of the firearms imported by Portuguese traders. Briefly toward the end of the 16th century, Japan had the biggest arms industry in the world. Militarily on a par with any European power, Japan was never colonized.

Over the following two and a half centuries, the shogunate's strictly-enforced sakoku (isolationist) policies did keep Japan from getting involved in any land wars in Asia. But while the culture developed in meaningful ways, Japan as an industrial power remained stuck in the 16th century.

The arrival of Commodore Perry's Black Ships, sporting technology three centuries ahead of Japan, triggered a huge social upheaval and kicked off the Meiji Restoration. Ryomaden well illustrates what an encounter with starfaring aliens might be like, including how quickly the Japanese adopted that technology.

Along with everybody else, Ryoma Sakamoto was completely overwhelmed upon seeing the steam-powered Black Ships for the first time. His second reaction was, "I want one of those." And he would get himself one.

Both a businessman and a revolutionary, Ryoma Sakamoto deserves comparison to Alexander Hamilton. Alas, like Hamilton, he died young. The identity of his assassin remains a mystery to this day. At the time, the crime was pinned on Kondo Isami and the Shinsengumi, though others also later confessed.

Negotiating by day and killing each other by night was common practice in Kyoto politics at the time.

Singer and actor Masaharu Fukuyama does well in the lead role, starting off the series as an affable Prince Hal, leading an aimless existence until Perry's Black Ships arrive and throw the country into turmoil. Not long thereafter, Ryoma crosses paths with Shoin Yoshida, the fiery Patrick Henry of the Meiji Restoration.

The sonno joi ("Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians!") movement took root soon thereafter. In a rare break with precedence, according to which the emperor took no part in politics, Emperor Komei (father of Emperor Meiji) supported the movement, placing the shogunate in an increasingly untenable political position.

Ryoma negotiated the Satcho Alliance between two once bitter enemies, the Choshu domain, the ideological center of the Restoration, and the powerful Satsuma domain. Now facing a unified opposition armed with modern British weaponry (thanks to the help of Thomas Blake Glover), the shogunate's days were numbered.

For an alternate perspective on the same events, Atsuhime follows the life of Tenshoin, the adopted daughter of the governor (daimyo) of Satsuma. Hoping to become the power behind the throne, he arranged a marriage between her and Iesada Tokugawa, the third-to-last shogun.

Unfortunately, Iesada proved to be utterly incompetent, and all that effort failed to change the policies that ultimately doomed the regime. But Tenshoin was later instrumental in negotating the peaceful surrender of Edo Castle during the Boshin War. The only major conflict in the city was a daylong skirmish at Ueno.

Labels: history, japanese culture, japanese tv, shogun, taiga drama

As promised back in September 2019, dLibrary Japan is building its catalog at an impressive rate, adding several new titles a week. The lack of content is no longer an issue. Whether you stick with it will depend on what you make of their curated selection so far and on your willingness to watch mostly non-localized content.

Two big reasons to sign up for dLibrary Japan are NHK's two flagship series, the weekly Taiga historical drama and the daily Asadora serial. It'd be nice if they showed up on a predictably timetable after their domestic runs, but the licensing windows are all over the map. Check the "End Date" before getting too invested.

dLibrary Japan has a good selection of six recent Taiga series, including three of the most interesting woman-centered stories you'll find anywhere. And they are subtitled!

Go follows the three nieces of the warlord Oda Nobunaga as they play a major role in shaping the end of the Warring States period, two of them marrying into clans on opposite sides of the conflict.

Atsuhime examines the life of Tenshoin, the adopted daughter of the province lord of Satsuma. Hoping to become the power behind the throne, he arranged a marriage between her and Tokugawa Iesada, the third-to-last shogun.

Yae's Sakura is about a markswoman who fought on the side of the shogunate during the Boshin War that launched the Meiji Restoration. Her firearm of choice was a Spencer repeating rifle.

And then for a view of the events depicted in Atsuhime and Yae's Sakura from the perspective of Japan's Alexander Hamilton, Ryomaden follows the life of Sakamoto Ryoma, who, like Hamilton, tragically died a violent death before his time.

Asadora serials include Ume-chan Sensei, about a girl who attends medical school and becomes a doctor during the Occupation. Toto Nee-chan is a biopic about Shizuko Ohashi (1920–2013), who in 1948 co-founded Notebook for Living, a home improvement magazine still in print.

Though Oshin was the most-watched television program in Japanese history, its Gothic Perils of Pauline plot leaves me disinclined to slog through it. During the 1980s (it debuted in 1983), Oshin became a synonym for perseverance in the face of neverending hostility and opposition.

The cheerfully upbeat Toto Nee-chan is more my speed, and it's been nice to revive my old TV Japan habit of watching a fifteen-minute Asadora episode every night.

Along with the Taiga and Asadora dramas, the scripted content includes family and food dramas, and an eclectic collection of police procedurals and medical dramas, such as the preternaturally cute Aoi Miyazaki playing a teenage super-sleuth in Mobile Detective and Ryoko Yonekura channeling Gregory House in Doctor X.

Mobile Detective is worth watching simply as a reminder of what "cutting edge" smart phone technology was like a mere fifteen years ago.

dLibrary Japan has the first three seasons of Midnight Diner, an ensemble series that takes place at an all-night hole-in-the wall restaurant (Netflix has seasons 4 and 5). And speaking of food dramas, dLibrary Japan has six seasons of Solitary Gourmet, pretty much the salaryman version of Wakakozake.

On a quirkier note is Room Laundering (think "money laundering"), which arises out of Japanese superstitions about renting an apartment in which the previous occupant died. Miko's job is to move in, figure out why the ghost haunting the place is hanging around, and get it to move on. The real estate version of Ghost Whisperer.

For whatever reason it was shot in a 21:9 aspect ratio. I really don't see the point of that (I don't see the point of shooting anything in 21:9 except as a special effect).

There are a handful of documentaries and talk shows, such as Matsuko no Shiranai Sekai ("The World Unknown To Matsuko"), and the Wildlife and Great Nature documentary series from NHK. Plus a cute travel show in which Tetsuro Degawa rides a electric scooter until the battery is dead and then bums a charge from the locals.

In the movie category, dLibrary Japan has the entire Tsuribaka Nisshi ("Diary of a Fishing Nut") franchise. Starring the delightful character actor Toshiyuki Nishida, this film series follows the adventures of a salaryman at a construction company who will concoct any excuse to go fishing. And still manages to save the day.

The handful of anime titles on dLibrary Japan are aimed at kids, such as Anpanman, a long-running kid's franchise (1500 episodes and counting) hugely popular in Japan and practically nowhere else. (Tim Lyu explains why.)

So far, there's more than enough to keep me interested. If dLibrary Japan keeps adding new programming at the current rate, it will become the unquestioned home of live-action Japanese television in North America. Though I'm afraid it won't be able to significantly expand beyond the TV Japan and Nippon TV audiences without more localization.

Related links

dLibrary Japan (background)
dLibrary Japan (user experience)
dLibrary Japan
dLibrary Japan Roku app
NHK World
TV Japan

Labels: asadora, dlibjapan, history, japanese tv, nhk, nhk world, streaming, taiga drama, tv japan

dLibrary Japan has been a work in process since it launched and still is. But, hey, that only means there's lots of room to grow! And it's improving at a reassuring pace.

To start with, the picture is great. dLibrary Japan streams HD video, much better quality than I ever had with Dish. The Roku app is snappy and easy to navigate. Though Roku replay button doesn't work, the "skip forward/back" implementation of FF and rewind works better than the typical VCR-style controls.

For example, HIDIVE uses the standard 2x/4x/8x/16x/32x FF/rewind UI, but especially with longer videos, its 32x isn't nearly fast enough. Also unlike HIDIVE, the dLibrary Japan login page has a "remember me" checkbox. Unfortunately, like HIDIVE, it doesn't remember you even when it's checked.

The home page borrows from the Netflix interface (a streaming standard of sorts) though it's a rudimentary implementation. There are a half dozen genre categories but no search function. Seasons from the same series often aren't grouped together. The queue can be bookmarked but not the landing pages for shows.

The Roku app employs a "Windows 8" design approach, with big blocky icons. The catalog can be searched from the app, giving the app better discoverability than the website. The biggest missing feature is the lack of a viewing history or any way to keep track of your progress in a series from the app or website queue.

In order to automatically queue up episodes in order, you have to turn on Auto Play in Settings and launch episodes from Continue Watching. It's a workaround that works well enough most of the time, but these history and queue issues are currently the Roku app's most annoying bugs.

Though with apps like Netflix suffering from feature overload, there is something refreshing about the sheer simplicity of the interface. In any case, along with better progress tracking in the app and a search function on the website, the genre list needs more subcategories, such as for the Taiga and Asadora dramas.

Considering how much the NHK World app has improved, with the VOD catalog and program guide now accessible from the app, I expect dLibrary Japan to keep pace as well. Perhaps NHK Cosmomedia can take the lessons learned from NHK World and dLibrary Japan and create a streaming triple play with TV Japan.

Related links

dLibrary Japan (background)
dLibrary Japan (content)
dLibrary Japan
dLibrary Japan Roku app
NHK World
TV Japan

Labels: asadora, dlibjapan, hidive, japanese tv, netflix, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, nhk world, roku, streaming, taiga drama, television, tv japan

Musing about the "look and feel" of Stargate SG-1, Kate observes: "Here's the truth about fantasy & sci-fi and clothes: the older they look, the cooler they are."

Or to put it another way: you're not likely to invent fashions (or architecture) better than what's already been dreamed up and put to the test of time. The best way to predict the future is to wait until it's in the past and then take a close look at it.


Thus Stanley Kubrick got it right in 2001 by giving his astronauts a conservative military look instead of taking his cues from the hipster 1960s. This 1947 photograph of Chuck Yeager sitting in the Bell X-1 cockpit is pretty much timeless.


Seriously, that could be Han Solo. George Lucas popularized what might be called the "space cowboy aesthetic": the kind of well-worn, practical work clothes that have barely changed since the mid-1800s.

For Darth Vader, Lucas reached further back, giving him a helmet (kabuto) straight out of Japan's Warring States period.


Japanese clothing has held up well over the past four centuries. As a general rule, if what was fashionable 150 years ago is fashionable today, it'll probably be fashionable a century from now. Which is why James Bond still wears a tuxedo.

Projecting the past into the future, consider the battle dress of the 16th century military strategist Kuroda Kanbei (played by Jun'ichi Okada). Want to dress your invading aliens-from-outer-space in something cool? This outfit will do nicely.

Labels: fashion, history, japanese culture, japanese tv, movies, science fiction, taiga drama, television

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.

Labels: dlibjapan, history, japan, japanese tv, nhk, nhk cosmomedia, sakamoto, taiga drama

Manga and anime in the U.S. had a thriving fan base long before they were commercially viable. With an already established market, and since their IP was getting pirated anyway, Japanese publishers made the rational decision to license it.

The market for physical media—manga and DVDs—maxed out about ten years ago. Then the bubble burst, driving several established importers/distributors out of business. And yet the demand for content was still there and the licensors were still licensing.

So the sensible solution was streaming, with a side business in printed books and discs. Crunchyroll delivers many anime episodes a week after they air in Japan, beating the pirates to the punch. (Unsurprisingly, Crunchyroll was a pirate site before it went legit.)

Mid-list genre novels and live-action television dramas from Japan have never made that break. With no existing market to feed, Japanese media companies couldn't be bothered to try and create one. (Or they tried once and now are twice shy.)

NHK's year-long Taiga dramas and morning serials are often licensed throughout Asia. But to this date, never in the U.S., even though recent series like Ryomaden, Go, and Atsuhime have accessible storylines and attractive lead characters.

Korean television dramas, by contrast, can be found in abundance. The Japanese section of Netflix has a boatload of anime and only a handful of television series. The Korean section has over 100 live-action television series.

Despite the fact that South Korea has half the population of Japan and a third its GDP. This isn't a supply problem. But how can there be a demand when hardly anybody knows the supply exists, or thinks it consists primarily of gonzo game shows?

As an ethnic group, Korean-Americans (1,822,000) outnumber Japanese-Americans (1,411,000). I suspect the bigger reason is that Korean broadcasters (and the South Korean government) have more realistic expectations about the size of the market.

At Anime News Network, Justin Sevakis explains that anime continues to thrive because

License fees have fallen to a point where they are relatively reasonably priced, and an American publisher can reasonably be expected to buy the rights to a show, produce subtitles (or occasionally a dub), put it on sale, and make a decent profit.

Given its microscopic fan base, the cost of simply subtitling a Japanese live-action dramas would wipe out the profit margin for a series.

Korean television content is also more likely to be distributed with a second-generation demographic in mind, while TV Japan is directed primarily at an expatriate audience. This makes it hard to create a home-grown audience

There are plans in the works to create more export-friendly Japan channels. And NHK is slowly building a fledgling distribution network based on its news and infotainment programs.

Drama-wise, NHK has to put something good out there to start the word-of-mouth going. Such an effort would dovetail with the government's "Cool Japan" initiative, launched in 2010 with the goal of creating a profitable overseas market for Japanese culture.

Labels: asadora, crunchyroll, hulu, japanese tv, k-drama, netflix, nhk, streaming, taiga drama, technology, tv japan

So I was reading Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino. It's a mystery in the classic whodunit (or howdunit) style. I got to chapter nine and there was "Professor Yukawa." I stopped, looked again, and a light went on in my head.

"Oh," I said to myself, "this is Galileo!"

Galileo is a Japanese television series (Fuji TV) that's roughly a cross between Numbers and Bones, the only big difference being that the consulting detective is a physicist.

The series stars Masaharu Fukuyama as Professor Yukawa. Fukuyama made a name for himself as a pretty good pop singer.

He's a pretty good actor too. He played Sakamoto Ryoma in NHK's historical drama, Ryomaden (2010), and most recently starred in Hirokazu Koreeda's Like Father, Like Son (2013), which won the Jury Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.

The book doesn't introduce Professor Yukawa until chapter nine. In the second TV series (I didn't see the first until later), Kaoru Utsumi (Kou Shibasaki) is replaced by Misa Kishitani (Yuriko Yoshitaka), a character invented for the series.

A casting issue, no doubt, as the first and second series were made six years apart. Kaoru Utsumi only appears for about five minutes in the first episode, so I missed the connection. Professor Yukawa is far more prominent in the TV series.

(Incidentally, the first television series was broadcast in 2007 and Salvation of a Saint was published in 2008, which may explain why Detective Utsumi is listening to a Masaharu Fukuyama album on her iPod in chapter 24.)

As you can see, Fukuyama's Yukawa favors vests and tailored shirts while in the book he's often described wearing short sleeves or a T-shirt and maybe a leather jacket.


But once I made the connection, in a blink my brain automatically cross-linked all of the visual data from the television series to the book. It's a quite curious experience when that sort of thing happens in real time.

So now Masaharu Fukuyama is Professor Yukawa. He looks and talks that way, and his office is the television set. Even though they're not the same character, Yuriko Yoshitaka becomes Kaoru Utsumi because they essentially fill the same role.

Sort of the reverse thing happens if there are multiple data sources to choose from. When it comes to Sherlock Holmes, as soon as I'm done watching Robert Downey Jr. (whom I quite enjoy), Sherlock Holmes flips back to Jeremy Brett.

James Bond always reverts to Sean Connery.

Oh, and about that set. In Bones and Tokyo Broadcasting's Mr. Brain (the consulting detective is a neuroscientist), the sets are designed to look cool, not real. But Professor Yukawa's office looks like an honest-to-goodness applied physics lab.


As a bonus, now and then they do a real physics experiment or demonstration, such as racing a supercooled puck around a track.

Labels: book reviews, crunchyroll, japanese tv, personal favs, taiga drama, television reviews

Having previously observed that a big draw of NHK's historical dramas is the very attractive women they cast in the lead and supporting roles, I feel obliged to point out that NHK hardly shuns the aesthetic when it comes to the men.

The stodgy network has a fondness for chart-topping rock stars with decent acting chops. For example, Gackt (left) in Fûrin Kazan and Masaharu Fukuyama in Ryômaden.


And last month on Yamamoto Yaeko, a fencing match was concocted in order to give Hidetoshi Nishijima, who pays Yaeko's older brother, an excuse to strip down to the waist.


I'm sure it was important to the, ah, um, historical accuracy of the scene. Though for some mysterious reason, nobody else did.

Related posts

The ears have it
Japan's got talent
Timeless fashion

Labels: japanese tv, taiga drama

NHK's 2013 year-long historical (Taiga) drama features another one of those amazing Meiji period women, Yaeko Yamamoto. To quote from Wikipedia:

Yaeko was the daughter of Yamamoto Gonpachi, one of the Aizu domain's official gunnery instructors. She herself was skilled in gunnery, and took part in the defense of Aizu during the Boshin War. After the war, Yaeko went to Kyoto to care for her brother Yamamoto Kakuma, who had been a prisoner of war in Satsuma custody. She remained in Kyoto, and became a Christian in the 1870s. Soon after, she married Rev. Joseph Hardy Neesima [Jo Niijima] and, together with Neesima and Kakuma, played an integral role in the founding of Doshisha University.

Yaeko later served as a nurse during the Russo-Japanese and Sino-Japanese wars.

She and her husband were a remarkably modern couple, causing a minor scandal in stuffy Kyoto by addressing each other as equals (not using honorifics) in public. Their house was equipped with central heating and had one of the first western-style, indoor toilets in Japan.

The television series begins with an equally fascinating juxtaposition. The very first scene is, in fact, a vivid depiction of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg (1863). It then seamlessly transitions to the seige of Aizu Castle during the height of the Boshin Civil War (1868-69).

And then back to the Gettysburg Address.

Like the U.S., Japan was going through a revolutionary change, attempting to transition from a thousand years of feudalism to a "government of the people, by the people, for the people." And it'd be doing it practically overnight.

The next scene is that of a Japanese man walking down a Boston street in 1865.

He's Yaeko's future husband, Joseph Hardy Neesima (his Americanized name), who attended Phillips Academy and Amherst College from 1865 to 1870. Like Yaeko's Spencer repeating rifle, the Meiji reformers were in no way hamstrung by a "not invented here" mindset.

The producers at NHK pointedly intended these twins themes of a woman and a country liberating itself from the past to resonate with contemporary Fukushima, where Aizu-Wakamatsu is located. Fukushima took the brunt of the 2011 tsunami and nuclear melt-down.

One of Japan's biggest stars, Haruka Ayase, was cast in the lead role (you can watch her playing well against type as a blind swordsman in Ichi, a Zatoichi spinoff).


Back in the real world, describing his wife to a friend in the U.S., her husband wrote, "She is not a handsome woman, but she does handsome." Hey, there's no need to pretend that a big draw of NHK's historical dramas isn't the very attractive women they cast in the lead roles.

Labels: history, japan, japanese culture, japanese tv reviews, taiga drama

NHK's "Big River" (Taiga) historical series and Asadora Showa dramas usually cover most or all of the protagonist's life. This presents an interesting casting challenge.

A typical approach is to cast a child for six Asadora episodes (a week's worth), and just the ninety-minute premier in a Taiga drama. And then quickly introduce the "star" of the series, who plays the character from her teens to her forties or fifties.

The last two Asadora series, Ohisama and Carnation, made a third casting change, bringing in an older actress to play the protagonist in her seventies and eighties. (This transition is often more jarring than going from child to teenager.)

In the Taiga drama Atsuhime, the main character (Tenshôin) and the actress Aoi Miyazaki were within five years of each other for much of the series. Tenshôin died at the age of 47. The last decade of her life was covered in a single episode.

Another approach is to lie a little. The 25-year-old Juri Ueno played the eponymous character in Gô, the wife of the second Tokugawa shogun. I didn't notice anything amiss until the episodes covering the year Gô lived with her stepfather, Shibata Katsuie.

One of the mini-documentaries that accompanies each Taiga series episode featured the famous statue in Fukui City of Shibata (out of frame to the right), his wife (on the left) and stepdaughters. As you can see here and here, Gô (in front) was ten years old at the time.

In the previous scenes with her famous uncle, Oda Nobunaga (below), Gô couldn't have been older than eight. And while Juri Ueno can pass as fifteen, she can't play ten, let alone eight (she's almost as tall as he is, to start with).


Of course, these scenes were less about Gô than about these towering figures of the Warring States period, whose actions would drastically affect the rest of her life. I consider this sort of cinematic fibbing a perfectly acceptable use of dramatic license.

The current Asadora starts with Umeko as a teenager. The 24-year-old Maki Horikita has a slight build that easily allows her to play half a dozen years younger (for that matter, few teenage characters in Hollywood are played by actual teenagers).

I'll be interested to see how long Maki Horikita stays in the role. Many Japanese women between thirty and fifty are blessed with a timeless quality, so it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to stretch it that far.

As Dick Clark said, "If you want to stay young-looking, choose your parents very carefully." Or be on good terms with the casting director.

Labels: asadora, history, japanese tv, taiga drama, television

Early on, Ryô is actually a lot more condescending than it sounds to western ears.

Namely, she refers to everybody by name alone, while Sen dutifully applies the expected honorifics, -dono (the period equivalent of -san) in the case of Koreya (only the vilest opponent didn't deserve grudging respect) and "Lord" (-sama) with everybody else she regards as her social "better."

Ryô's liberal use of yobisute (呼び捨て), literally "call" + "throw away," is a way for her to assert her superiority (whether deserved or not).

It's still considered rude to address one's superiors by name alone, let alone with a bare pronoun. This includes family members. A scene from the NHK historical drama Gô springs to mind, in which the three amazing nieces of Oda Nobunaga meet after several years apart.

Here's how the dialogue begins:

Yodo Hatsu       Gô

Hatsu, Gô. O-ne-sama, Gô. O-ne-sama, O-ne-sama.

Revealed here is their familial status based on age. Yodo is the oldest, Gô the youngest. These sociolinguistic rules have barely budged in four hundred years. That exchange would be almost the same today (except for a more sparing use of the honorific sama).

In Scrapped Princess, for example (which takes place in a fictional alternate universe, not Japan), Pacifica consistently appends ni-san (big brother) or ne-san (big sister) to the names of her (older) step-siblings.

As Peter Payne puts it, relationships in Japan are vertical. Students address teachers as Sensei, lower classmen address upper classmen as Senpai, never by their first names. In a teen romance, you know things are moving to the next level when yobisute kicks in.

Labels: honorifics, japanese culture, language, serpent notes, serpent of time, taiga drama

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.

Related posts

The ears have it
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Yaeba

Labels: deep thoughts, japan, japanese tv, pop culture, sakamoto, social studies, taiga drama, television

My sister's analysis of Darcy from Pride and Prejudice reminds me of the NHK historical drama, Tenchijin, about a minor daimyo, Kagekatsu, who governed Echigo Province from 1578 to 1623. He is depicted as a classic introvert, handsome and accomplished, but who loathed "socializing."

There is apparently solid historical evidence for him being a man of few words (the court historians kept detailed records), and actor Kazuki Kitamura does a good job of depicting him just dying inside when trapped in situations he has to schmooze his way out of.

Like the great warlord Uesugi Kenshin, whom he succeeded, when faced with a battle or political dilemma, Kagekatsu was wont to retreat to a literal cave to think things through. If he'd been lord of Pemberley instead of Echigo, he would have spent most of his time in the study.

When dealing with the hyper-extroverted warlord Hideyoshi, he dragged along his gregarious adopted brother, Kanetsugu (Satoshi Tsumabuki), to do the talking, a la Aaron and Moses. Kanetsugu had to work hard to convince Hideyoshi that his brother was being quiet, not contemptuous.

As Jonathan Rauch (my go-to guy on the subject) explains, "[Extroverts] cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion."

Kitamura's Kagekatsu would make a good Darcy. Not surprisingly, the NHK series is told from the point of view of Kanetsugu, not Kagekatsu. Introverts really are boring, but they prefer it that way.

Labels: criticism, history, introversion, japan, nhk, peaks island press, taiga drama

In the making-of extra on the Stardust DVD, upon visiting the set where a full-scale model of De Niro's flying ship is being built from scratch, Neil Gaiman quips that he feels a bit guilty about "writing a few paragraphs" that would get translated to a million dollar-plus set (taking up ten minutes or so of the movie).

He needn't feel guilty about providing good trade union work. But this kind of extravagant and unnecessary budgeting is nevertheless appalling. Not because there are little children starving in China or wherever (eating all the food on your plate as a kid only made you fat, after all). But because it's ultimately ruinous to good movie-making.

Stardust cost $65 million and grossed $40 million. In 2007 dollars, The Princess Bride cost $30 million and grossed $55 million. The two films are aimed at similar-enough demographics that it would seem wishful thinking to imagine Stardust would break even on that budget. (The same problem attends The Golden Compass, hugely overbudgeted for its potential audience.)

To be sure, Stardust is a gorgeous-looking movie. But it is difficult to justify the artistic return on investment. Monty Python and the Holy Grail cost $1 million (in 2007 dollars). Can you actually see $64 million worth of a difference in art direction between the two films?

The 2003 remake of Samurai Resurrection has the "look and feel" of the Hollywood action-adventure blockbuster (unlike the enjoyable but very B-movie 1981 version starring Sonny Chiba). The making-of extra on the DVD reveals a smart but carefully rationed use of mattes, wire-work, green-screens, and CGI. For 1/10th the budget of Stardust.

I challenge anybody to spot differences in verisimilitude (often inaptly termed "realism") between The Last Samurai ($140 million) or Memoirs of a Geisha ($85 million) and NHK’s Taiga historical drama series ($500,000/episode).

Elsewhere in the business world, computers are used to decrease overhead and increase ROI. Hollywood has managed to do the opposite. This short documentary shows how that shouldn't be the case, recreating the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach. Three men play all the soldiers, one man runs the camera, and then everything is put together in post.

At $40 million, the 100 percent green-screen Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow shows what CGI is capable of (and it broke even). That was four years ago, half a century in digital technology terms.

An hour-long, prime-time, Hollywood-produced television drama currently costs around $2 million. That establishes the base cost of a two-hour movie at $4 million or so, including a reasonable use of special effects. But not counting star salaries.

The only "star" roles that made a lasting impression on me in Stardust were Pfeiffer and Danes. The only special effects that really mattered were some rotoscoping to make Danes glow (she's a literal star, after all), and "magic" CGI of the type done just as well on shows like Charmed and Buffy.

The thing is, I'd like to see more movies like Stardust. But that's not going to happen with production companies making fifty cents for every dollar spent. Since it's possible to make movies that look "blockbuster" on near-art cinema budgets, Hollywood needs to wean itself from this "all-in" investment strategy.

You're not all Peter Jackson! Or even Michael Bay.

As William Goldman famously said, when it comes to predicting success in Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything." Which means that winners over the long run follow the same rules as a smart Wall Street investor: with a diversified portfolio. Not by sinking a dozen dry wells and hoping that the next one will prove the gusher.

Labels: business, movies, nhk, taiga drama

"A Connecticut Yankee in Lord Toranaga's Court"
The Anachronistic Splendor of The Last Samurai
The Last Samurai is a thoroughly enjoyable, big-budget theatrical extravaganza, if less than original in plot and theme. It looks gorgeous, sounds gorgeous, is executed competently in most respects. Tom Cruise even correctly conjugates "to be" in Japanese (something Richard Chamberlain never managed). True, there are a few tense moments when you fear you might have to start taking the whole thing seriously.

But not to worry! Because that's when the ninjas show up! What Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was to back-lot Hong Kong wuxia actioners, The Last Samurai is to chambara eiga, the samurai sword fight genre Akira Kurosawa retooled from John Ford and Howard Hawks westerns, and that Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood reinvented yet again. It's a heroically self-important morality tale, so stunningly anachronistic and historically inaccurate that it qualifies more as fantasy.

Peter Jackson I'm sure would tell you, there's nothing wrong with fantasy. As long as you don't mistake it for the real thing.

The last time Hollywood made a big deal about an epic event in Japanese history (prior to 1941, that is), the aforementioned Richard Chamberlain was helping Toshiro Mifune establish the Tokugawa Shogunate and unify Japan under a single authoritarian regime. A quarter century and 250 years later, we find Tom Cruise alongside Saigo Takamori, the man largely responsible for overthrowing the Shogunate and ushering in Japan's modern age.

Now, Mifune's character in Shogun is called Toranaga, not Tokugawa Ieyasu. And in The Last Samurai, Ken Watanabe's character is called Katsumoto, not Saigo. Yeah, sure, whatever. Except that, back in 1600, there simply weren't that many shipwrecked English pilots hanging about the Edo court bending Ieyasu's ear. Unlike Cruise's Algren, a pure fiction, Chamberlain's Blackthorn was based on the real Will Adams.

And following the Meiji Restoration there was only one Satsuma Rebellion. And definitely only one Saigo Takamori. It's sort of like making a movie about Valley Forge and calling General Washington General Smith, you know, lest anyone object to your ahistorical deviations. Clavell mostly avoids meddling in verifiable history, mentioning the decisive Battle of Sekigahara only in an afterword. His 16th century Englishman would have been exchanging one barely post-medieval society for another.

Thus, the expectation that men (aside from himself, naturally) should know their station in life and act accordingly would hardly have been a foreign concept to Will Adams. What is more difficult to swallow is that such an enlightened U.S. Army veteran of the Indian Wars as Cruise's Algren would find his redemption amongst the passionate followers of an unegalitarian feudal order. (And, incidentally, the Imperial army's advisers ⁽¹⁾ were French and Prussian, not American.)

Okay, feudalism isn't slavery, but it's awfully dang close. Tokugawa-era feudalism concentrated enormous power in the hands of a few, who perpetuated their power from generation to generation through a rigidly-policed caste system. But absolute power corrupts absolutely, and by the mid 19th century the regime had rotted out at the core. The arrival of Admiral Perry's "Black Ships" in 1853 alone nearly felled it.

But, hey, if you're going to embrace feudalism you might as well start at the top, and Cruise's Captain Algren gets to cut to the head of the line. Edward Said is worth listening to here. What he terms the "Orientalist" impulse to depict the cultural grass as exotically greener elsewhere has the tendency to inure one to the faults of all other cultures but one's own. As Slate's David Edelstein observes, "Movies can manipulate you to root for just about anyone, anytime."

Thus biased by Noble Savage silliness, and the ball and chain of Occidental self-loathing, we have come to believe that any culture observably different from our own must be, ipso facto, better. The more different, the more superior. Here, Cruise is channeling another burdened white man, Kevin Costner and his Lieutenant Dunbar from Dances with Wolves (gee, also a U.S. Army veteran ready to help out the natives with his superior military training ). "Dances with Samurai," let's call it, then. So Dunbar's noble warrior, Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), becomes Algren's Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe); Dunbar's girl, Stands With A Fist (Mary McDonnell), Algren's Taka (Koyuki). And etcetera.

Okay, tell me the same story, only different. Except we're not dealing here with the latest politically-correct mythologies of the American West, but with well-documented history. The melodramatic demands of director Edward Zwick's well-intended Orientalism have instead produced a hagiographic account of the Battle of the Southwest (as it is called in Japan), that provides American audiences no good idea, other than the repeated mantra about samurai "honor," what it was really about.

What makes it doubly unfortunate is that the real Saigo Takamori was such a fascinating person. While he was a physical and intellectual giant of a man, we see nothing in Zwick's earnest screenplay or Watanabe's earnest portrayal that hints at the complexities of a person who attempted suicide once, was exiled three times, married at least three times, and carried on a long-term affair with a plump Kyoto geisha his close friends described as "comically round."

Or that in this final instance the Meiji government was right and Saigo was wrong. As Mark Ravina, author of The Last Samurai (a biography of Saigo Takamori) briefly notes in a History Channel documentary on the DVD, the soldiers mowing down Katsumoto and his troops in the end were in fact "the good guys," representing the ninety percent of the population fighting for a share of the rights and privileges that hitherto had been granted only to a small elite.

Saigo himself was born a low-ranked Satsuma samurai in the domain/daimyo system. Growing up he absorbed the totality of the bushido ideology. This aspect of his personality Zwick gets right. Katsumoto's fascination with General Custer is a nice (fictional) touch. Throughout his life Saigo waxed eloquent about the hope of dying a glorious death in battle. Two years before ending his life on a hilltop in Shiroyama, he summed up his beliefs in a poem that vividly begins, "The burden of death is light."

During the initial engagements of the war against the Shogunate (called Boshin, or "the year of the dragon"), Saigo successfully led his troops against much larger Shogunate armies, all the while bemoaning that he could only command, and not join in the front-line fighting. He did personally lead the assault on a hold-out brigade of Shogunate dead-enders at Ueno, where his statue famously stands today.

The Boshin War began with a sweep north from Satsuma, at the southern tip of Kyushu, and ended with the Battle of Hakodate, on the northernmost island of Hokkaido. However, Saigo was delayed mobilizing the troops under his command out of Tokyo, and Hakodate capitulated before he could arrive. The war was definitely over, and this bad timing Saigo regretted for the rest of his life.

But while Saigo-the-warrior represented the ideals of the traditional samurai ethos, Saigo-the-revolutionary could not ignore the vast social and political corruption Tokugawa-era feudalism had produced. Not only was Japanese society divided by caste, but the haves and have-nots within the castes had by then separated like oil and water, reducing many samurai families like his own to poverty. Yoji Yamada's Twilight Samurai well depicts the trap in which low-ranked samurai found themselves, with the impoverished protagonist longing to shed his status and become a mere farmer.

Saigo rose to prominence after internecine conflicts decimated the Satsuma leadership. Like Ito Hirobumi and Fukuzawa Yukichi and other leaders of the Meiji Restoration, the "creative destruction" of the Shogunate's fall presented opportunities for travel, education and political involvement that would have been otherwise impossible for a minor samurai from a tozama (outsider) domain to contemplate.

You'd never know it from The Last Samurai, but some of Saigo's most notable accomplishments were his diplomatic efforts. The first was the alliance with Choshu, Satsuma's bitter rival and one-time enemy. Choshu and Satsuma, together with the Tosa domain, formed the core of the Restoration movement.

The second was the surrender of the Shogunate army, including an amnesty for many in the Tokugawa leadership whom Saigo deeply despised. These negotiations prevented a reprise of the bloody power struggles that preceded the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603, and perhaps more than any other single act cemented the legitimacy of the Meiji Restoration.

After the fighting was over, Saigo helped push through radical reforms of the decrepit feudal system, including the conversion of samurai stipends to bonds, and the replacement of the domain/daimyo system with the contemporary prefecture/governor system. Both spelled the end of the samurai as protected social class, even before the edicts on carrying weapons were promulgated.

In fact, many of these reforms Saigo had already implemented in Satsuma. Moreover, the Meiji government had expressed a grudging willingness to make exceptions on Satsuma's behalf in regards to samurai privileges, and a man of Saigo's stature could easily have bargained for more. So why did he then start the Satsuma Rebellion?

The simple answer is: he didn't.

Zwick's screenplay asserts that Saigo/Katsumoto began a war over a fashion statement. It is impossible to imagine a man of his stature and political maturity carrying on in such a silly manner, especially in the presence of the Emperor. Perhaps Zwick was thinking of The Forty-Seven Ronin, the classic story of bushido honor and revenge, an oldie-but-goodie even in 1877.

Saigo had plenty of criticisms of Meiji policies, to be sure, starting with its Korea policy. Like all good samurai, once the fighting was over in Japan, he believed it was time to invade Korea. Again. He was rightly rebuffed. (Unfortunately, three decades later this is exactly what Japan did, aggressively moving against China, Korea and Russia with a degree of military overconfidence that eventually led to Pearl Harbor.)

After resigning from the government, Saigo spent his time hunting and running a military school devoted to the Confucian classics. Anecdotal accounts have it that when the revolt first broke out, he despaired at the pointlessness of it all, but became enraged at the government's heavy-handed treatment of the Satsuma upstarts, many of whom were his students and disciples. After provoking Tokyo governments for 300 years, Satsuma just couldn't stop itself.

Like Robert E. Lee, only after the shooting started was Saigo approached by the Satsuma rebels to lead the revolt, and Meiji officials to suppress it. And like Lee, he chose his "country" (Satsuma) over his nation. But one suspects as well that Saigo was seizing upon the opportunity for that great and glorious final battle that had escaped him at Hakodate.

It does not help that Zwick's "insights" into the samurai mind and his depictions of the Battle of the Southwest consist of throwing every cliche in the book at the cinematic wall, such as having Katsumoto and his troops dressed up in period costumes. Imagine General Pickett at Gettysburg outfitting his men like medieval knights and charging the Union line sporting lances instead of guns. Hey, I'm not saying it wouldn't look totally cool. But Saigo's 25,000 man army was equipped with western military hardware. To demonstrate his loyalty to the Emperor, Saigo dressed in an Imperial Army uniform.

The rebellion itself began with raids on government arsenals in Kagoshima and Iso. The rebel samurai who joined up along the way did so with any number of motives and allegiances. Military tactics were similarly confused. Soon after Saigo joined the effort his forces blundered badly at the siege of Kumamoto Castle. By the time they had regrouped and started a long retreat, a larger conscript army commanded by Aritomo Yamagata (who would become the first prime minister under the Meiji Constitution), equipped with better weapons and supported by much better logistics, had caught up with them.

It was all over except for the wasteful killing and heroic dying. Still, Saigo managed to drag the fighting out for six months. There was no charge of the "Noble six hundred," as Tennyson immortalized the similar fate of 13th Light Brigade at Balaclava. Popular accounts had Saigo committing seppuku and being beheaded by one of his retainers before their positions were overrun on Shiroyama. A subsequent autopsy concluded that he was too injured to carry through with the first part of the ritual.

Paradoxically, as the movie does accurately indicate, Saigo Takamori's reputation emerged from the conflict not only intact, but enhanced. This was in large part due to his extraordinary contributions to the Restoration before the Satsuma Rebellion, but also because the poetic finality of his revolt. The goal of the rebellion leaders had been to drive north to Tokyo and present their complaints to the Meiji leadership. But they never even made it off the southern island of Kyushu. It exhausted the nascent national budget and resulted in over 30,000 killed and wounded on both sides. But the last land battle fought on the Japanese "mainland" (Honshu, Shikoku, Kyushu) was resolved without a return to the devastating civil wars depicted in Kurosawa films such as Kagemusha and Ran.

Which brings us back to the appeal of The Forty-Seven Ronin. To review, a young daimyo is provoked by a haughty court official into drawing his sword within Edo Castle. As punishment, the daimyo is ordered to commit seppuku, his lands are confiscated and his samurai disenfranchised. A year later, these forty-seven ronin (masterless samurai) carry out a carefully-planned revenge, and then gave themselves up to the authorities.

At the time, Confucian scholars hotly debated the rights and wrongs of what they did. Bushido ideology itself had been largely invented to justify the existence of a warrior class with no wars to fight. They weighed the specific responsibilities of the principal actors in the affair, and whether such a well-planned revenge was really in keeping with the spirit of bushido, and whether they should have committed seppuku and not surrendered.

The Shogunate found itself in a tight spot. They couldn't openly condone such actions. Like cowboys slinging guns, it was fine for samurai to carry swords as long as they didn't use them very often, if at all. Yet, they couldn't well be seen to disparage such a spirited execution of bushido ideals. Similar political conflicts, arising out of this surfeit, not paucity, of martial "honor" did not end until the final devastation of the Second World War.

So the Forty-Seven were ordered to commit seppuku. And by complying, cut graphically through the Gordian knot. The Shogunate could celebrate the noble exceptionalism of the ruling samurai class while warning that, take that exceptionalism too seriously and you may have to nobly die for it. It provided a politically tidy conclusion to the affair, and the general public with a dramatically satisfactory ending to a great 17th century reality show.

As did the final days of Saigo Takamori. And the Meiji government did not let slip such a golden opportunity. In 1889, Saigo was posthumously pardoned and promoted. He was declared a national hero, if a tragic national hero, and those are often the best kind. According to the mythic historical account that later arose, as described by Mark Ravina,

[Yamagata Aritomo] turned to the assembled commanders and spoke of Saigo's glorious death. He called the attention to Saigo's calm countenance, unchanged even in death. Then, holding Saigo's head, Yamagata wept for his fallen comrade. This was a death befitting the last samurai.

Zwick gets the myth about half right. Unfortunately, embracing a tragic hero is no longer enough. We must be constantly reminded what lousy people our ancestors were. And so Zwick has to toss in the requisite wicked white men in black hats. The character of Omura, based on Saigo's far more pragmatic and realistic Satsuma compatriot, Okubo Toshimichi, whom historian Masakazu Iwata praises as the "architect of the modern [Japanese] state," practically twirls a vaudevillian mustache whilst carrying out his evil deeds.

Granted, it's only one man's opinion, and a relatively benign one at that. Japanese film makers have plenty of experience fictionalizing their history as well. Consider Samurai X, based on the popular Rurouni Kenshin anime series.

The movie begins with a flashback of Kenshin standing guard at the critical meeting between Saigo Takamori and the Choshu clan's Kido Koin, and driving off an attack by the Shinsengumi, a fanatical group of Shogunate loyalists. It was this meeting that marked the beginning of the end of Shogunate rule, and the rise of Saigo as one of the great leaders of the Restoration.

The story resumes shortly after Saigo's death. It follows Kenshin's investigation of one of the many minor coup attempts that would erupt during the Meiji period. The coup plotters include a motley crew of naive idealists, honestly dismayed at the government's politics and policies, remnants of the Shogitai (the brigade Saigo wiped out at Ueno), Shinsengumi dead-enders, plus assorted carpet-baggers and opportunists.

The movie's Japanese title, "Requiem for the Meiji Revolutionaries," makes clear the director's message and intent. And along the way, Samurai X much better explores the inflamed passions that also led Satsuma to revolt against the very thing it had created. Samurai X is a cartoon, to be sure, but ultimately less cartoonish than The Last Samurai.

Buried as well in the surprisingly accurate historical detail of Samurai X is the the real story Zwick was trying to tell but missed completely: the Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi was a guerilla organization based in Kyoto, charged by the Shogun to confront advancing Satsuma and Choshu forces and disrupt and frustrate anti-Shogunate activities. For the Shinsengumi, plain old bushido wasn't good enough. They lived by the Taliban version of the samurai code, called gohatto (literally, "forbidden").

Following the collapse of the Tokugawa regime, the Shinsengumi were routed and killed. According to the gohatto code, a quarter of the original 200 committed seppuku. If you want to be Byronesque about it, they were band of brothers sacrificing themselves for a lost cause. Or you could conclude, as John Dougill quips in his review of the NHK television series, "They were a bunch of hit-men hired by a repressive regime."

Saigo deployed similar insurgency forces in Tokyo prior to the surrender of the capital. But the Shinsengumi came far closer to Cruise's and Zwick's romanticized notions of the "old" samurai ways. They even eschewed firearms and fought with swords and bows and arrows! In the forward to his manga, Rurouni Kenshin creator Nobuhiro Watsuki admits to a sneaking admiration for the Shinsengumi, his protagonist's sworn enemy.

The same year as The Last Samurai also saw the release of When the Last Sword Is Drawn, a romanticized account of the downfall of the Shinsengumi. Not to be outdone by Hollywood in the "dying for your self-destructive but admirable beliefs" genre, NHK made the Shinsengumi the subject of its 2004 historical drama series. NHK hired writer Mitani Koki (who penned the hilarious Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald) to do the screenplay, cast pop idol Katori Shingo in the lead, tossed its heralded devotion to historical accuracy out the window, and has been pulling in buffo ratings all year.

---

1. Cruise's Algren does have a historical precedent, and in an unexpected quarter. Japan had, for the time, a highly literate population, but nothing like a national or even state education system. Japanese diplomats traveling abroad were impressed by what they saw in the United States.

Our prototype in this case was also a Civil War veteran, one Captain L. L. Janes, hired to set up a school for "western learning" in Kumamoto. But as Marius B. Jansen wryly notes in The Making of Modern Japan, Janes's employers got more in the bargain than they had counted on:

Under [his] influence, the first class produced the "Kumamoto band," or fellowship, of earnest young Christians who dedicated their lives to spiritual rather than martial modernization.

Spiritual "enlightenment," apparently, goes both ways. [return]

Labels: culture, history, japan, movie reviews, movies about japan, nhk, taiga drama