As I read, I found a mix of real and fictional place names, as well as allusions to real battles, real histories, real social structures, and real culture. It was not unlike the persecution of Christians under Sengoku Japan’s second great uniter, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. I was asking myself, had Hearn followed the same path, using fictional names (many given names being from the modern day) to retell actual history?īook 1 opens in a village of the Hidden, a group that follows a banned religion that worships One God who sees all humans as equal.
Clavell, you see, had changed the names of historical figures (not to protect the innocent, I am sure). What does Shogun have to do with Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori? I went into Book 1, Across the Nightingale Floor, not knowing if it was based on real history like Shogun, or a second world fantasy. Not to mention, a waste of Toshiro Mifune’s talent. It wasn’t until I lived in Japan and started watching Jidaigeki (period dramas, which, to be fair, are probably as true to history as Spaghetti Westerns) that I realized what a travesty the American miniseries was (For a stories covering the same period, I highly recommend NHK Taiga Dramas, and specifically Toshiie to Matsu). To say the least, the miniseries didn’t do the original novel justice. In high school, I read Shogun at a time when the only thing I read for pleasure was fantasy. Japanese cinema titan Toshiro Mifune owned each scene he was in. Besides being the first time I ever saw suggestion of the hanky-panky happening on television, what struck me the most was the exotic customs and culture of Feudal Japan. I was first drawn to Japanese samurai stories as a nine-year-old, when the miniseries based on James Clavell’s Shogun graced the little screen for five straight nights.
Tales of the Otori (originally posted on Fantasy-Faction)
0 kommentar(er)
