The Japan Society Review 45
Book, Stage, Movie, Arts and Events Review

Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)

400 years ago
Sean Curtin on history in the making
A tale of two worlds
Chris Corker digests the latest offering from Haruki Murakami

cross section of translated work, including 1Q84, Murakami’s
latest surrealist blockbuster novel; The Winter Sun Shines In,
reflections on the life of poet Masaoka Shiki by the scholar
Donald Keene; a 2013 translation of Schoolgirl by the shortlived writer Ozamu Dazai, and Clouds above the Hill, an
historical epic based on the author’s experience of the ­­Russo­- ­Japanese War.
Introducing this array of great literary exports is an article byour editor Sean Curtin, who joined others in celebrating thevery first British vessel to sail into Japanese waters, 400 years
ago this June. So began a cultural exchange that continues tothis day.

This issue focuses on a selection of Japanese writers intranslation, from the current poster-boy of Japanese fiction,
Haruki Murakami, to the rarely translated historical novelist,
Shiba Ryōtarō.
Any country’s literature is essential to a broader understandingof its character and history. The great Japan scholar andtranslator Louis Allen once wrote:
In order to know a nation fully you have to go beyond
knowing the way it expresses itself in its laws, its military
behaviour, and its political systems. You have to know the
way it talks about itself unconciously and through its fiction.
In other words, the fiction of a nation is as important as thefacts of a nation if we want to know it properly.

Jack Cooke, June 2013

Viewed in this light, the continuing translation of Japanesenovels into English is vital work and this issue presents a broadContents
1) Britain & Japan – 400 Years: A Voyage Through Words and Music2) 1Q84 - Book One and Book Two3) The Winter Sun Shines In, A Life of Masaoka Shiki
4) Schoolgirl5) Clouds above the Hill (坂の上の雲), Volumes I and II.......................................................

.........................................................­........................................................................................................................................

6) Aesthetic Strategies of the Floating World, Mitate, Yatsushi andFûryû in Early Modern Japanese Popular Culture

EditorSean Curtin
Managing Editor
Jack Cooke
Reviewers
Chris Corker, Mark Headley and Sean Curtin
Special Reviewer
Sir Hugh Cortazzi
New reviewswww.japansociety.org.uk/resources/the-japan-society-review

Britain & Japan – 400
Years: A Voyage ThroughWords and Music
Tuesday 11 June 2013
All Saints Church Fulham,
Bishops Park, London, SW6 3LA
Review by Sean Curtin

Britain & Japan – 400 Years
was an absolutely brilliant
evening of uplifting music, verse and spectacle to markfour centuries since the UK and Japan initiated official
ties. When John Saris, commander of The Clove, sailed
the very first British vessel into Japanese waters on 11
June 1613, he could not have ever dreamt that four
hundred years to the day we would be celebrating avibrant relationship which has stood the test of timeand greatly enriched both countries. Saris spent his
final years living in a house just behind All Saints Church
in Fulham, where he worshiped and also where he isburied. This special association made the magnificent
old church the perfect location to celebrate this uniqueoccasion. The current vicar, the Reverend Canon Joe
Hawes, commented ‘I think it most appropriate thatthe event marking this significant voyage is happening
here.’The Japan 400 organizers created a truly memorable
evening of visionary content to mark this pivotal
milestone and remind the two nations of the deepand long-lasting nature of their friendship. The lyricalevening was divided into six well-crafted sections which
together attempted to recreate different stages of Saris’
epic voyage. Each segment succeeded in capturing
the essence of a particular phase of The Clove’s long
journey. Using a combination of inspiring music,
moving verse, singing interspersed with dancing, andvisual imagery, the past was conjured back to life. It
was a magnificent show with high production values
and a fantastic venue which allowed the audience tofeel a sense of connection with Saris and his time. On
occasions it was a moving experience which made one
reflect on the immense dangers the crew of The Cloveendured. The evening also succeeded in restoring
John Saris and his accomplishments back into themainstream of historical narrative.

a thoughtful address to launch proceedings. The firstpart of the music fest was entitled ‘Setting the Scene:
Music of 1611–1613′and gave the audience a taste ofperiod tunes with some excellent performances.

1Q84
by Haruki Murakami

As part of the effort to rekindle a link with Saris andtake the audience back in time, the current Lord
Salisbury, whose ancestor advised King James I on
the voyage, outlined The Clove’s mission as part ofthe second section. Following this reading the tempo
went up a gear as the third segment, entitled ‘The
Mission,’ burst into life. Pianist Noriko Ogawa gave an
impressive performance of Debussy’s L’Isle Joyeus. Thiswas followed by a spirited reading of John Masefield’s
Sea Fever by David Warren after which it seemed theevening was on full throttle with a non-stop successionof impressive performances by various artists. The
electrified audience were encouraged to join in a
lively sea shanty section. As the atmospheric church
resonated with glorious music and singing, it really
did feel that one was participating in a very special
event. After an intermission the fourth part, entitled‘Arrival,’ sprang off the blocks with a lively music anddance routine which included local school children.
It was a stunning visual scene which led into anotherseries of dynamic musical performances and thoughtprovoking readings carrying the audience into thefinal two segments of an incredible commemorativeevening.

464 pages

Every single performer and organiser deserves theupmost praise for what was a real tour-de-force. Thisfantastic concert is just one of the events Japan 400
has organized to highlight this important anniversary
year. This evening and other events have made asignificant contribution to bilateral ties by making us
re-examine the genesis of our partnership with Japanand rediscover how things all began.

Many of the performances evoked a strong sense of
the sea and maritime adventure, a key theme of theevening, reminding the audience of the immense
uncertainties seafarers faced. Many who set sail with
Saris never returned and it took a gruelling two years
for the ship to make its way from England to Japan.
The Clove departed on 18 April 1611 but did not return
until 27 September 1614, arriving in Plymouth.

ISBN-13: 978-0099549055
Review by Chris Corker
Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel 1Q84, the title
being a nod to Orwell’s 1984 (the Japanese nine being
read kyuu), was released in two stages. Books One andTwo coming out a week before Book Three. While on
one hand this may have seemed like a marketing ploy,
it did make an otherwise daunting novel manageable(1Q84 is comparable with The Brothers Karamazov interms of size). While I don’t agree that 1Q84 is quite
the Magnum Opus that others have claimed (I feel that
Wind-up Bird Chronicle may yet retain that title), it is
as infinitely readable as
so many of Murakami’s
other works.
On her way to kill a
man in a Shibuya hotel,
Aomame is forced totake a shortcut fromthe bridge, climbing
down a ladder. After the
man is dead, Aomame
begins to notice subtle
differences
aroundher, indicative of what
she decides must bea parallel universe. At
the same time, Tengo
receives a rough but
promising manuscriptfrom a young girl who
he later discovers isdyslexic. When he visits
the girl to ask for permission to re-write the manuscript,
he finds that her family are part of a religious
commune, which the girl herself escaped from. The
rumours are that everyone there is being brainwashedand conditioned into emotionless robots. This is theintriguing setup to a story that combines elements ofdetective stories, horror and the supernatural, as thetwo main characters become entwined in mattersabove their heads.
The story is nicely set up and starts to flow well. I haveto say that I’ve never been a fan of the alternating
perspective of storytelling, a technique that otherauthors stretch to the limits of usefulness, as it feels
like a padding technique. It does, however, in this casegive us an interesting pace shift and allows us to sharethe frustrations of the characters as they search foreach other in vain.

The evening was anchored by Japan 400 CoChairman, Nicolas Maclean with Keiichi Hayashi,
Japan’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom, giving
2

Vintage, 2012

Tengo is, in a lot of ways, the archetypal Murakami
Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)

Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)protagonist. A thirty year-old misanthrope, detachedfrom the workings of society, without a real job,
without a real relationship, not really knowing thedestination he wants to take in his life. What’s different
about Tengo, however, is that he seems so much more
selfish than the usual type of protagonist employed,
making him harder to relate to as a result.
The other main protagonist, Aomame, is a realconundrum. Her motivations for doing what she does
seem a little weak (the lady she works for never goesto such extremes herself) and even at the end of thenovel, I found it difficult to muster any sympathy forher. She also seems overly fascinated with her own
body (perhaps a slightly masculine interpretation ofa female protagonist – I am yet to be convinced by
Murakami’s female characters).
In terms of the storyline, I can divulge very little without
spoiling the plot. One of
the more atmosphericrecurring
scenesfeatures a spectre-likeNHK (the Japanese BBC)collections officer who
slams on the doors ofapartments in a brilliant
metaphor for a guilty
conscience. I also foundthe New Religion plot tobe very intriguing, witha fulfilling conclusion,
which is more than canbe said of the novel asa whole, which ends
vaguely.
The subject of New
Religions is one that is
far from a dead in Japan
and, even now, newreligious organisations similar to Aum Shinrikyo (asubject that has also been delved into in Murakami’sbook Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and theJapanese Psyche, which documents first hand reportsof the Sarin Gas attacks) are still going strong, withmember contributions funding their operations. The
claims of these organisations, much like the natureof the magic realism that Murakami employs, aredifficult to believe and understand, but easy to accept
and often ensnare the unsuspecting. This also is thestrength of Murakami. It isn’t always clear why he does
something, and often there seems to be no reason atall, but his books are addictive nonetheless. I took lessaway from 1Q84 than I did his other works, but it still
had me eagerly turning the page.
Would I recommend it as an entry point for nonMurakami officianados? No, I wouldn’t, but it is stilla pleasant read where Murakami veterans will findelements of the things that made Murakami such a3

beloved author, and this work also gives us hope forhis next novel, the long-windedly titled Colourless
Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage, which
was released in Japan only recently. This is a shorter
work which was adapted from a short story, much in
the way Norwegian Wood was adapted from Firefly,
and may be a more accessible book for newcomers to
the Murakami canon.
I’ve been a Murakami fan since my first year atuniversity. At the time I was trawling through bookafter book of clearly defined Thriller, Crime and Horror,
shamelessly adhering to archaic conventions set down
decades ago. Finally, I came to a book with pure white
cover featuring a picture of a black kitten. The name,
Kafka on the Shore, was bizarre enough to interest
me and I flipped over the book to read the synopsis. It
was totally different to any premise I had read before,
seeming part screwball comedy, part magic realism.
I read it in a couple of days. Having become morefamiliar with Japanese culture, his books seem slightly
diminished in their novelty, but his gift of storytellingand intrigue still have me eagerly awaiting each newwork like 1Q84.

of Shiki’s life and the many literary figures, including
the novelist Natsume Soseki with whom Shike came incontact during his brief career.
Shiki was born in Matsuyama in Shikoku. He was theson of an impoverished low ranking samurai. He wasambitious and in 1883 made his way from Shikoku by sea
to Tokyo where he began to study philosophy, but hewas temperamentally unsuited to the subject and soonturned to literature and aesthetics. He forced himself toovercome his physical weakness and became intriguedby baseball. The following haiku composed by Shiki in1890 reflects his enjoyment of the game:

		
		
		

harukaze yamare no nagetaki
kusa no hara

		
		
		

Spring breezes How I’d love to throw a ballOver a grassy field.

He took up journalism and determined to becomea writer. Despite the handicap imposed by illness heacted as a war correspondent in the Sino-Japanese
war of ­1894-­5 for the nationalist newspaper Nippon.
He was highly critical of the way in which the Japanesearmy treated war correspondents as equivalent to
private soldiers. But his primary interest was literature.

The Winter Sun Shines
In, A Life of Masaoka
Shiki founded the haiku journal Hototogisu whose
Shiki
by Donald Keene
Columbia University Press,
New York, 2013248 pages
ISBN: 978-0-231-16488-7
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Professor Donald Keene,
who is now a Japanesenational and lives in Tokyo, is the doyen of western studies
of Japanese culture and history. He began to study theJapanese language more than seventy years ago and has
written some thirty scholarly and very readable studies ofa wide variety of aspects of Japanese culture, in particular
Japanese literature through the ages.
His latest book describes the life and works of one of themost significant poets of the Meiji period, when Japanese
literature, in response to the revolutionary changes thentaking place in Japan, adopted new forms and styles.
Shiki Masaoka [正岡 子規] is best known as the leading
haiku poet of the modern era, but he also, as Keene
explains, wrote tanka, modern poems (shintaishi), novels
and essays as well as a Noh play. His life was a shortone (1867-1902) and for much of it he suffered fromdebilitating and painful ailments.
Keene gives an interesting and informative account4

creed was shasei which meant that haiku must reflect
real life rather than the idealized world. Haiku ‘must
include the ordinary and even ugly elements of daily
life.’ Keene in his introduction quotes the following
haiku written by Shiki in 1896 as an example of shasei:
		
		
		

aki kaze ni
koborete akashi
kamigakiko

		
		
		

As it spills overIn the autumn breeze, how red it looksMy tooth powder.

The first haiku by Shiki which was printed was, Keene
notes in discussing Shiki’s student days, the following:

		
		
		
		

		
		

mushi no ne wo
fumiwake yuku ya
no no komichi
Trampling throughInsect cries, I create
A path through the fields.

Among haiku by Shiki, quoted by Keene, the following’is notable not only for its sensitivity to nature and theseasons, typical of Japanese poetry, but also for its
unusual combination of imagery’:		Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)

		
		
		

ajisai ya
kabe no kuzure wo
shibuku ame

		
		
		

Hydrangeas and rain beating down
on a crumbled wall.

Shiki criticized what he considered the excessive
reverence for the haiku master Matsuo Basho (16441694) and praised the haiku of that other master, thepoet and painter Yosa (Taniguchi) Buson (1716-1783),
whose haiku had, Shiki thought, been neglected. Shiki
attracted a number of disciples including anotherfamous modern writer of haiku Kyoshi Takahama [高浜 虚子] although he and Shiki did not always agree.
Basho, Buson, Issa and Shiki (and perhaps Kyoshi) are
now seen by many as the leading Japanese haiku
poets.
Keene ends his introduction to this biography withthe following conclusion about Shiki’s contribution
to modern Japanese literature: ‘The haiku and tanka
were all but dead when Shiki began to write his poetry
and criticism. The best poets of the time had lostinterest in short poems. Shiki and his disciples, finding
new possibilities of expression within the traditional
forms, preserved them. The millions of Japanese (andmany non-Japanese) who compose haiku and tanka
today belong to the School of Shiki, and even poets
who write entirely different forms of poetry havelearned from him. He was the founder of truly modern
Japanese poetry.’
We must hope that Donald Keene continues for many
years to add to his many books on Japanese culture.

Schoolgirl
by Osamu Dazai,
translated by Allison
Markin Powell
One Peace Books, 2012103 pages
ISBN: 978-1935548089
Review by Chris Corker
It isn’t always necessary
to know the backgroundof an author to enjoy anovel, but it often adds a
depth and understanding that is otherwise impossible.
This is certainly the case with Dazai [太宰 治 - 19 June
1909 to 13 June 1948], who in many ways epitomises
the feelings of his contemporaries, and the younger
generation of his time. Some authors steadfastly
attempt to write what they don’t know; to experiment.
Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)

Others rely on their knowledge and feelings to write
what inevitably becomes a genuine representation of
their thoughts. The latter is certainly true with Dazai,
whose works all seem to be semi-autobiographicalin nature, even (as is the case with Schoolgirl 女生徒)
when the protagonist of the story is a young girl.

Schoolgirl was the first of Dazai’s published works, andgained him national acclaim. The novella is set in Tokyo
during the Second World War, a time of patriotism
and strife for the general population. Although, theprotagonist seems unaffected by both. When being
lectured at school, she notes the following:‘She (the teacher) went on and on, explaining to us
about patriotism, but wasn’t that pretty obvious? I
mean, everyone loves the place they were born. I felt
bored.’
To describe the plot in any depth would be an exercise
in futility, as the novella takes the form of a day-in-thelife, stream of consciousness, similar to an extended
diary entry, where the young protagonist begins bytalking about certain events that have influenced herlife such as the war and the death of her father, only tothen be sidetracked on some minor detail and to go
off on a tangent, giving us a glimpse into her psyche.
It’s obvious that the protagonist is a person, much like
Dazai, who is struggling with their role in their particularclass. Dazai, who felt great resentment for the ease of
his life and the luxury of his social status, was neveron good terms with his parents, or in many cases
his siblings. He was even a member of the Japanesecommunist party, whose ideal would certainly see
Dazai’s class dragged from their pedestal. These actsof self-flagellation were a constant feature in Dazai’s
years and he finally succumbed to them in 1948,
when he committed suicide after several unsuccessfulattempts.
The girl in the story seems to be in the same state ofconflict as Dazai, not only with her class but also withher emotions, which are so often juxtaposed with how
she is supposed to behave. During the course of thestory, she struggles to adopt these affectations that
more often than not represent the polar opposite of
how she really feels. Like Dazai, she believes privilege to
be a curse:‘. . . before I knew it that privilege of mine had disappeared
and, stripped bare, I was absolutely awful.’
She is also in a constant state of self-analysis, where every
action that she considered a failing is logged and serves
as source of shame. Even as her train seat by the door isunashamedly taken from her by a man (an action that isstill easy to witness in modern Tokyo), the protagonist,
after pointing out his impropriety, still manages to allot
some of the blame to herself:‘When I thought about it, though, which one of us was
the brazen one? Probably me.’5

The novella is a form that hasn’t enjoyed the same
success in the west as it has in Japan. There is no
escaping the fact that this book is very short, despite
the inclusion of a preface and a foreword, which
are themselves quite brief. Standing at just over
one hundred pages, and with a third of each pageillustrated with the kanji for the title of the book, it
could be argued that it isn’t the best value for money.
I would say that the strength of this medium, andindeed the strength of Dazai’s works, is that this brevity
facilitates a large amount of imagery in each page.
Every paragraph that you read and every page you
turn has you thinking back, considering the subtext
and significance of seemingly throwaway comments.
If one part of the book could sum up the sentiment andthe feeling of Dazai’s works in general, it would be this,the imagery and word use being deep but accessible:‘(Waking up in the morning is) Sort of like opening abox, only to find another box inside, so you open that
other box and there’s another box inside, and you
open it, and one after another there are smaller boxes
inside each other, so you keep opening them, sevenor eight of them, until finally what’s left in the box is asmall die, so you gently pry it open to find . . . nothing,it’s empty.’
A note on the translation. While I think that Allison
Markin Powell has done a great job of recreating
the voice of a teenage girl, readers from the United
Kingdom may find the Americanisms such as ‘bogus’and ‘the worst’ to be irksome. Otherwise, this is a crisp
and accessible translation.
I would recommend readers who have enjoyed thisbook to try No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku 人間失格) as it feels like a much more fleshed-out
version of Schoolgirl, and one that seems to represent
Dazai’s feelings even more overtly. There are few
works of supposed fiction that could claim to be more
autobiographical in nature. Fans of the confessional
style of Dazai and Japanese literature may also want to
try Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, a brutally honest
but beautifully written look into the life of another ofJapan’s famous authors.

Clouds above the Hill
(坂の上の雲), Volumes I and II
by Shiba Ryōtarō
Routledge, 2013388 pages
ISBN: 978-0415508766
Review by Mark Headley
Shiba Ryōtarō, born in Osakain 1923, studied Mongolian at the Osaka School of
6

Foreign Languages and worked as a reporter in Kyoto.
After the war, he began writing historical novels,
mainly set in the Late Tokugawa and Meiji Eras, but also
including works on Yoshitsune, Toyotomi Hideoyoshi
and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Many of his novels have been
adapted for TV and the cinema.

Clouds above the Hill, considered to be Shiba Ryōtarō’s
most popular work, centres on the lives of two brothers,
Akiyama Yoshifuru and Akiyama Saneyuki, and theirfriend, the poet Masaoka Shiki, all from Matsuyama(Shikoku), against the background of the First SinoJapanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War(1904-95). It originally appeared in a serial publicationin eight parts from 1968 to 1972. The first four ofthese parts have now been published in an English
translation in two volumes, and Volumes III and IV are
due for publication in November 2013.
In both the First Sino-Japanese War and the RussoJapanese War the newly industrialized Japan scoreda spectacular victory over a far larger country in eachcase. In the former, although China had begun tomodernize her forces, acquiring inter alia the Germanbuilt Dingyuan and Zhenyuan which were thenamongst the most powerful battleships in the worldand superior to any ships in the Imperial Japanese Navy,a large part of the funds allocated for this purpose were
diverted by the Dowager Empress Cixi to such projects
as the Summer Palace; in Ryōtarō’s words it ‘was, inshort, something along the lines of a great experimentcarried out between a superannuated order (Qingdynasty China) and a brand-new one (Japan)’ [Vol. I,
page 260]. The Japanese victory was a vindication of
the Meiji policies of accelerated ­­­­modernization overthe preceding 25 years and Western arma­ments,
training and tactics; the tremendous boost to theirconfidence allowed the Japanese to feel they had
joined the ranks of the Western great powers, as
shown by Japan’s align­ment with the Western campduring the Boxer uprising of 1900, described in thebook with ­­­par­ti­cular refe­rence to Japan and Russia[Vol. I, pages 370 to 375]. That this equality with theWestern powers was still something of an illusion wasshown after the gains awarded to Japan in the Treatyof Shimonoseki were overturned by the inter­vention ofFrance, Germany and Russia; it was Russia’s acquisitionof these territories and, in par­ti­cu­lar her designs upon
Korea, which led to the increase in tension between
Russia and Japan which were ultimately to result inwar.
The Russo-Japanese War was the first major war of
the 20th century and is often con­sidered to be thefirst ‘modern’ war. In many respects it was a precursorof the First World War ten years later. Although tanks,
aircraft and poison gas were yet to be developed
and the submarines already in service in the Russianand Japanese Navies did not play a decisive role, theheavy artillery, machine guns, trenches and barbed
Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)

wire associated with WW1 were already present in the
Russo-Japanese War.
In point of fact, however, Russia and Japan had one
important feature in common: both were slow to
adopt the modernization and industrialization ofWestern Europe, and later the USA, i.e. essentially
Westernization. Amongst the numerous reformers,
Peter the Great (1682-1725) single-handedly forced
through a crash programme to turn Russia from a
mediaeval back­water into a European great power;
he succeeded in military terms by defeating Sweden
and the Ottoman Empire, but social conditions, and inparticu­lar that of the serfs, remained largely unchanged.
In the case of Japan, after the Meiji Restoration of 1868
it was eventually agreed to end the self-imposed
isolation (sakoku) of two and a half centuries ofunder the Tokugawa Shoguns and to resist Western
encroachment by adopting full-scale modernization,in order to avoid the fate of the Chinese who had
revealed them­selves powerless to resist Western
aggression. Peter the Great’s attempts to modernize
Russia were borne in mind by the Japanese, the bookdrawing an interesting parallel between him andthe Japanese daimyō Shimazu Nariakira of Satsuma
and Nabeshima Kansō of Saga who enthusiasticallyintroduced new technology into their domains [Vol. I,
page 351]. Not only did Japan prove more successful
than Russia in this respect, but it is probably universally
regarded as the pre-eminent example of a successful
newly indus­trialized nation.
At the outset of the war, Russia appeared to havethe overwhelming ad­van­tage: with a population
estimated at 130 million, Russia had an army of one
million and, despite the con­flict taking place at theother end of the Eurasian landmass from the politicaland industrial heartland, had the capacity to supply
her forces by the recently completed Trans-Siberian
Railway. Japan had a population of only around fortysix million, and an army half the size of Russia’s. Russia’s
Cossack cavalry was generally acknowledged to be thebest in the world, whereas Japan’s was virtually nonexistent. Russia’s attitude to Japan was gene­rally oneof overconfidence, grossly underestimating Japan’s
potential.
That is not to suggest shortcomings in the Russian
leadership. General Kuropatkin had visited Japan
in 1903 and rated her army (but not the cavalry)
and artillery as being the equal of their European
equivalents; far from being an incompetent fool, he isdescribed as ‘the finest tactician in Europe’ [Vol. II, page267] and portrayed rather as too much of an absolutist,with­drawing from Liaoyang when the situation wasless than perfect instead of taking the ini­tiative when
victory was still possible.
Conversely the Japanese leadership did not invariably
display the degree of effi­ciency which one associates
Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)

with Japan: the most prominent example of suchfailings is Major General Ijichi Kōsuke’s not seizing theunfortified 203-Metre Hill overlooking Port Arthur atthe beginning of the siege. General Nogi Maresuke’s
sub­sequent consignment of thousands of troops
to their inevi­table death in trying to capture it only
after it had been heavily fortified is a recurrent themeof the book; Shiba is highly critical of Nogi, who has
generally enjoyed the reputation of a war hero. Sadly,
the degree to which blood was needlessly shed isperhaps the ultimate way in which the carnage of theWW1 was fore­shadowed; in the author’s words [Vol. II,page 206] ‘The fort at Port Arthur became a vast pumpthat sucked up Japanese blood.’‘Russia’s attitude to Japan was gene­rally oneof overconfidence, grossly underestimating
Japan’s potential.’
The work is described as a ‘best-selling novel’, but interms of depth and detail it goes way beyond evenwhat is generally understood as being an historicalnovel. It is instruc­tive to compare it with War andPeace which, despite Tolstoy’s own denial, may betaken as an archetypal example of such a novel. Thisis centred around a number of fic­tio­nal characters
against the background of Napoleon’s invasion of
Russia; many of the protagonists, e.g. Prince Andrei, aredirectly involved in the action, and some non-fictional
characters, e.g. Prince Speransky and Field Marshal
Kutuzov, also appear. In the case of Clouds above
the Hill on the other hand, all the characters are nonfictional; in this case the historical events are illustrated
through the three central characters, in par­ti­cu­lar the
Akiyama brothers. There is consequently a large castof characters who serve as vehicles to advance theaction; one surprising virtual absentee is the Meiji
Emperor himself who puts in a minor appearance only
late in Volume II.
In contrast to Tolstoy’s philosophizing, Clouds above
the Hill is enlivened by frequent pithy observations,such as ‘The hardest part of foreign relations is thedomestic rather than the foreign part.’ [Vol. II, page44] or ‘The military profession justi­fies not just killing
enemy soldiers but even more so, killing one’s own.’[Vol. II, page 385].
Despite the wealth of detail the book contains, it is fastpaced and the momentum accele­rates as the action
progresses. As far as I can see, without refe­rence to theoriginal Japa­nese, the translation is also excellent.
As with any high-quality work, any errors, howeverminor, become more prominent by contrast with theremainder. I shall confine myself to mentioning thefollowing: It was the English navy which defeated the
Spanish Armada in 1588, not the British, as this was wellbefore the Acts of Union of 1707 and indeed the Unionof the Crowns of 1603 [Vol. I, page 307]. The Spanish
7

form of Christo­pher Columbus is Cristóbal Colón, not
Cristóbol Colón. Vladi­vostok is better translated as‘Rule the East’ (the usual rendering) or even ‘Control
the East’ rather than ‘Conquer the East’, which is quite
wrong and gives a misleading impression. Finally I am
somewhat puzzled by the statement [Vol. II, page 304]
that Napoleon received no formal training, i.e. military,when in fact he attended the mili­tary academy at
Brienne-le-Château from 1779 to 1784 after which
he trained in the École Militaire in Paris, graduating in
1785.

Clouds above the Hill will be essential reading foranyone with an interest in Japanese history, in Russian
history and in the history of the 20th century in general.
Readers of Volumes I and II will doubtless look forward
to the publication of Volumes III and IV in November
with the keenest anticipation.

Aesthetic Strategies of
the Floating Worldby Alfred Haft
Brill, Leiden and Boston,2013
216 pages
Review by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
Alfred Haft works at the
British Museum as a project
curator in the Japanese
section of the department of Asia. He is also a research
associate of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study ofJapanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC) at Norwich. This
book is based on his Ph.D thesis and inevitably is more
likely to be of interest to the specialist art historian than
the general reader, but the book, which is copiously
illustrated with reproductions of relevant Japanese
prints in full colour, nevertheless has much to offer
to anyone interested in the art and culture of the Edo
period.
It is not possible in a brief review to give an adequate
summary of Haft’s scholarly analysis of the threeterms in the title to his book. But readers will notethat in his introduction he explains that his study islargely built round the concepts behind the term
gazoku which may be translated as the refined andthe mundane. In the concluding section he sums up
the terms mitate as ‘analogical juxtaposition,’ yatsushi
as casual adaptation and fûryû as standards of style,although such simplified translations fail to convey thecomplexity and nuances of these terms.

circumstances in an easy going manner and eventually
met with a happy end [p.39].’
He notes that one version of mitate involved thebundling of ‘elements of the everyday world (householdobjects) into an organizational relationship modelled
on a component of high culture (nature studies)’ i.e
the combination of high and low culture.

Fûryû was ‘the ideal of elegance,’ which is such animportant element in so much of Japanese culture,
but as Haft points out the term came in the eighteenth
century to be used as a euphemism for kõshoku or
eroticism. Prostitution was a major element of thefloating world. It was, he notes ‘running rampant near
the entrance gates to Edo’s many shrines and temples,and even on properties allotted for use by the shogun’s
own retainers [p.29].’
In discussing the use of these terms in the Edo period
Haft looks at the Japanese pastime of writing linked
verses and haikai. For the haikai poet mitate denotes‘the juxtaposition of two objects viewed to have asimilar shape [page 91].’ This leads him into a discussionof humour in Japanese poetry and art. He notes thatthe ‘culture of Edo Japan was alive with humor [sic],
adaption, appropriation, innovation, unexpectedjuxtaposition, classicism, didacticism and continuity –a diversity of approaches spurring artistic growth in an
ambitious range of directions [p.173].’
Haft’s book sheds much interesting light on life in the
Edo period. The samurai were the elite but the ‘floatingworld’ was as much their world as it was that of themerchants and commoners. Actors may have been intheory outcasts but they were depicted by artists suchas Shunsho Katsukawa [勝川 春章] in refined actor
portraits.
Haft’s chapter four entitled ‘Harunobu’s Textual
Pictures’ is a stimulating introduction to the colour
prints of this outstanding artist. If I had to choose one
Harunobu Suzuki [鈴木 春信] print from this bookit would be the following print from the Honolulu
Academy of Arts in which a young woman wears arobe with dangling sleeves. As Haft notes ‘Her slender
form is characteristic of feminine beauty in ukiyo-e
produced during the late 1750s-60s’.

In chapter one he brings out some of the implicationsof the term yatsushi in the Edo period. It was for
instance used for a man of higher social status who
had come down in the world. He ‘endured his reduced
8

Issue 45 Volume 8 Number 3 (June 2013)