Ooku 5

Fumi Yoshinaga – Viz – 2011 – 7+ volumes

This volume chronicles the sad, lonely life of Tsunayoshi. I don’t have that much to say about it. Tsunayoshi is fiercely loyal to those around her, and wishes to please them. Those around her are rather selfish, and interested in their own status and the status of the shogun family line. Thus, Tsunayoshi’s life is filled with bad advice made into law for the sake of her loved ones as well as a near-constant stream of men, provided from several sources, that are necessary for her to bear her heir.

As I said in the last review, I do feel I’m missing out on quite a bit by not knowing the actual history that’s being related here. It’s a sad thing to see such a powerful figure reduced to a faceless sex partner, being passed around by several terrible men all hoping to be the father of the next shogun. Obviously this didn’t happen to the real shogun, since he wouldn’t have borne the child himself. Perhaps there were fertility issues, but such things are far easier to hide for men. Even so, what variations in history does the gender swap offer? I’m curious to know.

There are some points of law that are historical fact. The Edicts on Compassion for Living Things is, in the story, a kind of karmic payback for a misdeed the shogun’s father committed in his youth. It’s a tyrannical law, however, that leaves dogs roaming the streets and people thrown into poverty when slapping at mosquitoes.

It’s also notable that Tsunayoshi was the shogun behind the Forty-seven Ronin incident. I didn’t know that, so I didn’t see this particular bit of history coming. The master of the Ronin is a man, one of the few men left as head of a samurai household, and the person he assaults is an old woman. The gender swap in this story offers the variation that the shogun and others thought the incident might not have happened if the master had been a woman, or any of the ronin, as women are naturally less aggressive. It is also much more of a sin to order the Forty-seven Ronin to commit seppuku, since there are so few men to begin with.

The storytelling is slow and ponderous, which is important in a story like this. I don’t have that much to say because not a whole lot happens. Yoshinaga spends a lot of time developing Tsunayoshi, and showing the woman behind what must have been a very unpopular shogun ruler. She’s not a villain, or even a bad person. She means well, but just… can’t. It’s interesting. And I love that much of the emotion is implied, rather than spelled out to the reader. Tsunayoshi doesn’t often talk about her thoughts or feelings, so the only way to infer them is to watch her interactions with others. It takes a great deal of skill to do this sort of thing in comics, and it’s why Yoshinaga is such an amazing creator.

Ooku continues to impress. I did already read volume 6, and it’s a shame I’ll have to wait a year for the next volume now. I would dearly love a more regular schedule for my Yoshinaga series, but we’re basically caught up in English now.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.