[薄桜鬼] The Shinsengumi boom, “the male ideal of beauty in the spirit,” Hakuouki, a military song, and the end of the samurai era?
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
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.)