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Ooku volumes 2-4, Yoshinaga Fumi
Sep. 8th, 2010 07:08 pmOoku 2-4, Fumi Yoshinaga
(Yes, I did read volume two more than a month ago.)
Ooku volume 2 is set about one hundred years before volume 1. It's a stronger book, I think, but it's clear why it needed to be the second volume in the series. The flawed but relatively functional matriarchal Japan of Yoshimune's reign needed to be established and made to feel convincing, to give the decisions made in Chie/Iemitsu's time the gravity they need to feel real.
There's this sort of story that I think of as a "negotiable narrative" - one where, for some reason, the reader is compelled make comparisons between the narrative presented, and an alternate narrative that is in some sense more "real." In this case, if volume 2 were read before volume 1, the alternate narrative - with which most Japanese readers would be at least somewhat familiar - is the actual historical narrative of the early Edo era.
When volume 2 is read after volume 1 and framed as a story that Yoshimune is reading, however, Yoshimune's own alternate Japan becomes the basis for comparison. We read it wondering what she and the people around her might think of it, not what the historical Iemitsu might have thought.
This is a good choice for the kind of alternate history Yoshinaga is writing here. It's sort of a suspension-of-disbelief issue, but it's also partly a question of tone. The first kind of alternate history always runs the risk of feeling didactic, even when that's not the author's intent (though I think it often is). It's easy for even innocuous decisions on the author's part to feel like criticism, or advice. By beginning the story in a Japan radically different from the real one, then moving backwards to one that is just beginning to diverge, Yoshinaga defines the story as one taking place in another world, which makes the criticisms that she is sneaking in - and I would say that she is making some criticisms here! - seem more organic to the story.
(Incidentally, I feel like Jacqueline Carey did something very similar to this with Kushiel's Dart. She gives the reader a kind of permission to buy into the fantasy by introducing the floating world of the Night Court first - and not making it clear until further in that, oh, by the way, this is all happening in a fairly close approximation of Europe. It just works better.)
Volume 2 and the first portion of volume 3 are the sort of story Yoshinaga is good at - several smart, unhappy people make a lot of understandable bad decisions and hurt each other, slowly coming to terms with the unfairness of the world.
I'm not sure what happened with the second part of volume 3, but it started to fall apart. ( Cut for an infinitesimal spoiler. )
(Yes, I did read volume two more than a month ago.)
Ooku volume 2 is set about one hundred years before volume 1. It's a stronger book, I think, but it's clear why it needed to be the second volume in the series. The flawed but relatively functional matriarchal Japan of Yoshimune's reign needed to be established and made to feel convincing, to give the decisions made in Chie/Iemitsu's time the gravity they need to feel real.
There's this sort of story that I think of as a "negotiable narrative" - one where, for some reason, the reader is compelled make comparisons between the narrative presented, and an alternate narrative that is in some sense more "real." In this case, if volume 2 were read before volume 1, the alternate narrative - with which most Japanese readers would be at least somewhat familiar - is the actual historical narrative of the early Edo era.
When volume 2 is read after volume 1 and framed as a story that Yoshimune is reading, however, Yoshimune's own alternate Japan becomes the basis for comparison. We read it wondering what she and the people around her might think of it, not what the historical Iemitsu might have thought.
This is a good choice for the kind of alternate history Yoshinaga is writing here. It's sort of a suspension-of-disbelief issue, but it's also partly a question of tone. The first kind of alternate history always runs the risk of feeling didactic, even when that's not the author's intent (though I think it often is). It's easy for even innocuous decisions on the author's part to feel like criticism, or advice. By beginning the story in a Japan radically different from the real one, then moving backwards to one that is just beginning to diverge, Yoshinaga defines the story as one taking place in another world, which makes the criticisms that she is sneaking in - and I would say that she is making some criticisms here! - seem more organic to the story.
(Incidentally, I feel like Jacqueline Carey did something very similar to this with Kushiel's Dart. She gives the reader a kind of permission to buy into the fantasy by introducing the floating world of the Night Court first - and not making it clear until further in that, oh, by the way, this is all happening in a fairly close approximation of Europe. It just works better.)
Volume 2 and the first portion of volume 3 are the sort of story Yoshinaga is good at - several smart, unhappy people make a lot of understandable bad decisions and hurt each other, slowly coming to terms with the unfairness of the world.
I'm not sure what happened with the second part of volume 3, but it started to fall apart. ( Cut for an infinitesimal spoiler. )
