Melinda delves into Edo period history with The Blade of the Courtesans (Vertical) while Ken finds both good and bad in Faust, Vol. 1 (Del Rey).
The Blade of the Courtesans
By Keiichiro Ryu
Vertical, 304 pp.
Matsunaga Seiichiro is a master swordsman, trained by the legendary Miyamoto Mushashi, who has spent his entire young life in the mountains of Higo province cut off from the rest of the world. At the age of 26, as directed by his now-deceased master, Seiichiro leaves the mountains with nothing but his sword and a letter of introduction and finds himself in Edo’s pleasure quarter, Yoshiwara. When he discovers that the man to whom the letter is addressed is no longer living, Seiichiro is momentarily lost, but he soon finds some purpose in defending those in the quarter against the Yagyu clan, a fearsome group of ninjas who are loyal to the shogun. Not everyone is as they seem and as the story goes on, much is revealed about both the society Seiichiro has wandered into as well as his own personal heritage.
Set at the beginning of the Edo period, The Blade of the Courtesans is painstakingly woven into the fabric of history. Keiichiro Ryu’s characters stand alongside well-known historical figures and the author obviously has an extensive knowledge and deep love of the period. Unfortunately, this attention to history is also responsible for one of the book’s greatest flaws. Ryu frequently pauses the story to explain terminology or expound on historical fact, which, while interesting, breaks the flow of the narrative to a nearly fatal point. These pauses increase as the book goes on, pulling the reader out of the story for pages at a time to offer detailed explanations of its historical context, most of which have only minimal impact on the plot. At times, Ryu instead uses his characters to deliver this information, which is just as clumsy and almost as distracting.
Also clumsy is the novel’s narrative mode, which spells out far too much of each character’s thoughts and feelings, saving the author from having to figure out how to reveal these things organically through action and dialogue. Some of this may be due to the difficulty in translation, but the result in English just reads as lazy writing. As with the huge chunks of historical background, what Ryu really reveals here is his lack of skill as a novelist.
The story itself is a strange, meandering thing, sometimes appearing to have gotten a bit lost, much like its protagonist. It is strongest in the beginning, before becoming too deeply mired in the long historical passages. Though it does gain some momentum just before the end, the conclusion feels quite rushed, as major characters are shunted quickly to the side with very little explanation.
For all its awkwardness, however, The Blade of the Courtesans has some truly stirring moments. Early on, one character delivers a sudden, fiery speech to Seiichiro as they lay on a rooftop, proclaiming, “Living ought to be something more magnificent. It’s so fantastic that just thinking about it makes you sigh, makes your blood rush. But if it’s like this… if that’s all it is, then I’ll cast it all aside. Any time, I’m ready to die!” It is in moments like this that Ryu is at his strongest, letting his passion run out over the page. He lends his passion to several of the supporting characters and even occasionally to the dully-virtuous Seiichiro, particularly in his encounters with elite courtesan, Takao, and in his art with the sword.
Unfortunately, some of that passion is marred by philosophies and biases that, while doubtlessly appropriate to the time period, are difficult not to find offensive today. Much of the novel’s philosophical emphasis is placed on the lifestyle and beliefs of the Kugutsu clan, a nomadic group of wandering puppeteers, who call themselves “companions of the way.” The Kugutsu pride themselves in their lack of worldly entanglements, and particularly in the strength and autonomy of their women, from whom many of the Yoshiwara courtesans were descended. It is difficult, however, to swallow a vision of female empowerment in which a woman’s liberty is measured only by the number of men she will share her bed with. The story constantly describes the power of women in the Yoshiwara society, yet in the midst of an impassioned explanation of how the women are able to come to Yoshiwara to “rinse away their origins” and escape from the persecution of their clan, it is revealed that they are indentured to the various houses in the pleasure quarter (all owned by men) until their 28th birthday, at which time they may choose to get married or to remain courtesans for the rest of their lives. That these women, shackled to a system that values them only for their skills in lovemaking, are held up as the pinnacle of female beauty and sovereignty is inexpressibly sad.
Though The Blade of the Courtesans offers a level of historical detail that anyone with an interest in Japanese culture would find genuinely fascinating, its difficulties as a fictional narrative are many, rendering it an ultimately unsatisfying read.
The Blade of the Courtesans is available now.
–Reviewed by Melinda Beasi
By Faust Editors
Del Rey, 432 pp.
Rating: Older Teen (16 +)
Faust is a collection of short stories, essays, manga and interviews featuring contributions from such names as NISIOISIN, Otsuichi, and more. It’s heavily billed as containing the brightest and the best of the new generation of avant-garde creators in Japan.
The bulk of this book is made up of text pieces, opening with an excerpt from NISIOISIN’s novel, xxxHOLiC: AnotherHOLiC. While the length, quality and enjoyability of each story varies, there is a unifying theme with regards the ages of most of the protagonists. Almost every story has a main character that’s a male in his early 20s or late teens with feelings of isolation. The extent to which this is played up also varies in each story, but it’s definitely an underlying current throughout most of the prose tales.
For me, I found the stand out story to be “Drill Hole in My Brain” by Otaro Maijo for the sheer off the wall nature of it. Something about the story reminded me of the movies of David Lynch, and the introduction to the story compares the content of his works to that of William Burroughs. A young boy is brutally attacked by his mother’s lover—stabbed in the head with a screwdriver—an act which awakens him to another world in which he’s a superhero defending the world from various odd villains and the like. It sounds like an Alice in Wonderland tale, but I don’t think that would really do it justice. He’s not really transported to this other world physically; he’s more or less left living inside the head of this other him, but the other him is another being in its own right with its own desires and life.
It’s an odd concept and one that gets odder as the superhero has a hole in his head in the exact location where the screwdriver entered the boy’s skull, a hole which has made him the perfect match for a strange girl who has a horn on her own head. The story gets incredibly bizarre as the hole is used as a sexual organ in some fairly graphic and intense scenes. The imagery and sensation are so raw and vivid that I almost forgot that the kid was getting them from a gaping hole in his skull. It’s so smutty that I’m amazed it got by the editors for the English language version. I’m honestly still not sure what to make of this story, it’s very weird but very engrossing at the same time. It was definitely the high point of the volume for me.
The low point, sadly, comes in the form of “Outlandos d’Amour” by Kouhei Kadono. It’s a story about a young man with rather mysterious origins finding love with an insanely shy and socially inept girl. The girl is just so incapable and pathetic that it’s hard to get into the story. Every time she appears I couldn’t help but lose interest in the entire thing. She’s just so incapable of doing anything on her own that it’s not even funny. When she’s confronted with the prospect of social interaction she practically breaks down into tears. Unfortunately it’s not just social interaction with strangers that results in this, it’s just about any kind of social interaction. Trying to talk to the main character, who quickly becomes her husband, results in the same effect even after they’rer married.
Since most of the stories are of the light novel variety there are several illustrations tossed in. They range from the more straightforward contribution of CLAMP to the odder impressionistic pieces that turn up at the beginning of “Drill Hole in My Brain.” Of course, rounding out the book is some lovely full-color manga in the back which, oddly enough, is also reprinted in grey tone. No idea why this was decided. The color manga pieces are mood pieces; they’re almost music videoesque in that they’re short vignettes focusing on emotion and looks rather than plot, character and the like. They succeed to various degrees, but they’re all almost fantastic to look at. A few even approach the level of jaw-droppingly beautiful. There’s also a single black-and-white manga that’s written by NISIOSIN with art from Yun Kouga. It’s the longest manga piece in the book and is an odd tale about a young girl capable of destroying the world and the new guard assigned to watch over her.
Faust is a very interesting creature. Some of the stories were fantastically out there, while others were a bit more mainstream and by the numbers. I felt the quality also bounced around all over the place as well, with a few very good and entertaining pieces and one or two that were a bit of a chore to get through. I fear that the high price point will probably drive many folks away, which is a shame because, despite the unevenness of the stories, I think this is a fantastic experiment and I’d love to see more of it.
Volume one of Faust is available now.
–Reviewed by Ken Haley
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