Ooku 1

Fumi Yoshinaga – Viz – 2009 – 4+ volumes

Here’s one of the last of my most-anticipated series of 2009 (the very last will probably be Itazura na Kiss).  I’m a big geek when it comes to Fumi Yoshinaga, and for good reason.  I have yet to be disappointed by any of her series, and I love seeing her characters interact with each other, no matter what they’re doing.

To let me know that this series was going to be worth my time, within the first few pages, a small child is attacked by a bear, which somehow (his mother thinks this is because he was cursed by the Gods) spreads a plague that kills most of the young men in Japan.  On one hand, that’s totally sweet.  On the other hand, it’s extremely unlike Yoshinaga to use such a strange plot device.  But the premise of the series is just that, that most of the young men in Japan were wiped out and that those who remain are valuable commodities that are kept like princes, with women taking over manual labor and all other tasks traditionally performed by men.  It’s a great idea, and especially interesting that the setting is feudal Japan.  This first volume only dips its toes in the possibilities of a gender role reversal like that, so I’m very much looking forward to where that idea goes in the future.

Most of the volume follows a man named Yunoshin.  Yunoshin is one of the few young men whose family has not sold him into sexual slavery, and also one of the only men who does not charge women desperate for children to sleep with him.  In order to help out his family, he volunteers to go to the Shogun’s Inner Chamber, a harem, in order to send his family the money he earns.  He does not fit in at the Inner Chamber with all its pettiness and lavish excesses, and sees the whole situation as wasteful, since a harem of 800 men so desperately needed elsewhere are being kept for a single 7-year-old girl, the current Shogun.  But the girl dies, and her successor is a very no-nonsense woman named Yoshimune.  Yoshimune is disgusted by the excesses of the palace.  Naturally, Yunoshin catches her eye in the harem, and she picks him to be her first lover.  Unbeknownst to either of them, the first lover is killed as part of an ancient ritual to punish him for physically harming the Shogun (ie taking her virginity).

After that situation is resolved (about 3/4 of the way through the book), the story switches focus in a very Yoshinaga-like way to Yoshimune herself, the small changes she is making around the palace, and her choice of lovers from the harem.  She is quite a character, and works entirely and delightfully contrary to all the stuffy policies and ways of palace life.  She and her right hand adviser, a female childhood friend from her home town, are also very clever about stepping around the old guard at the palace and satisfying all their various antiquated rules.  The very end of the book is where Yoshimune begins to question why women need to dress as men and take on men’s names in order to do as they do.

Yunoshin’s story has all the best things Yoshinaga puts in her series.  We see how deftly he deals with women, in a somewhat cavalier but caring way.  We see the subtle tugs on his life that compel him to join the Inner Chamber (his parents are too poor to find a husband for his older sister, and he turns down all marriage proposals since he loves his childhood friend, who he can’t marry because of social standing).  We see the lives and motivations behind different members of the Ooku, and the rather ugly politics that work behind it all.  Yoshinaga has the gift of painting a lot of detail with a broad brush, so to speak.  She tells an ambitious story with lots of tangents, but knows just how much to reveal of everything in order to make it touching.

And that last chapter just promises so many interesting things for future volumes.  I admit, it’s a little unusual to read one of her stories with a female lead, but there’s no reason to be suspicious.   Ooku is everything interesting I was hoping it would be and more.  I was expecting a period drama involving lots of women and the members of the harem, which this isn’t.  It’s far more interesting and involved than her other series, but I may need a couple more volumes to like the characters as much as the ones in Antique Bakery and Flower of Life.

Viz did a wonderful job with the presentation, too.  It’s in the Signature format, which means it’s an oversize volume with french flaps and color pages, and the first page is actually vellum.  There are copious translation notes in the back, and the graphic design on the cover and throughout the book is stunning in its simplicity.  The characters all speak with a sort of Shakespearean inflection, which reflects the period and the fact they were probably using an older form of Japanese in the original.  I’m not sure if I like it or not, since it seems strange that characters in Medieval Japan would be using Early Modern English, but I appreciate that the distinction was made, and there really is no better way to show it.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.