By Jiro Taniguchi and Natsuo Sekikawa
Fanfare/Ponent Mon
No Rating

Reading The Times of Botchan reminded me of watching Alexander Sakurov’s cryptic 2002 film Russian Ark. Both employ a similar gambit: a literary figure from the country’s past wanders through a landscape populated by real people who played pivotal roles in its modernization. In Russian Ark, the author/protagonist role is filled by the Marquis de Custine, a French aristocrat who published Empire of the Czar: Journey Through Eternal Russia in 1839, while in Botchan the role is fulfilled by Soseki Natsume (1867-1916), a novelist active during the Meiji Restoration. Neither Ark nor Botchan employs a clear, linear narrative; both works are episodic–even, at times, picaresque–in nature as their principle characters rub shoulders with poets, composers, czars, and politicians.

When we first meet Natsume, he is working on a novel called The Times of Botchan. He hopes that Botchan will help him (and others like him) achieve catharsis from a vague but nagging sense of anxiety brought on by the period’s considerable social, political, and economic upheavals, from the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement to the first murmurs of suffragism.[*] Though we occasionally see Natsume in his study drafting chapters (or admiring the inky paw prints left behind by his cat), much of the manga is devoted to Natsume’s daily routine, which brings him into contact with historical figures from An Jung-Geun, an activist who assassinated the Korean governor in 1909, to Hiruko Haratsuka, a feminist active in the Seito suffrage movement of the 1910s. Some of these encounters are the jumping off point for vignettes about Westerners living in Japan, or the state of Japanese literature, while others are mere coincidence and treated in just one or two panels. The resulting manga feels like a tableau (or, perhaps, the Japanese equivalent of a guided tour through Colonial Williamsburg), as our unseen narrator identifies the sprawling cast of characters and mentions key events in Meiji-era history.

Despite its literary and historical ambitions, The Times of Botchan is best read for its superb illustrations. Jiro Taniguchi creates intimate scenes that require little or no dialogue to convey their nuance. Small details–such as the characters’ mix-and-match costumes of Western hats and Japanese robes–capture the transitional nature of the period, and speak volumes about the characters’ ambivalent relationship with the West.

Sekikawa’s script, however, is a different matter altogether. Sekikawa’s omniscient narrator often supplies the reader with information that can be readily inferred from the pictures. In one scene, for example, the writer Rintaro “Ogai” Mori[**[ returns to his family after a prolonged stay in Germany. He intends to tell his parents that he loves–and plans to marry–a European, but cannot bring himself to do so now that he is back on Japanese soil. Taniguchi’s illustrations instill in us a powerful sense of estrangement, but Sekikawa’s voice intrudes on the scene. “I have returned. It has been a long absence,” Ogai says. Then the narrator informs us: “At that moment, Ogai felt, for the first time, that he was back in Japan. In this country, individualism was not regarded as a personal virtue, the ‘family’ had to be considered. Ogai was unable to speak the words he had prepared and became mute as a fish.” (Mute as a fish? Surely there was a more idiomatic way to translate this phrase.) Such heavy-handed interjections insult the reader’s intelligence, as if the author didn’t trust his audience to decode moments of mystery, poetry, or ambiguity on its own. At least the Marquis de Custine never bothered to explain why Nicholas II and victims of the Kursk disaster haunted the same wing of the Hermitage.

Given the didactic tone and frequent allusions to unfamiliar historical figures, I’m hesitant to give Botchan an unequivocal endorsement. Some readers will find the book long-winded, confusing, and perhaps even boring. But for those already enamored of Taniguchi’s superb draftsmanship or well-versed in Japanese culture, The Times of Botchan offers readers a lovely reward: a window into one of the most fascinating periods in Japanese history.

* The Freedom and People’s Rights Movement in Japan began in the 1870s. Building on the reforms established in the Charter Oath of 1868 (which abolished Japan’s rigid class structure, among other provisions), urban intellectuals lobbied for the drafting of a constitution and the creation of a parliament.

** Ogai Mori is best known to Western audiences for his novels The Wild Geese and Sansho the Bailiff, the latter being the basis of Kenji Mizoguchi’s devastating 1954 film.

This review was revised on 6/7/07.