Being here, by Mark Garry, thread pins, beads
I’ve actually been thinking a bit about rainbows lately. Given that they PORTEND DISASTER most of the time in historical Japanese sources.
Or shopping.
Admittedly, that case was considered “non-canonical” by 12th century astrologers.
The link with shopping seems to have stuck through the 14th century, tho!
Anyway.
So, just saying. There’s the story in theZuozhuan(左傳) Wen 2.5.
To quote Schaberg citing it (p128): “One does not sacrifice to strange seabirds.”
I think I know who they were talking about.
Hmm, I wonder, what aspects of the military background do people think they’d be missing by making her a civilian surgeon? I mean, it wouldn’t be discipline, or pushing physical boundaries, or just plain SEEING HORRIBLE TRAUMATIZING SHIT, so….?(I would imagine especially so training in NYC, or any of the boroughs; King’s County in Brooklyn is where you can still regularly see things like tertiary syphilis or people’s spines collapsing from TB.)
She’s missing out on SHOOTING GUNS FOR PAY obviously. (Of course, surgeons could shoot guns. But you don’t get paid for that, right? And I suspect boot camp/rounds/hazing death at marching band, same diff right?)
Ugh, video trailer suffers from US dramatic series video trailer syndrome. (I hear there’s medication for that.) Well, I’ve watched sillier things (*cough* Body of Proof), so maybe maybe not as far as I go. (Really, that’s the main thing Sherlock has in advantage over Elementary, right?—less of a time commitment.)
(Source: theadler)
Interesting! Thanks, Kristina, that was helpful (although I strongly suspected your answer was going to be the rituals, hahahaha).
Heh, what can I say, I’m pretty predictable like that.
I was thinking, that, hm, this must be what watching House is like for you med types! “Who cares if it’s accurate so long as the stooooory is fun?” right? XD
You know, I never thought to look at Tezuka for the med info, but it’s nice that sometimes some mangaka take the time to look up the appropriate info (re: Monster). Tezuka’s version of Japanese history in Pheonix makes me squint a bit too, but he is playing off of a fairly recognizable pop version (as is Yamagishi, only she’s being even more “revisionist”). But history’s one of those fields where the value of expertise is less recognized (as the barrier for entry’s a lot lower). But would it kill people to crack open a more accurate book now and then for a source? (Apparently, yes.)
Actually, for the lulz, I once translated for my sister a specific medical case report, and it’s pretty easy once you know the specific vocabulary and have a good dictionary to consult, but without the medical jargon knowledge (血清梅毒反応陰性 = “RPR” in English), it would be very, very intensely annoying. (Although I was delighted to find out that, for example, albuminuria was 蛋白尿. You can’t ask for anything clearer than that.)
Dude, I love technical terms like that. Pass on the literal kanji-strings (which are often more recent formulations), let’s go for the older translations. (FWIW, 蛋白光 is “opalescence” XD)
In short, go to grad school, kill any pleasure you once got out of reading or talking about Japanese pop culture! Win-win!
(Source: notesonleaves)
… I could probably do a whole ask-blog thing about Japanese history as depicted in anime/manga with capslocks of rage. (Which are not really rage-y per se, because you know what? White guys who’ve studied martial arts? You’ve already broken me, happy now?)
But it’d hurt me more than it’d hurt you.
So, Tomoe “Gozen.”*
Let me direct you to her canonical textual appearance, taken from pages 291-292 of the McCullough translation of The Tale of the Heike. (Which is not quite a “historical source” no matter what Wikipedia tells you.) This is from the Kakuichi-bon, ”The Death of Kiso” (one and only appearance).
First a description:
Kiso no Yoshinaka had brought with him from Shinano two female attendants, Tomoe and Yamabuki. Yamabuki had fallen ill and stayed in the capital. Of the two, Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming ceatures. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or god, mounted or on foot. She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka sent her out as his first captain, equipped with strong armor, an oversized swoard, ad a mighty bow; and she performed more deeds of valor than any of his other warriors. Thus she was now one of the seven who remained after all the others had fled or perished.
Now, Tomoe in action:
Reluctant to flee, Tomoe rode with the others until she could resist no longer. Then she pulled up. “Ah! If only I could find a worthy foe! I would fight a last battle for His Lordship to watch,” she thought.
As she sat there, thirty riders came into view, led by Onda no Hachiro Moroshige, a man renowned in Musashi Province for his great strength. Tomoe galloped into their midst, rode up alongside Moroshige, seized him in a powerful grip, pulled him down against the pommel of her saddle, held him motionless, twisted off his head, and threw it away. Afterward, she discarded armor and helmet and fled toward the eastern provinces.
DO YOU SEE A NAGINATA THERE? NO YOU DO NOT. THERE ARE NO NAGINATA THERE. BECAUSE THEY HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN INVENTED AS A STANDARDIZED WEAPON YET, THAT WOULD BE ONE REASON WHY.
Also: dude, she just ripped off that guy’s head with her bare hands. (This is why she’s often credited as the mother of legendary dudes with amazing strength.) Take that, Judith!
Tomoe’s link to the naginata says more about the enduring popularity of the character (the kick-ass woman has been a tantalizing and titillating figure since the Amazons and the Trung sisters), stage dressing for Noh plays, and ideals of “kill yourself before dishonor (female kind)” in Edo-period culture, than about anything from the end of the Heian Period.
Try to get that through the internet, though—Japanese or English. Pffffft.
*”Gozen” as a term for a female attendant is also a bit anachronistic, but I’ll roll with you here for now. It’s standardized by the Muromachi Period, going by the name of Noh plays involved in the Heike, and the Kakuichi is, in fact, formalized well after the end of the Heian. I tend to put it pretty late, myself, nearer the terminus ante quem than I know some others do.
Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi, by Yamagishi Ryoko, is considered one of the early classics of shoujo manga. Sadly, no one has scanlated this (why? I don’t think it’s that difficult to read, in comparison with say, Rose of Versailles.
It’s because it hurts those of us who study the Asuka Period LIKE BURNING. And thus we conspire. (Only effective cabal I ever joined, for srs.)
Hah! Okay, then, out of curiosity:
1) So what are the huge inaccuracies? (Besides the usual inaccuracies inherent in manga, such as “omg historical figure X isn’t gay,” or whatever)
Okay, it should not surprise you to find that I was being a bit facetious in that. What we have reliable intel on for the Asuka Period is rather slim, and largely material from archeology—when you work on this period, you’re most often writing based on historical sources compiled during the the Nara Period (so about 100 years later), although the materials do seem to be steady enough astronomically in parts so that you tend to assume that from Suiko’s reign onwards, you have a reasonably reliable group to deal with.
We do know that the Suiko court was heavily influenced by China in some ways, but also that culture remained steadily non-Chinese in others (for example, hairstyles, even if those are largely children’s/non-adult styles that we’re looking at). Even the NHK had to throw up its hands and go “welp” for some of the clothing in it’s Taika Reform 2-parter a few years ago. So admittedly, the fact that the dressing styles make me side-eye pretty damn hard, that’s not what makes me violently ill at the manga.
Likewise, the figure of Shotoku is myth upon historical rumor upon whitewash. So him being all scheme-y and using sexual wiles, okay, I can roll with that. The author’s obviously trolling people (I mean, we’re dealing with a guy who was seriously worshiped by carpenters for centuries), but hey, her right. His death, even, is a bit mysterious, and there’s reasonable grounds to assume some sort of political murder, given what happened to his son—this, plus some nails in statues of Horyuji has been enough for some authors to claim historical cover-up and panicked apotropaic response. The fact that the author seems to be clearly trolling, however, cools me a bit to the story. But, sure.
Political decision making as depicted in the manga… WEEEEEELLLL, okay, like I said, we have records that are pretty poor for reliability in things there. For example, the historical records in the Nihon shoki have a tendency to recast everything in the type of ritsuryo bureaucracy that made sense to the authors at the time (and that’s being generous, for there’s lots of political negotiation and posturing being made there—the figure of Tenmu for example). So you have a lot of room to invent things. However, the way that things are presented just seems a bit off for me.
At this point, I’ll note that most people who study the Asuka Period in English? Have never and have no intentions of reading the manga. Seriously, manga reading’s painful for some of them, what with sound effects and slang and all that. Translate the thing into kanbun and maybe I could convince them. >XD
What kills the manga for me is the depiction of religion. There’s a lot of room to play with Buddhism as a cosmology or theological system, but the ritual? UGH. We have material culture remains there, mind you. I also was under the impression that much of the esoteric stuff was a later Tang development. DO NOT GET ME STARTED ON THE “SHINTO” OR I WILL HAVE TO CUT A.
Admittedly, the author’s just in it for the lulz as far as I can see. I’m less against the author than the devoted swooning fans of the story, for I am side-eyeing very very hard here. I HAVE SEEN WHAT YOU DID TO HEIAN JAPAN FROM HIKARU NO GO AND ONMYOJI. DO NOT THINK THAT I HAVE NOT. I WANT YOU TO SIT IN THE CORNER AND THINK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.
To draw a sort of parallel, Houshin engi about does better because when you add robots and space aliens, no one expects it to be an accurate depiction of the rise of the Zhou! (Although the original novel, um. Well, almost no one in Chinese studies I’ve met has heard of the damn thing, so the “four great novels” designation seems to be pretty much a Japanese setting.)
2) Are there any manga set in the Asuka (or Heian, while we’re at it) period that are worth reading, then?
Er, define worth reading? Worth drawing conclusions about historical time periods, though: Nope.
Worth hurting my BRAIN over? Well, maybe a few. XD
For reference! I was having a short jam with another scholar over dinner on manga/pop culture involving onmyoji, and he though the Onmyoji series was actually pretty decent. (It is amusing, I will say.) It’s pretty modern in the sentiments, but the early volumes are pretty reasonable in terms of the art used, and the stories are pretty solid. Language, of course, way too modern and informal and some of the interpersonal negotiations that would have gone on. (Abe no Seimei is OF VERY LOW RANK, INTERNETS. JUST INFORMING YOU. He made it to high rank for a technical member of the bureaucracy when he was ancient. And that was of a rank high enough to get mocked by Sei Shonagon instead of just ignored by her, btw.) I have to side-eye it pretty hard for the Ancient Egyptian shenanigans of the later volumes.
Of course, my interlocutor informed me, the best bit of onmyoji pop culture is the novel that launched it all, Teito monogatari. (Set in the modern day, so sort of irrelevant to the question.)
Although there’s the cheap knock-off Tokyo Babylon, he admitted.
IN SUM: If you write me a paper or inform me earnestly about what you learned about history from your manga or video game, you will probably be failed. But if you’re reading it to have fun, hey, go to. My inner grader will probably mean I won’t share the joy.
IN FURTHER SUMMATION: The more obviously signposted the deviations from the source material, the more fun I’ll have and the better a lot of casual fans will do in terms of drawing “conclusions” from the material. Atlus shows a lot of inside mythology jokes, but doesn’t pretend to be authoritative. Houshin engi has a surprising amount of references that would require a reasonable amount of interest to get.
In fairness, I don’t think Hi idzuru tokoro no tenshi pretends to be authoritative—to get the lulz you kind of need to have the background knowledge of the time period (at a level of paying attention to your class in high school, which is where I’m finding the problems) and cultural significance of Shotoku. I find the historical understanding underpinning the story to be… disturbingly lacking. But who knows, I could meet the author and she could surprise me with her solid disputations on matters of interest on what really was going on with the Mononobe!
(Unlikely. The meeting part, I mean. I won’t pretend to judge on knowledge not revealed in the manga-as-text itself.)
IN FINAL SUMMATION: Fear my course if you have you idea of a Shinto “pantheon” from video games and manga. Or Time-Life books. Srsly dudes. Srsly.
IN POSTSCRIPTUM: Mushishi is surprisingly resonant with early natural history and philosophical discussions from late Edo/early Meiji, along with the folklore movement. That was kind of nice.
Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi, by Yamagishi Ryoko, is considered one of the early classics of shoujo manga. Sadly, no one has scanlated this (why? I don’t think it’s that difficult to read, in comparison with say, Rose of Versailles.
It’s because it hurts those of us who study the Asuka Period LIKE BURNING. And thus we conspire. (Only effective cabal I ever joined, for srs.)
Piñata Anatomy (by Carmichael Lynch)
