This is Hakodate...This is Historifandom!

Dear hypothetical readers,

Your hapless author has been occupied with cramming Japanese into a pitiably sieve-like noggin for the last few weeks here where the sun don't shine, i.e. Hokkaido. Updating because my so-called "independent study" project draws to a close (or at least is being forced to come to some kind of closure, as the presentation looms like the Sword of Damocles over next Tuesday) and it attempts to express, very poorly, some observations made in these parts about historifandom as well as Modern East Asia*, which I will relate with greater detail and eloquence below.**

These observations concern mostly the life and demise of one Hijikata Toshizo, "The Demon Vice-Leader of the Shinsengumi." If that line made little sense to you, Mr. W. Pedia could probably explain things much better. But, briefly, Hijikata was the close friend and right-hand-man of the leader of a semi-official police force fighting for the dying Shogunate in the 1860s. As Imperial supporters increasingly gained in power and finally erected the new Meiji government, the remnant Shogunate loyalists broke away and tried to form their own country in Hokkaido, the Ezo Republic, with its capital located in the little town where I am currently making my abode. In perhaps one of the more pathetic civil wars in East Asian history, Hijikata and fellows staged a desperate last stand in Hakodate, centering their energies on holding a new-style pentagonal fort, Goryoukaku, only to be totally wiped out by summer 1869. Hijikata, who had become Vice-Minister of the Army for the Republic, was supposedly killed in a spot about 10 minutes by foot from where I type this post.

Anyway, what's more exciting than modified copy-paste from Mr. Pedia is that Hijikata fandom is extremely active. Photos from the big souvenir shop near the Goryoukaku Park:

Exhibit A, Hello Kitty cosplaying as Hijikata. (Expresses one of the central tenets of fandom, namely "sacrilege is an measure of total worship"...) 315 Yen.

Exhibit B, Hijikata piggy bank. 682 Yen.

Exhibit C, Hijikata T-Shirt. About 3000 Yen.

I could go on with the random Hijikata memorabilia, but that could be a very long post indeed. Instead let me cut to the chase: I find these tokens curious because of their mingling of the life of a historical figure (and from not even that long ago) with fan-mythos, tourism, and consumption. More than simply creating a legend and maintaining/expanding it through free-for-all fan channels like scanlation groups or fanfiction writers, these items create an (capitalist) economy of historifandom. It is nothing as simple as "well, I like him because he was a cool dude" or "he was the last real samurai." If such were the case, how could one bear to buy a (probably made in China) cell phone strap of the last samurai

Thus Hijikata has been remodeled into a mascot of sorts, a stand-in for Hakodate or for whatever bushido is supposed to mean, more than for himself.*** It would be interesting to interview tourists and find out how much they know of Hijikata's background and of the period in general, and how much of that knowledge might be derived from what might be considered "illegitimate" sources, like NHK Taiga Drama, manga, or novelizations. If I were really good at this accursedly difficult language **** or about 50 times more diligent a student I would have probably done so. But for the purposes of the manga, I felt it sufficient to document atrocities/awesomeness like the "Hijikata Hotate [Scallop] Burger" buyable at the local burger joint, Lucky Pierrot.***** Witness the mayonnaisey horror:

And the "Shinsengumi" coin laundry (a pun on the word "sen", 撰/洗, the first of which means "organized," as in "Newly Organized Group," the latter of which means "washing,", as in laundry...):

Abominations or amazing testaments to a view of history that celebrates losers sometimes more than it celebrates winners? As to that, I wonder how much of the so-called "mono no aware" sentiment suposedly so native to Japan has been retroactively emphasized after 1945.

This monument located in a quiet corner in the moutain, for instance, is dedicated to the fallen Shogunate warriors, but its delayed installation (and rather out-of-the-way placement) could imply that there was considerable resistance to recognizing the losers of the Bakumatsu in the early Meiji. I would not be surprised if militarization also led to a certain interpretation of Hijikata and his colleagues. Sure, they were romantic and dashing and doomed, etc., but surely not much room for that by the 1930s? Ditto for the Chunshingura. I am sure that someone could answer this question, especially as I recall hearing from somewhere this spring that there's a collection or monograph on the transmutation of the text and its various adaptations (aka fanfic spinoffs!11!!!). Where does heroism end and plain old failure begin?

Before signing off, the Mona Lisa-like photo of unknown date (probably in 1868) that is plastered over every imaginable household item and surface in the souvenir stores:

A statue version of him from Shinsengumi days:

Some recent anime versions:

From Gintama, I believe.

From Peace Maker Kurogane.

And, I always thought that Anachronism looked like a great game, but this trading card takes the cake:

And with that, to all a good night.

*Phrase used with a mild twitch of the eyebrow.

**Not saying much.
***Other Hakodate mascots include squids, squids, and also squids. These folk really appreciate their 名物, so much that there's a whole dance routine reciting some popular squid dishes, like squid somen and squid shiokara...
****Gratifyingly or maybe terrifyingly, our most recent reading selection, by Dr. Donald Keene, has him writing that Japanese is "uncountably many more times more difficult than Chinese." If even Dr. Keene thinks so, then...well...
*****Apparently, founded by a Chinese man...

Shoutoku: The Man, The Myth, The...Angst?

Who doesn't like some déshabillé period costume ?

Just finished reading Yamagishi Ryouko's epic Hi no izuru tokoro no tenshi [『日の出ずる処の天子』Ruler of the Land of the Rising Sun], which ran from 1980 to 1984. In a sentence, the 10-volume (in Chinese translation; I believe the bunko version in Japanese is 7-8 volumes total) was

REVISIONIST JAPANESE HISTORY, JERRY SPRINGER STYLE.

Maybe that makes the book sound unpalatable to some readers, but believe me when I say that this is not "so horrible it's good." It's so good it's horrifying. At least, enough people thought so that the work won a Kondansha Manga Award in 1983.

First, the art: Yamagishi Ryouko is famed as one of the pioneering female mangaka who jump-started the shoujo manga or "girls' comics" movement--the so-called "Year-24 Group" (二十四年組), or "Forty-niners," who were born in 1949 and were among the first women to enter the Japanese comics-making world. Most of this group's work would thus be considered rather old-school by the aesthetic terms of modern manga. Take this page from Kaze to ki no uta, by Yamagishi's fellow Year-24er Takemiya Keiko:
Major characteristics of classic shoujo from authors in this generation include stylized, glamorous-looking protagonists, cartoony cariactures in the supporting cast, an unironic abundance of flowers, pointillist bubbles, and sparklies, and an earnest deployment of coventions such as vertical lines on the face, which denote shock and/or fear. No CG technology here, folks--all the toner and ink carefully hand-applied. Most of the lines are highly organic and finished, in contrast to some of today's authors, who may strive for a "rougher" or "simpler" look. On top of all this, Yamagishi demonstrated a decided fondness for period costume and, to a lesser extent, other material bits of history (her interiors never as dense as Takemiya's, nor her page layouts as complex and thickly packed). To wit, a page from Hi no izuru:
Now that the aesthetic context is gotten out of the way, onto the juicy part. The story concerns the exploits of young Prince Shoutoku [CE 574-622], known also as Prince Umayado [厩戸]. As most know him, Shoutoku was a promulgator of Chinese culture--Buddhism and Confucian values*--as exemplified in his patronage of temples: Shitennoji, and the magnificent Houryuuji. The "Seventeen-Article Constitution" that Wikipedia so helpfully calls "one of the earliest moral dictatorial documents in history" is generally attributed to him, as well. In case you, hypothetical reader, cares, the moral injunctions were mostly pretty "duh": obeying imperial commands, not rushing to decisions by one's lonesome, etc. Awesomely, until the 1890 Meiji constitution came into effect, this document was completely valid. Even today, the Japanese constitution does not technically override it.*

Anyway, Shou-chan is a very respected figure, indeed almost a saintly one, though apparently some have disputed his existence (not to mention the attributions of various things to him). Even so, he was on Japanese currency until 1984:

Don't make me get all moralistic on your a$$, yo.

Now, go and look at that pretty picture at the beginning again. Yep. Yamagishi intended it to be the same man. The flowers+hair loops visualization has apparently stuck; here's a cover from Ikeda Ryoko's Prince Shoutoku manga, which was published about a decade later [you betcha there have been some debates about Ikeda plagiarizing from Yamagishi]:

Mmm, beefy.

Anyway, here we've got a most efflorescent coiffureal delicious case of historifandom--if the pictures don't do enough to convince you, then the DRAMA better. Not to spoil anybody [warning, spoilers imminent], but if the following plot elements don't reek of TEH DRAMUS characteristic of (histori)fandom, I'm not sure what will:

-Countless plots to horribly murder various important people, quite a few of which succeed

-Quasi-incestuous marriages between step-parents and -children
-Actual incest [which, by the way, the reader sees from a mile away but is like unto a runaway locomotive in its relentless momentum], consummated via deceitful trickery
-Illegitimate children who represent about 80% of the births in the book, the most plot-central of which result from suspiciously endogamous sex
-Nonconsensual sexual acts
-Dream [GHEI] sex
-General homoerotics, riddled with more angst and Unresolved Sexual Tension than a gay Harry Potter "deathfic" and all kinds of gender issues
-Issues of which are mostly manifest in Shoutoku's repeated and highly successful cross-dressing
-Suicidal thoughts and attempts so far up the frigging wazoo that it's probably come out on the other end
-Trippy-as-hell and very distressing dreams, visions, out-of-body experiences, ESP, telekinesis, telepathy...Shoutoku will kill you with his mind

In this delightful melting-pot of freakishness, Yamagishi mixed a beautiful, cold, traumatized Prince Umayado, his [very obvious] love interest Soga no Emishi, various historically recorded folks from the Soga clan, the imperial line, and what feels like everywhere else. The thing is over two thousand pages long, so here I'll just discuss why I think this particular bit of revision is so engrossing quickly.

1. Yamagishi plotted her political and romantic intrigues with great mastery: gripping, intense, but not quite so over the top that one lost a deep engagement with the story. Mostly, she achieved this by plumbing the vast casts' psychologies with consistent dexterity. Emishi isn't just a stupid 6th-century frat boy, though that could have been his lot. His ultimate rejection of Umayado is so devastating because the reader believes that, for one, it might not have been that way "if only...", and for another, Yamagishi gives us so much insight into the human torments of the characters that we feel all the proper mono-no-aware catharsis.

2. The art feels sometimes archaic and a little stiff, but there's something about classic manga's willingness to conventialize and stylize that reveals the medium's parity to other highly formulaic yet nonetheless engaging visual genera, i.e. noh or Peking opera. It's a little silly when Umayado can't seem to put his hand on anything without making it look as delicate as possible, but then again, arguably that's part of manga's heritage from more traditional Japanese art. Where she needs it, Yamagishi makes use of the image's power to "tell all."

In short, the images and words together convey an immense, realistically textured emotional universe for not just the protagonists, but all the major characters. There are not too many absolutes in Yamagishi's world. Just about everyone is capable of making the reader groan in frustration, recoil in horror, or smile.

3. Also importantly, the manga isn't shy about its facts. The machinations of Soga no Umako, Emishi's doggedly conventional father, and virtually all of the characters, are situated with what was a surely considerable amount of research. The politics of 6th-century Japan are not just about sleeping with sisters and cross-dressing to impress, but related to international history: the Paekche-Koguryo-Silla standoff on the Korean peninsula, for instance, is of great import to the cast--and even if the reader didn't have any clue about the situation, its immediacy in the story. On the mainland, the Sui dynasty exterminates the Chen and unites a huge swathe of formerly divided territory. And, of course, the title takes its title from the famous missive Shoutoku wrote to the Sui emperor in 607: "From the ruler of the land of the rising sun, to the ruler of the land of the setting sun, greetings...."

To draw hundred of pages in quest of the legendary creature who wrote those haughty words and coined the phrase "Nihon" is impressive enough, but to give these long-dead folks, often without much more than a name, the dimensionality of people trying to cope with their situations, their emotions, their pasts, is truly the most admirable point of good history as well as good historical fiction. Sometimes the boundary isn't so clear, and verification almost seems unimportant. Yamagishi's Shoutoku, with his angelically beautiful androgyny, a boy by turns cruel, vulnerable, brilliant, loveable, domineering, and passionate, is nothing like the moralizing gentleman with a respectable beard whose portrait is printed in history books. But his divergence from that man fails to signify after we pass through the landscape that Yamagishi drew for him. That's the sign of the best kind of historifandom: with enough power that it can stand alongside what is conventionally accepted as "reality," in a strange and attractive symbiosis.

Basically, if you have time to spare and would like to spend it marathoning through an epic of some kind, Hi no izuru is an excellent choice. Have another nice thing to look at, to whet your appetite:

From left to right: Prince Umayado, Futsuhime, Emishi, and his sister Tojikome. Aka Emishi and his harem. Damn frat boys with Mickey Mouse hair always get the fun.

*Yeah, they didn't really have Buddhism in Japan back then. Crazy, huh? They even had a war over it. They didn't even have horses in Yamato until the late 4th century CE. And there was even a time...(hushed voice) when Japan didn't have domesticated rice. That's right. NO SUSHI. It must have been terrible.
**Oh Wikipedia, educational as always.

For the love of monkeys

When Carl "My Inspiration, Basically" Pyrdum at Got Medieval started posting about images of monkeys, I was inspired. Also, I laughed, cried, and gave it many thumbs up. And people should give him a super-duper Medieval Lit job.

But returning to my inspiration: I knew that someone had to do something about Chinese monkeys, and where better to start than with the Chinese monkey, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven齐天大圣, the mighty Sun Wukong 孙悟空, the Beautiful Monkey King 美猴王，the immortal Simian 猢狲himself!*

Behold! My fuzzy cheeks, my rosy glow, my large magical stick. Sorry, I'm a celibate Buddhist, and besides, the dude who created me invested in me the vices of Pride and Anger, not Lust or Gluttony.
(Image from the nostalgia-riffic mid-1980s CCTV show, with the opera star Liuxiao Lingtong as Mr. Sun)

The goal of this post is to take an initial look at some representations of the Awesome Ape** over time and in various media, and to muse about why a monkey, of all creatures, became the uncontested hero of this extremely influential story.*** In general, the trend seemed to be one of "domestication," especially considering that this block-print, dated by the authoritative Wikipedia to the 16th century, depicts a rather more bestial incarnation:

("Pilgrim Sun." Frontispiece from the oldest surviving copy of the Journey to the West, c. 1590.)

I am pretty sure that this isn't His Apeness way back before he learns human ways, because he's wearing clothes and has got his magical staff from the Sea Palace. In fact, this is probably supposed to beSun the Pilgrim (the label in the left margin says as much). So even in his role as protector and disciple of the sutra-seeking monk Tripitaka, Wukong looked a bit more au naturel. He's also blending in nicely with that peach tree behind him. Maybe the hairiness is a side-effect more of printing technology than of any initial visual type, but that would require looking at more illustrations from later copies, which maybe one day I can convince someone to pay me to do.

On the stage, Lord Monkey acquired a more standardized look. Here he is as the Great Sage, with the long partridge feathers of a warrior and the yellow robes of a ruler:

And here he is as a more modest Pilgrim en route to India with his master.

Dramatic****, coded facial makeup is emblematic of Peking opera in general, but note the decidedly nonhuman features highlighted by the contrasting red and white, and the orange fabric balls for extra-large monkey ears. But of course, these bold, recognizable colors and patterns are also a way to "tame" the hairy, bulgy-eyed Ape of earlier times into brightly-colored familiarity for theatergoers.

More recent iterations began to get creative. Witness Sakai Masaaki-san as the Sage in the 1978 Monkey [also Monkey Magic!] (or as I like to call it, "the more politically incorrect Journey to the West TV series"). Compare his relatively more "normal" skin and hair color to the CCTV Wukong, as well as the abstracted monkey-ness of the opera makeup.

Next comes the many faces of Goku from that venerable, ridiculous, and horrifically unattractive anime known as Dragonball***** that I nonetheless watched for lack of anything else (oh, bygone days when no American kid watched weird Japanese shows instead of hearty, patriotic, made-in-the-USA cartoons). The link (as far as I know) between this Goku (the Japanese pronunciation for "Wukong") and our favorite simian are tenuous. Apparently sometimes this one has a tail, and he can fly around on a cloud. Also, he is powerful. More interesting is that his hair grows really long when he enters "Super Saiyan mode"--a kind of lycanthropic (simithropic?) transformation, a bestial reversion maybe.

(AM I PORCUPINE OR MONKEY OR MAYBE A BUNCH OF POLYGONS??)

The tension between Wukong's conformation to Buddhist (or in some cases Daoist) tenets such as mercy and patience and his "wild," impulsive streak forms some of the central conflicts in Journey to the West, the primary one being between Monkey and his master Tripitaka. But how ironic that it seems to be this very "human" weakness of impatience and pride that is contrasted to the virtues of an actual human (Tripitaka)! Plus, as I'll discuss in more detail below, Tripitaka is not the hero of Journey--so it's really these "untamed" qualities of the Monkey King that attract our human admiration, even as his image was domesticated.

But of course then postmodernity and that dang globalized media thing has to go and screw the trend of domestication up (in that annoying half-assed postmodern way). So we got the anomaly of a pretty much human looking beefy hero named Goku who "reverted" by growing long bushy blond hair. Japan of the late 1990s brought us another charming version of Goku:

(Son Goku from the manga Saiyuki by Minekura Kazuya which, though not overtly ghei, is ghei by (many) implications.)

Bushy hair, check. Stick, check. Traveling-clothes, check. You don't know this, but occasional outbursts of violence in a weremonkeyish manner, also check. The weird thing is this Goku's childlike image; indeed, instead of being basically the only competent member of Tripitaka's little party, this Goku is kind of airheaded. It's Sanzou (Japanese rendition of Sanzang, in turn the Chinese rendition of Tripitaka) who's the cool operator. Then again, Sanzou uses a revolver to blast demons away while Hakkai (Bajie/Pigsy) is an emo one-eyed user of "ki blasts." So. Some revisionism here. What meaning does this have, aside from indicating the popularity of dark-drama manga that transcends traditional genre barriers? Unclear. But I should point out that Goku retains something apart from the obvious from the original novel--his asexuality. This is something that'll be important when I take a look at the history of monkeys in older folklore.

Here we have a Jet Li-Monkey from the recent Forbidden Kingdom, which I haven't seen but in which I am mildly and guiltily interested. The armor's been updated--no more tacky yellows and reds! It also has a bit of a Japanese look to it, but maybe it's supposed to be Tang-style. But importantly--nothing really very apelike about this Sage except for the hair. The more "natural" blond hair (as opposed to the heavy-duty goldenrod of the CCTV version), tied in a not-very-Chinesey tall ponytail. This man looks more like what a Chinese person who'd never seen a blond Caucasian might imagine one to be like (hairy, very hairy, with slightly sketchy grin) than an animal.

(Damn, that looks soooo itchy.)

And finally, Sun Wukong (as far as I am aware, he is known by this name and not Son Goku) from the very recently released Musou Orochi 2: Maou Sairin video game by the Japanese company Koei. His attitude resembles that of a surfer more than that of a Buddhist pilgrim, and he allies himself with the (eeeevil) monk Taira no Kiyomori, who takes Tripitaka's place in freeing the Monkey.

(Thanks to http://koeiwarriors.co.uk/ for the image.)

As far as I can tell, the Sage looks like (again) a "foreigner" with weird hair more than he does a monkey, tail aside (even the tail looks like an accessory and not a hint of a deep bestial nature). Perhaps coinciding with a man-objectifying trend I identified in a post some time ago, he's got a really impressive midsection.

To sum it up, from the initial publication of the Journey to the West to the twentieth century, it seemed like the general trend in image/imaginings of the Monkey King was one of codification and concomitant domestication. He was powerful, but not an object of terror. The narrative of the novel also concerns the Monkey's taming, of course. As some people who know vastly more than I will ever know about this have written, the Monkey's journey is one of being appropriated by the strictures of religion and made not only human but holy, rather like a Chinese St. Christopher.****** The Monkey of Journey is, however, the inheritor of two traditions, neither of which is quite as friendly. The first is that of the White Ape, whose legends mostly concern the kidnapping and raping of human women (some of whom apparently could be bestialized by the experience and "forget" their humanity). This obviously threatening figure is a target of men's attacks, and ultimately dies at their hands--a dangerous, racially distinct Other intent on "stealing" womenand subverting human society tameable only by violence. The ethnic quality of the White Ape's otherness seems especially striking when recalling the blondness of several of the images of the Monkey above, and particularly of the recent versions. Monkey-as-foreigner is thus one mode.

The other is that of the rebellious ape, a Titan-like creature born naturally of the earth and locked in battle with a god in the form of a young man. This monkey is not nearly as obviously evil or dangerous as the White Ape, and it's pretty clear that its attempts to usurp a "higher" authority are echoed in the Monkey's pre-pilgrimage exploits. Basically, then, the monkey was a symbol of conflict between chaotic earthly forces and lawful human ones--the pivot being a threatening sexuality, which, as I pointed out, Sun Wukong does not have. That, I think, is an important factor that puts him, and not the actually more human-looking Sandy (Shasen) or the actually human Tripitaka, in the role of the hero.

Sandy's in fact not a very central character in the party, so let me look more closely at Sun Wukong, Tripitaka, and Pigsy (Bajie/Hakkai) instead, because they represent three ways for the reader to identify with the action.

Tripitaka's the only human being--so there's a superficial level of self-recognition for the reader. Furthermore, he's the most spiritually accomplished in the human world-order of Buddhism. Of course, he's a sexual teetotaler, being a holy monk and all, but there's a crucial difference from Monkey's abstinence: he lacks sexual agency. It's not only his being a monk that emasculates him, but his personality (vacillating, credulous) and his looks (effete, and outright "tasty" to the various demons that try to eat and/or have sex with him). Not something a virile young reader would want to fully sympathize with.

(In some cases, Tripitaka has been actually played by an actress, as here in Monkey. Cute, though <3.)

Pigsy, on the other hand, is bestial, even monstrously so, and voracious in both sexual and literal appetite. He's the sins of greed and lust made obvious in a porcine package. His failings also include, however, incompetence at defeating demons/protecting Tripitaka (all of his abilities are explicitly described as inferior to Wukong's), and dishonesty. He's an aspect of human weakness, but the most repulsive one of these three main characters.

(I do recognize that pigs are in fact intelligent, cool animals. But most 16th-century Chinese probably didn't.)

Thus Monkey is the only one left to make our hero, and the fact that the first major section of the novel is actually all about Monkey's exploits only reinforces that link. For a contemporary reader Wukong didn't have the sexual "gross-out" factor of either looking too girlishly feeble or too disgustingly greedy. The motifs of sexual/racial threat are still in the imagination of His Monkeyness, but apparently neutralized into abstract representations of his identity as the Monkey.

It was the Royal Ape's very human self-discipline, capability, intelligence, along with his irrepressible impulsiveness and irreverence that made a perfect hero. Novels and print culture are associated with an early modern consciousness in Europe--though the appellation has only been controversially applied to China, maybe the Great Sage's intense individualism in the face of Confucian authority, along with his presence in a widely printed novel, could be an argument for a similar spirit in the Ming and Qing.


*He is a man(?) of many faces, of many passions, of many Risible and Old-Fashioned Literal Translations... [BTW, I am delighted to note that my Chinese input system automatically supplied these proper nouns. Even the computer is a fan.]
**Not an actual epithet, but one I am sure His Awesomeness would appreciate.
***If you need a refresher, or maybe just a fresher, on what the hell is going on here with the monkeys and pilgrimages and Buddhist satire, here's a rundown.
**** Badummmmp!
*****For sake of simplicity, have omitted other suffix letters (Z, S, etc.)
******See Whalen Lai's article, "From Protean Ape to Handsome Saint." 1994.

Historifandom: Musou (Part 2)

After putting up the last installment, I had a discussion with a friend in which he suggested that perhaps I was overemphasizing the fannish appeal of the Musou games, viz. that the majority of players actually savor the games for the intuitive (read: idiotically easy) controls and mechanics, and the fantastic appeal of slaughtering thousands of polygonal enemies, not the satisfaction of seeing historical figures reduced to a delightful hodgepodge of over-the-top visual motifs.

It's probably true that the initial audience for the Musou series were more into das Hackenslashen than the, um, character-slashin', but over the years the game designers' own fannishness toward their heroes have become noticeably more prominent. As evidence I'll follow the evolution of Lu Xun, a general of the kingdom of Wu, historically married to the daughter of Sun Ce and most prominently known for his role in the capture and death of Guan Yu and his victory at the Battle of Yi Ling in 222 (see previous entry). Here he is in Shin Sangoku Musou, known as Dynasty Warriors 2 in the US (released 2000). [NB: The first Dynasty Warriors was a fighting game of the arcade face-off variety.]


And Shin Sangoku Musou 2/DW3 (note the hint of midriff) (2001):


Shin Sangoku 3/DW 4, a swing toward fuller coverage--possibly in tandem with a sweep of conservatism around the world? (2003):


Only to be countered with a decided turn for the bare-all (!) in Shin Sangoku 4/DW5 (2005 ):

And last, not least but probably fruitiest, I present Lord Lu as seen in this year's Shin Sangoku 5/DW6 for the PS3:
And have a closer glimpse of his tres chic eye makeup and feathers:
Certainly the constant improvements in 3D modeling capabilities have contributed to Lord Lu's image updates over the years, but it seems pretty clear that there's something else at work here, namely historifandom and its participants' concomitant power as consumers to actually mold the "canon" of their own fandom. And, since their canon is actually a bunch of characters from historical record reenacting actual events, they are revamping the understanding of history itself through its icons, re-imagining (or distorting, if you're less kindly disposed) the appearances and behavior of the long-dead for their own enjoyment and consumption. When a fan plunks down in 2008 to write a slashfic, would ze prefer a feathery, tribal-eye-tattooed Lord Lu to insert into hir steamy scenes or something more like this:

...they'd probably end up covering the poor fellow in sparkles and feathers anyway. Just like Nobunaga's ridiculous armor in the previous installment, I think Lu Xun's feathers and braids have some "real" roots--he was known as the pacifier of southern "barbarians," and since he hailed from the Eastern Wu (centered in the Jiangnan area), which was already coded as peripheral in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the whole exotic look kind of makes sense.* So there seems to be a general "fanon" model for Lu, and it looks a lot more like the Koei rendition--youthful, red-clad, associated with all things flaming (literally). In fact, I've got another indicator that historifandom is in fact going backward to influence corporate-produced canon, that in fact the two are becoming well-nigh inseparable in this our age of high-speed consumption:
[Screenshot from the 2007 show Koutetsu Sangokushi 鋼鉄三国志. Lu Xun on left, Zhuge Liang(!) on right ]

So consumers/fans are actively repatterning history to fit their tastes through popular culture, and apparently with more force than in previous decades. I'd call it Japanese popular culture, but a quick browse at your local chain bookstore or electronics joint will demonstrate that North American consumers are becoming a huge force in gobbling up fandom and fanculture. I do, however, think that the progression of Lu Xun's wardrobe reflects but one dimension of historifandom, that resonate with fangirl/腐女子 ("corrupt girl") culture, with its love of fruity men behaving suspiciously with other fruity men. A somewhat different fannishness has also prompted action on Koei's part--witness the case of Lü Bu, henchie of the warlord Dong Zhuo.

A Qing print, in which Lü looks skinny (according to some, a staple of Qing figurative style). But he's got the mandatory long pheasant feathers and the "Great Sky Slicer" halberd (方天画戟).


Shin Sangoku 2/DW3:
Shin Sangoku 3/DW4, beginning to get a bit darker:
And Shin Sangoku5/DW6, which is just wow(I don't think that's what people meant by "halberd"...):

So what, says the hypothetical reader. These crazy Japanese folks have decided to make more exaggerated costumes, big deal. But there are important differences in how the exaggerations have been made--always with some kind of hearkening to an ur-image or set of motifs based in textual record, but manipulated to cater to as wide a spectrum of historifandom's fan-consumers as possible, a spectrum that is no longer (if it ever was) merely a bunch of Hack 'n' Slash devotees who didn't give a thought what their avatars looked like as long as they could rack up KO counts. And the game isn't all nonstop mook-slaying; cutscenes and cinematics are progressively unlocked as the player slice-n-dices through hordes of enemies, and though the narrative merits of said scenes are questionable, they focus heavily on the heroes' character development (distortionment may be a more accurate term), embedded in historical context delivered by a solemn narrator. For example, Saika Magoichi's opening video.


There's a question worth probing here in relation to non-Asian consumption of the Musou games, which is "how much do American audiences 'get' of the historical stuff," and whether that makes their historifandom one that is weaker than Asian fans, who are presumably more in the know. First of all, of course Asian fans are not necessarily more knowledgeable about obscure, short-lived generals of the 200s CE or random daimyo and their henchmen in 17th-century Japan than are American fans, who may have knowledge sufficient for them to recognize Guan Yu or Hideyoshi and be attracted to the games in the first palace.

Returning to the "Americans aren't historifans" point, when the Musou games first arrived in the US, players were maybe as a whole more content to tolerate weird names and exotic outfits--not exactly something stunningly novel in the game industry--without thinking of them beyond the game, in a way accepting them as culturally "odorless" goods. This may still be the case for some. But the Musou games seem to have also prompted a search for, or at least curiosity in, the very much culturally specific and historically rooted "real" underneath the glossy CGI. For example, the large Koeiwarriors fansite forum (http://z13.invisionfree.com/koeiwarriors/) boasts a special sublevel, the "History Realm," dedicated to "various eras of history"--it's actually got more topics than any one of the other sublevels dedicated to specific titles of the Musou series.

While changing demographics and demands in fandom successfully reshape Koei's Gross Historical Distortion, history (with lesser or greater degrees of Gross Distortion) enters into the consciousness of fans and recalibrates their demands. Intuitively it seems kind of terrible to imagine hordes of 18-35 year-olds contributing to the terror that is Shin Sangoku 5's Lü Bu or Koutetsu Sangokushi's Zhuge Liang, but really, is what the "pros" do so very different? There's money, obsession, and distortion involved in the latter case, too, isn't there? Maybe academic historifandom seems more okay because there's less money and more book-reading entailed. Probably the same obsession, though, and distortions are willfully ignored or ruefully acknowledged, not delighted in and paraded around.

(*I'll need to muse a bit on why Japanese pop culture seems to like Wu so much when Shu, which controlled Sichuan, and the 中原, or Yellow River plain, was the narrative focus of RotK.)

Historifandom: Musou (Part 1)

The other day I called home and had a slightly disheartening conversation with my kid brother:

ME: ...so, yeah, I'm doing Asian history.
BROTHER: (shocked) Asian history?
ME: Chinese in particular.
BROTHER: ChiNESE?

If I knew he could understand the joke, I'd call him a 汉奸. Oh well.

Now, kid brother is one of those chilluns who began gaming almost as soon as he could sit up unassisted. He adores RTS (real-time strategy) and turn-based games incorporating historical settings, such as Rome: Total War. But his first reaction, and, I think, that of a lot of people, is that history (and by extension historians) are inherently and irrevocably boring; the older the period, the more boring--yeah, yeah.

ME: But you campaign against the Celts and Germans every night, don't you? Isn't that cool?
BROTHER: (grudgingly) ...I guess so.

Second bias everyone's heard of: historical Asians are totally, like, boring! All Analects and test-taking and repression and famines, not to mention confusing names. Asian history's pretty dull as it's taught in East Asia, too (I can only speak for the PRC of the 90s, but somehow I doubt there's been much progress there or elsewhere in the neighborhood away from memorizing endless lists of names and filling in blanks therewith).

But some fanchildren out there know this ain't so, and in fact revel in making history (even premodern Asian history) their fandom. Of course, Asian historifandom's more common in Asia, but with the rise, especially since the mid-1990s, of North-American "otaku" culture that revels in all things Japanese (a topic that requires more updated research, for sure), there's a brand of unabashedly fannish, distinctly Asian pop culture that's begun to infiltrate the American market, which merges the historio-mythological with the sheer distorting glee of fandom in a whole new way.

In particular, there's Koei's Musou series, which began with the heroes of the Three Kingdoms (Sangoku Musou--Dynasty Warriors in English; the first was released in 1997), then recently added a new line about the Sengoku Jidai (Sengoku Musou/Samurai Warriors, first released in 2004). Unlike the Total War series, the Musou games are far less concerned with historical accuracy--indeed, the whole point of my posting on the games (apart from being obsessed with them, cough cough) is that they sell by deliberately distorting history. Emphasis on deliberately, because the characters are still recognizable, and, like in Total War, the player can choose to reenact documented battles and events. Other than that, at first glance the games seem to have taken rather little from recorded history. Have a look at this picture of Oda Nobunaga, as he appears in Sengoku Musou 2:
For comparison's sake, a more old-school rendering:

There's something fascinating about this contrast, for me anyway. Without knowing that the top image depicted a character named Oda Nobunaga, could anyone actually recognize him? Possibly. The Musou series' heroes are condensed symbols of their historical identities, in the same way that other forms of popular culture have reduced the complexities of heroes of history and myth into distinctive visual archetypes. Take Guan Yu for example. Here's a screencapture from a Chinese serial drama (Lord Guan's on the far left):
And as he appears in Peking Opera:

And finally, as seen in the latest Sangoku Musou game (released in the US just a month or two ago):
He's got the green color scheme, the "beautiful beard," and of course the 800-jin Blue Dragon Knife, just like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms says! Now, Nobunaga's case seems more extreme, probably because Nobunaga's a much more recent personality with less symbolic detritus (no Romance of the Sengoku Jidai)to link his identity to his appearance, or maybe because Koei's a Japanese company more at ease with distorting Japanese historical figures. Nonetheless, his purple-and-black look, the decadent feather ruff, the European cuirass, and the lightsaber do make sense. Missionary Jesuits were active in Nobunaga's time, and he made pragmatic use of them against his rivals, as opposed to his successors Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who banned Christianity and began persecutions of converted Japanese, fearing the destabilizing potential of this imported faith. This Jesuit connection might explain the armor and cape. Nobunaga's ruthlessness and self-aggrandizement as "demon-king" (魔王, maou), whether factual or apocryphal, contributes to his evil-overlord look.

And does anyone really learn anything from this? Well, for one, that gross historical distortion (henceforth GHD) can show how the mythos of history, particularly that surrounding people, is formed and perpetuated, even in such 'crass" venues as video games. Moreover, the fact that the Musou games are popular and profitable (Koei's up to the 6th Sangoku Musou release in the US, just put out a "tactical" version of Sengoku Musou in summer 2007, and churned out Musou Orochi, a mind- and timeline-boggling combo of San- and Sengoku, last winter) reflects intriguingly on the consumers' side of historical production, too. The "hack-n-slash" gameplay, as most game review sites point out, is incredibly repetitive between new installments of the series; the cast of characters also remain generally the same. So there's something else gripping about the content--its appeal to historifandom's "historifantasies" through its reimagination and repackaging of these "boring" long-dead people into "awesome" heroes.

Sometime in the future I'd like to talk more about the sexualities at work in the Musou historifandom, the "alternate history" appeal of Musou Orochi, and of course more in depth on why and how the Musou characters are "awesome" in a specfically historifandom way.