“Labor Thanksgiving Day (勤労感謝の日 Kinrō Kansha no Hi) is a national holiday in Japan. It takes place annually on November 23. The law establishing the holiday cites it as an occasion for commemorating labor and production and giving one another thanks.
Events are held throughout Japan, one such being the Nagano Labor Festival. The event encourages thinking about the environment, peace and human rights.
It is not unusual for early grade elementary students to create drawings for the holiday and give them as gifts to local kōbans, or police stations.”
“When Japan opened herself to the world in 1868, one of the government’s high priority was catching up with Western standards in science and education. The Japanese education system was reformed mainly according to the German and French model which experts regarded as most suitable and advantageous.”
A woman only identified as “Shiori” was the first to speak out to news media in Japan’s #MeToo movement. Shiori was assaulted in a hotel room in 2015 by a very famous Journalist who has written books about Prime Minister Abe. Shiori has yet to recieve justie
The tag #FightTogetherWithShiori has since become synonymous with #MeToo and #TimesUp on Japanese Twitter.
This is the first woman in Japan to speak out in a high profile sexual assault case against a very famous journalist who has written books about Prime Minister Abe. The first of the #MeToo movement surfacing in japan was based on this case that came out May 2017 as the first brave voice to speak up.
The #MeToo movement in America has greatly helped give women the courage globally to speak up against sexual assault and violence
Now, #standtogetherwithshiori has become the Japanese #metoo and #timesup synonymous rally cry.
Friends of Japan and global women’s rights, I implore you to add #FightTogetherWithShiori to your tweet about women’s rights so you can show your support for Japanese women’s liberation
“Miyagino the filial”, (1847/1848 ?), Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861)
Print from the series “Stories of dutifulness and loyalty in revenge”.
Depicts one of the two sisters who avenged their father during the 17th century. Their story inspired the kabuki play “Go Taiheiki shiraishi banashi” for instance.
Here the older sister, Miyagino, is represented carrying both a naginata and a sake cup.
Print from the series “Thirty-six Good and Evil Beauties”
The princess Kiyoshi Hikariin draws her sword in order to avenge herself. The folding screen behind her is decorated with the mon (crest) of the powerful Tokugawa family, who ruled the shogunate during the Edo period.
If you missed it, this was my April Fool’s Day post on this blog here. I hope I didn’t dash anyone’s hope for Shinsengumi photos too badly. Doing April Fool’s Day posts has become a four year running tradition on this blog. I may let things slide and not post for months, but I’ll get out an April Fool’s Day post, damnit.
My other April 1st project was for Ask Historians’ April Fools’ Event. The theme this year was Clickbait, as long as it was historically accurate clickbait and my Bakumatsu contribution was
I haven’t posted here for a while, and rather unfortunately, I think I must have turned off my notifications too, so there are some very kind messages I missed.
I got back to some history stuff, though. I have a “Meiji Restoration/Late Edo Period” flair on the subreddit Ask Historians, and about a month I got an alert from the AH mod team that lured me back to consistent posting.
A Valentine Day’s Special - The terrible tabloid story of an Edo Period ménage à trois gone wrong, some reflections on adultery law and divorce, and a more amusing story about a pair of lovers who promise to stop stealing the wronged husband’s clothes.
I have a confession to make. I have not watched Shinsengumi! I firmly believe all my friends who say it is a great series. I know I should watch it, all 49 episodes, plus the short sequel about Hijikata. But well, it’s 49 episodes. And I did watch the first episode once and … let’s not get into my Choshu trash bias. I promise I’ll watch it some day.
However, since it’s Shinsengumi!Day, I’m contributing from my store of random stuff I know about the taiga drama.
1.
During a review of NHK’S budget in 2004, Matsuoka Masuo, the Upper House representative for Yamaguchi Prefecture attacked the NHK’s portrayal of the Shinsengumi, which he called a ‘terrorist group,” labeling the program a “variety show” rather than a historical drama.
- Michael Wert, pg. 153, Meiji Restoration Losers
The context that makes this story hilarious: Yamaguchi = Choshu. Some grudges are never forgotten.
There are more specific data available at the nearby Yagi Residence, which is where Serizawa was assassinated. This old house is remarkable only for the violent events that occurred within its walls and the sword damage to pillars caused during the incident remain to this day. Up until the late 1990s, the Yagi Residence received twenty to forty visitors a day. During the 2004 Shinsengumi! boom, there were 600 to 800 visitors, rising to 1,000 on very busy days. After the drama, visitor numbers tailed off to 100 to 200. But, when repeats of Shinsengumi! or other related dramas are aired, these numbers rise to 300 or 400 (interview with the tour guide, 20 May 2012). These figures indicate how some tourist sites benefit in the long term by becoming better known and more established on heritage tourism itineraries. Shinsengumi! ratcheted up standard visitor levels by three to four times.
3. One result of theShinsengumi!mania was the manga Gintama.
When I was preparing for serialization, my editor told me to hop on the Taiga drama “Shinsengumi!” bandwagon, but the problem with historical fiction is that I’m limited by what I can write because of the historical content. I can’t use current events, and Shimura Ken doesn’t exist, and I can’t even use the phrase “I’m screwed!” This is like clipping the wings of my creative freedom, and I wind up saying “I’m screwed!” Setting this during Bakumatsu and changing the foreigners to aliens, I’ve somehow managed to create a crazy world where I can use historical and current topics. It’s not that I did it on purpose. It just happened. -Sorachi Hideaki,Quick Japan 2009 interview.
Also, according to Sorachi, his plan was to cash in with a Harry Potter clone.
Uh, yeah. So, I’d like to talk nakedly about how Gintama was born. It all started with a single thing my editor Monchicchi Onishi said to me. "You know, next year, Taiga dramais going to do Shinsengumi, right? Well, you could jump on the coattails of that.”
I had been thinking up a manga to be serialized… had it in my head to skim bits from Harry Potter, which I had never even seen, whip it up Japanese-style, and make a killing with a story about some kind of school for demon dispellers.
The center one looked like something for a movie poster so it escalated form there. And I had to add Katsura because he had such a villain pose.
Today is Kondou Isami’s birthday, born 183 years ago - 1834 - in a village now within modern Tokyo. The English Shinsengumi! taiga drama fandom has chosen his birthdate as Shinsengumi! day.
The picture above is a vintage photograph of an onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of the upper social classes in feudal Japan.
Often mistakenly referred to as “female samurai”, female warriors have a long history in Japan, beginning long before samurai emerged as a warrior class. However, they did fight alongside of samurai warriors. They were wives, widows and daughters who answered the call of duty to protect their families, households and honor in times of war.
Onna Bugeisha were the exception, rather than the rule, but they still played an important role nonetheless. One famous example is empress Jingu, who reportedly lead a successful conquest against Korea in 200 AD without shedding a single drop of blood (or so the legends say).
This is the second time this photo has gone around, and it is still not an image of an Onna Bugeisha, but rather was a photograph from a set of photos of Kabuki actors and Geisha in costume.
The original caption read:
Portraits of Japanese Kabuki actors and geisha. Unknown photographer, 1870s.
It went on auction, which you can see listedhere, and there were 34 prints total, but none of them were of Onna Bugeisha. Just a heads up! There are images of Onna Bugeisha on this blog here.
Felt the need to reblog it because I encountered this picture listed as “Onna bugeisha” like a thousand time during my research for my thesis (it even appears when you search “Nakano Takeko” on Google which is just…no). It was even used on the cover of a French book about warrior women in history. So I think some help with spreading the word is necessary here.
*this* picture, at last with proper context! I am so tired of having to “push back” whenever I get shown this with the insistence that it’s Nakano Takeko.
Now, there’s an outfit that’d be a drag to wear in 1868 battle. ;-)
Btw, Does anyone know when and in what context “onna bugeisha” was used?Has it existed all along for all the women it’s applied to? Is it an old word that’s been popularized? A newer word that’s been applied backwards? Literary? Historical? Historical-literary? I’ve wondered but not been able to find any information without reading Japanese.
Seems like it’s a newer word from what I can find. An older (probably used in the era) word is “besshikime” (別式女), though that possibly only applies to women instructors? It is difficult to find solid info… I’ll keep looking.
The picture above is a vintage photograph of an onna-bugeisha, one of the female warriors of the upper social classes in feudal Japan.
Often mistakenly referred to as “female samurai”, female warriors have a long history in Japan, beginning long before samurai emerged as a warrior class. However, they did fight alongside of samurai warriors. They were wives, widows and daughters who answered the call of duty to protect their families, households and honor in times of war.
Onna Bugeisha were the exception, rather than the rule, but they still played an important role nonetheless. One famous example is empress Jingu, who reportedly lead a successful conquest against Korea in 200 AD without shedding a single drop of blood (or so the legends say).
This is the second time this photo has gone around, and it is still not an image of an Onna Bugeisha, but rather was a photograph from a set of photos of Kabuki actors and Geisha in costume.
The original caption read:
Portraits of Japanese Kabuki actors and geisha. Unknown photographer, 1870s.
It went on auction, which you can see listedhere, and there were 34 prints total, but none of them were of Onna Bugeisha. Just a heads up! There are images of Onna Bugeisha on this blog here.
Felt the need to reblog it because I encountered this picture listed as “Onna bugeisha” like a thousand time during my research for my thesis (it even appears when you search “Nakano Takeko” on Google which is just…no). It was even used on the cover of a French book about warrior women in history. So I think some help with spreading the word is necessary here.
*this* picture, at last with proper context! I am so tired of having to “push back” whenever I get shown this with the insistence that it’s Nakano Takeko.
Now, there’s an outfit that’d be a drag to wear in 1868 battle. ;-)
Btw, Does anyone know when and in what context “onna bugeisha” was used?Has it existed all along for all the women it’s applied to? Is it an old word that’s been popularized? A newer word that’s been applied backwards? Literary? Historical? Historical-literary? I’ve wondered but not been able to find any information without reading Japanese.
From the Japanese-English Bilingual Corpus of Wikipedia’s Kyoto Articles . This is a translation from Kawai Kisaburo’s Japanese wiki entry, exactly as it was in 2010. It is taken from PNM00214 in that collection.
For information on the database and how to use it, please check this post.
Just like English wikipedia, none of this information is guaranteed to be accurate. It’s not a current version of the Japanese article either.
An anon sent me an ask:
What is the real story of Kawai Kisaburo? How did he exactly die?
and I realized there isn’t any good information on Kawai Kisaburo in English, so here’s his 2010 Japanese wiki article. Unfortunately, there’s no good answer to this question. Kawaki Kisaburo, the Shinsengumi’s accountant, died of seppuku, and he was sentenced to seppuku for a shortfall in the Shinsengumi’s finances. The article presents a lot of the theories and stories around his death, but most of them are dramatic inventions for storytelling purposes.
The simplest explanation, that he was indeed skimming money for his own use, seems to me most likely, but there’s no way to know the truth now.
The translated sentences used in this service contain English contents which are translated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) from Japanese sentences on Wikipedia. My use of these translated sentences is licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. Please refer to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/orhttp://alaginrc.nict.go.jp/WikiCorpus/ for details.
Kisaburo KAWAI
Kisaburo KAWAI (1838 - March 28, 1866) was a Shinsengumi Accountant (a group who guarded Kyoto during the end of Tokugawa Shogunate).
Personality
He was from Takasago City, Harima Province, and his parents’ home was a wealthy Kuramoto (rice wholesaler). His sister, who married into Shoka (mercantile house) in Osaka recommended him to Shinsengumi, which caused Shinpachi NAGAKURA to refer that Kawai was from Osaka.
He played an active role in the accounting of expenses for the group as an accountant, utilizing his skills at arithmetic. Some people believe that he was behind the spear works (military exploits) of other members since he was an accountant. However, some people say that he was as good as the other members since he received rewards for his performance in the Ikedaya Incident; he was active as a ‘fighting accountant.’
In March in 1866, he was made to commit Seppuku (suicide by disembowelment).
Mystery behind his Seppuku (the followings are the assumed reasons)
Because he couldn’t manage to raise the expense for redeeming Miyuki Dayu, the concubine of Isami KONDO (It seems that there is no link between two issues; redeeming Miyuki Dayu was attempted at the different time from Kawai’s purge).
Because he failed account processing under the process of redeeming another geisha other than Miyuki Dayu.
Because he showed his reluctance or gave Kondo critical comments against Kondo’s lavish expenditure for his women as the person responsible for to control expenses of the group, which led to Kawai’s being purged.
Because Kawai misused Shinsengumi’s money for unknown reasons.
The reason which was adopted in the historic drama of NHK (to be described later).
Because Kawai’s plot to carry out a rebellion was identified.
Because he merely used Shinsengumi’s money for himself.
It is unmistakably true that Kawai was purged and died; What happened before Kawai’s death has not yet been identified.
In the historic drama of NHK 'Shinsengumi!’ in 2004, the reason for Kawai’s purge was that he lent Kanryusai TAKEDA, the leader of the fifth group, money for him to buy military science texts without Kondo’s permission.
According to another story, Kawai sent an emissary to his parents’ home to borrow money to cover the money for Shinsengumi to avoid committing Seppuku. At that time, there was a trouble at his parents’ home, by which the money from his parents had been delivered just after Kawai’s Seppuku. His parents, having heard of Kawai’s Seppuku, became extremely angry and had a great tomb built in Mibu-dera Temple to worship their son, apart from the tomb which was built by Shinsengumi.
Because the world needs more samurai content, I’ve made a Shinsengumi-related prompts list for November, which I am calling Shinsenvember! This would be for drabbles mostly, probably, but anything else: art, fic, rp etc. that came out of it would be great. I’m using the tag#Shinsenvember and encourage you to post in it if you do any of these. Don’t worry about trying to do them all (unless that sounds fun to you), just use whatever appeals to you.
I’ve made these prompts so they should all work for any Shinsengumi fandom, except Gintama, (but I would be totally tickled if people used any of these for Gintama). I’ve linked interesting stuff for some of the prompts but they’re not full explanations or limits on how to use the prompts.
November 1 -That Pale Blue Haori November 2-Bakemono November 3 - Swords November 4-Pigs and Pork November 5-The Shinsengumi Code November 6 -The Ikedaya November 7-The Tokaido (or other journeys) November 8 - Sake November 9-Fire!(A constant threat) November 10 - Treachery November 11 - Espionage November 12-Tuberculosis November 13 - A View from the Other Side (the Shinsengumi as seen by others) November 14 - Kids in Kyoto (Okita played with some) November 15 - Seppuku November 16 - Family Back Home November 17 - Tenchu! (literally, “Divine Punishment”, the cry of a Sonnou Joui assassin.) November 18 - Western Uniform November 19 - Funerals November 20 - Internal Investigations (Yamazaki’s realm) November 21- Rangaku Medicine November 22 - Retreat November 23 - Promotions (the Shinsengumi going up in the world) November 24- Edo Women (supposedly headstrong and stubborn) November 25 - Kyoto Women (Here’s the whole women’s history tag.) November 26 - Foreigners (not allowed in Kyoto, but in the ports and people’s worries, present in Boshin War) November 27 - Prison November 28 - Local Delicacies (Every place has them.) November 29 - Battle November 30 - Writing Memoirs (Real or imaginary)
Inspired by this post. It was terribly cold in the morning, and when it’s cold I often think of Ezo/Hakodate/real cool stories about Hakodate/Hijikata in Ezo/etc, so I decided to draw something about Ezo Republic authorities and votes they got during that election. It’s clear that:
When the Portuguese arrived in Japan in 1549 they brought Christianity with Jesuit missionaries. During this period Japan was in a period of civil war known as the Sengokuera where several warlords were in conflict with each other for control of Japan. Unsurprisingly, many samurais - particularly ronins who did not serve a master of their own - adopted Christianity choosing Jesus as their lord instead. Curiously, many of these samurais did not share the same common practices as their fellow warriors like seppuku where they committed ritualistic suicide to restore their honor because suicide is a sin and instead they fought to the death. The most well-known of them are Dom Justo Takayama who is on his way of becoming the first Japanese saint recognized by the Catholic Church, and Amakusa Shiro, who is revered as an folk saint by Japanese Roman Catholics.
“[Japan] was closed to Portuguese ships in 1639 until 1853. But trade was still carried out with the Dutch and Chinese on the Nagasaki island of Dejima, and relations were established with Korea via the Tsushima region and with China again through the Ryukyu Kingdom (today’s Okinawa). Relations with the Ainu of Northern Japan, meanwhile, went through the Matsumae domain in Hokkaido. These were all windows onto the world….
Sarasa — a geometrically patterned and colorful, often reddish, fabric — was sewn into Japanese clothing and accessories…. It became a major trade item, with the first official record of it entering Japan in 1613; though, ostensibly it had been introduced earlier via the Ryukyu islands, perhaps a century earlier.
Kyoto’s Gion Festival in July still boasts floats displaying tapestries from Belgium (then a part of the Netherlands) and Persian carpets as decorations, all mixed in with sarasa fabrics. Sarasa also featured in Edo Period paintings and was prized for use in the creation of tea-caddy bags, wrapping cloths, and pouches for tea utensils….”
