Iwa ni Hana

An illustration of "Hakuouki", an otome video game to be adapted into an anime series in 2010. The character in the above image is Hijikata Toshizo.

Shinsengumi [新撰組] is popular in Japan for the same reason that maple leaves in autumn are much admired. Maple leaves are not flowers per se but for a very brief time in autumn, they are more beautiful than any flower on earth. Likewise, many members of Shinsengumi were not samurai-born, but for a very brief in history, they were more samurai-like than any real samurai.

The Shinsengumi boom

If I had to trace the beginning of the Shinsengumi boom, I would probably trace it back to the debut novel Moeyo Tsurugi [燃えよ剣] (1962) written by Shiba Ryoutarou [司馬遼太郎]. Shiba Ryoutaro (1923 – 1996) was a very prolific historic novelist and essayist and he was also reckoned to be one of Japan’s leading men of letters in the post-war era. Moeyo Tsurugi is a novel based on the life of Hijikata Toshizo [土方歳三]. If you ever were to Google for reader reviews of this book, you would come upon pages and pages of reader testimonies that they were moved to tears by this book – quite in spite of their usual skeptical and cynical selves. I also tried to read to it a while ago but personally only found it so-so (I much preferred to read Shiba’s essays instead – which I am enjoying at the moment and find them to be very sharp and interesting indeed).

Anyway, one of the reasons why Moeyo Tsurugi captured a wide audience is that it defines manhood in its ideal form. (So I am told.) In Japanese, they use the phrase otoko no bigaku [男の美学] to describe that ideal. Otoko means “man” and bigaku means literally “aesthetics,” but in this instance you may think of it as “the male ideal of beauty in the spirit” (as opposed to mere looks). Readers (men and women alike) find Hijikata Toshizo as a character attractive because his life is lived in that “male ideal of beauty in the spirit” – which in turn boils down into two words: love and honour. I do not wish to comment on the aspect of love in the post-war era that makes readers project their ideal on Hijitaka (because it is depends too much on the individual for me to generalize about), but I certainly can see why readers yearn for the spirit of honour that Hijikata stayed true to till he drew his last breath.

So it was little surprise to me that Hijikata Toshizo eventually ended up appearing as a character in an otome video game, which brings me to -

The otome game Hakuouki [薄桜鬼]

Not that this is the first ever video game in which the player gets to become romantically involved with members of Shinsengumi – there have been other titles such as Bakumatsu Renka・Shinsengumi [幕末恋華・新選組]. What piqued my interest was the name of “Hakuouki” itself, because there is a poetic yet creepy sound to it. Haku means “thin,” ou means “sakura,” and ki means “demon.” I have not played the game before, but my guess is that Hakuouki is probably short for hakumei no sakura no godoki oni [薄命の桜の如き鬼], or “a demon as tragic and short-lived as sakura flowers.” (This is just my guess – please feel free to fill me in if you have played the game.)

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Movie posters of "The Beauty Remains" (美人依旧)

Just a very quick post – I think this obscurer than obscure movie is a fair example of the Chinese aesthetic concept of decadent beauty known as tui fei mei [頹廢美] (which I explained here in the past). Everything from the narration, the setting, the clothes and the atmosphere just gives you the feeling that “the end is nigh” and the characters (or at least some of them) are “putting on their best dress to greet the doom.”

Plot Summary: In the midst of a sea of change in China in 1949 – two long separated sisters, Ying (Vivian Wu) and Fei (Zhou Xun), are reunited in the event of the death of their wealthy father in order to execute his will. Ying (the elder sister) was borne by the legitimate wife and had always lived the life of opulence and leisure. Fei (the younger sister) was borne by a housemaid and had been expelled since childhood from the family’s mansion. Now a high school student, Fei was determined to not count her hopes on men – she wanted to do well at school and become a medical doctor. Fei’s simple life as a student was changed one day when she was summoned back to the family mansion after many years to live with Ying, and there Fei was introduced to Ying’s lover Mr Huang, who runs a casino. Mr Huang is a man with a “colorful past” involving many women. Not surprisingly, he began to seduce Fei, who yielded to him out of a vague feeling of revenge against Ying…

You can watch the trailer from YouTube below:

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The Chinese language has a rich vocabulary for sadness. Consider the Chinese characters that all have the meaning of “sadness” -

憂 愁 悲 哀 惆 悽 悕 悴 悵 惙 惻 愴 慘 慽

Now if you consider combined words that all have the meaning of “sadness,” the list could go on and on – from commonly used words like xin suan [心酸] to very rare words like liu li [懰慄]. In addition, if you also add to your list four-word Chinese words like qi chu bei qie [悽楚悲切], duan chang cun duan [斷腸寸斷] and so forth, you will probably add up with a dictionary of several hundred pages of Chinese words describing “sadness” alone.

Personally, I think the proliferation of words for “sadness” in Chinese is not confusing at all but adds precision as to the the exact shade of sadness one is describing. Among these many shades of sadness, there is one area that the Chinese language is particularly good at describing. I refer to dan dan de ai chou [淡淡的哀愁] – the kind of sadness that is light in touch on the surface. This kind of sadness is never so violent as drive you to put a gun to your head or jump off a bridge. In fact, this kind of sadness is usually not apparent on the surface, and no one knows how deep it cuts within. Within this category of sadness, there is one particular word I wish to highlight, and it is wu nai [無奈].

The meaning of wu nai

Wu nai [無奈] is short for wu ke nai he [無可奈何]. It is hard to translate into English but you may think of it as:

Something sad that cannot be helped due to lack of means or solution, typically brought about by forces that are out of human control, such as the passage of time and vicissitudes of the world.

Let me give a more concrete example -

Suppose when you were a teenager you used to have to an older friend who opened your eyes to a new world of ideas and art. You read the same books, listened to the same music, admired the same artists and watched the same films. You lived in the same intellectual universe with him and spoke in the wavelength. There were scarcely any topic you do not like debating with him on, and for once in your life you felt you had met your equal. And because he was a few years older and had more experience of life than you, you looked up to him.

And then (as is typical of the young and headstrong), the two of you had a quarrel that was really quite trivial in retrospect but instead of making up at that time, you parted ways, burned all bridges and never spoke again. Ten years passed. One day, news of that older friend trickled through to you. From what you gathered he had not really kept up with all the books, music and art. He embraced a lot of things that he once thought was low and vulgar, and associated with people he used to consider silly and ridiculous. It was like he had given up all the pride and sophistication you used to see in him.

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[This post is not a plot summary or general book review of Mouryou no Hako, a novel written by Kyōgoku Natsuhiko (京極夏彦), but spoiler discussion assuming prior knowledge of the book. This is also not a review of the anime adaptation by Madhouse either, though it may or may not be useful reference information. If you are looking for spoiler-free information about the Hyakkiyagyō series (of which Mouryou no Hako is the second book), please do not proceed any further and refer to this post instead.]

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[This post is not a plot summary or general book review of The Summer of Ubume, a novel written by Kyōgoku Natsuhiko (京極夏彦), but spoiler discussion assuming prior knowledge of the book. The version I read is the Japanese bunko edition published by Kodansha. There is also a translated English version published recently by Vertical but I have never read it. If you are looking for spoiler-free information about the Hyakkiyagyō series (of which The Summer of Ubume is the first book), please do not proceed any further and refer to this post instead.] (more…)

I always say that there are more talented Chinese illustrators / manhua artists these days than I have time to keep up with them. There is always a new name coming across my way every month and even then I feel that what I know is only a tip of the iceberg. Below are some of the new names I came across recently:

Above is an illustration by Xia Da (夏达). News reached me that her supernatural manhua series "Zi Bu Yu (子不语)" is to appear in Japanese translation as "誰も知らない 〜子不語〜” this month.

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