Review: Taiko, by Eiji Yoshikawa

It’s quite some years ago that I read Musashi, by the same author, and I’d wanted Taiko for a long time but (until recently) found it hard to get my hands on a copy. Was the wait worth it?

In short, yes. Which was a relief.

Taiko actually occurs at a very similar time to Musashi, but the two stories do not intersect (nor is there any reason for them to). It follows Hideyoshi (as he became known), one of the three titans of the later Warring States (Sengoku) period in Japan, in the late 16^th century. I was slightly familiar with much of this political/military story from having played Kessen III a lot, but there are of course differences and more detail with this historical novel. Unlike Musashi, Taiko looks at the big picture of Japan as warlords struggle for supremacy while the shogunate falters. It’s a tale of war, treachery, plots, betrayal, and diplomatic cunning.

We join Hideyoshi as a young boy, and his childhood is not idyllic. From little food to a frail father, things don’t get much better in his later childhood. But eventually our protagonist leaves home and flits from one thing to another, gradually learning more about the world.

Hideyoshi is renowned as one of the three major figures of the era, and it’s in the impulsive but brilliant Nobunaga’s service that he earns the right to advance on merit rather than a prestigious bloodline.

Being the star of the show does mean that some of his weaknesses (womanising, primarily) get somewhat light treatment, and I don’t know the history of the era well enough to judge if the demonisation of some of his opponents is justified (Ieyasu, another major figure, is treated with great regard). What’s fascinating is the very different culture to Europe either at the time or in the medieval era (which, in some ways, is more akin to the Warring States period due to the near constant warfare in the 14^th century). By the end of the book my mind was naturally leaping to lines such as “Well, he screwed that up. Time for him to commit ritual suicide.”

Personally, I found Taiko very easy to not only read but become engrossed in, and the long term, detailed little threads (the enmity then friendship with Inuchiyo, for example) added to the story’s depth. One complaint is that the story is abridged (not sure why or by how much) in the English translation.

Musashi seems to be the author’s biggest hit, in the West at least, but I found Taiko to be very enjoyable. It’s a little like a simpler version of Three Kingdoms, with a greater emphasis on taking the reader into the world. At 926 pages or thereabouts it’s a reasonably hefty read, even abridged.

 

Thaddeus

Review: Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa

Musashi is the tale of the eponymous historical figure’s early life, beginning with the aftermath of the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600. This was the tail end of the Warring States period in Japan, which saw the Ashikaga shogunate totter and fall beneath the widespread warfare between daimyo (powerful noblemen). Sekigahara saw the forces of two of these, the Houses of Tokugawa and Toyotomi, clash. Tokugawa won and claimed supremacy, although the remnant forces of Toyotomi holed up at Osaka and dreamt of returning to glory.

In this world, there were many masterless samurai, called ronin, and Musashi was one of them. Early on he’s little more than a strong and energetic fighter, but over the course of the book he dedicates himself to the Way of the Sword and mastering himself. His wandering takes him from place to place, and the book’s POV sometimes switches to other significant characters, such as Matahachi (his comrade-in-arms at Sekigahara), and Otsu (a childhood friend from the same village). Various places are visited, including Kyoto, Osaka, and the rapidly expanding city of Edo. Coupled with smaller villages, this presents the reader with an interesting cultural backdrop including schools of swordsmanship, pleasure houses, and temples.

The book is large at 970 pages, but I read it faster than most things because I found the plot intriguing and the writing style easy to read. It perhaps also helped that the world of early 17^th century Japan was interesting to read about.

The cast is not as large as might be expected of such a big book, but the author’s style of drawing together and then dispersing clusters of characters, interweaving their own personal stories so that every character has different relationships with one another was very well done. It led to natural conflicts, allies of convenience, and explains how Musashi, despite doing his best to act honourably, managed to accrue quite a number of enemies over the years.

Other characters are three-dimensional, not merely reacting to Musashi’s own doings as background to his tale, but striving to achieve their own goals, whether that’s revenge or achieving success for oneself.

I tried to think of downsides, but it wasn’t especially easy. The size may put some people off. There is occasional sexual content but it’s the haziest of hazy watercolours you can imagine. Violence is a feature, of course, but far less frequent or visceral than in, say, Outlaws of the Marsh.

It’s a very enjoyable book, in short.

Thaddeus

Review: Outlaws of the Marsh

Outlaws of the Marsh is one of four great Chinese classical mega-novels (the others being Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber).

I use the term ‘mega-novel’ deliberately; this isn’t for someone wanting a weekend book (unless you can read 400-500,000 words a day). Editions vary significantly from a 70 chapter to a 120 chapter version. The one I read was the Foreign Languages Press box set in four volumes (100 chapters), translated by Sidney Shapiro.

Another easily accessible (in English) version is the Chinese University Press series (volumes bought separately, but it’s the full 120 chapter version). The translation of the latter may be slightly superior, from memory, but the cost is about six times more [I’ve read one volume, The Tiger Killers].

I’ve read Outlaws of the Marsh twice before, and it’s easily my favourite Chinese classic. It’s worth noting the first chapter is rather different to the rest of the book (effectively setting up the premise). The story cracks along at a fast rate of knots, and there are numerous memorable characters (my own favourite is Sagacious Lu, a Buddhist monk who enjoys getting drunk and acts of violence).

There’s no one main character. The closest would be Song Jiang, but lots of characters get much page time, including Wu Yong, Dai Zong, Li Kui, Wu Song, Sagacious Lu and many more. The narrative style is brilliant, it weaves numerous major characters’ arcs together, dropping off a character here and picking them up there. With dozens of main characters and over two thousand pages to play with, this works very well indeed.

There’s a minimum of flimflam description. This is a book crammed with dialogue and action, and is much lighter on describing landscapes and so forth.

It’s also not the most politically correct of books. One of the principal ‘good guys’ is a step away from being a mad axeman. Although some of the chieftains are women (most notably Ten Feet of Steel), the general treatment of women is of its time.

A concise summary would be Robin Hood and his Merry Men (emphasis on the latter) set in ancient China, with lashings of blood. I really enjoyed it, but it won’t be to everyone’s taste because of the style.

If you’re interested in this, you may also want to read my review of Three Kingdoms.

Thaddeus

Disabled Giants of History

A chance encounter with a tweet about the low rate of disability in fantasy made me think about writing a piece on significant historical figures who were disabled.

It’s worth noting that, historically, beauty could be seen as the favour of gods (or God), and ugliness as their/his displeasure. Indeed, in one Athenian trial the woman’s defence was to disrobe whilst her lawyer argued that one who was so clearly Aphrodite’s handmaiden could not be guilty. (She was acquitted, incidentally).

At the other end of the scale, being Eastern Roman/Byzantine Emperor required physical perfection (completeness rather than handsomeness), so rivals would often have their ears or nose cut off to prevent them from aspiring to the top job.

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list or anything like that, merely a recounting of historical figures I happen to have read about who also have (although definitions can vary) one or more disabilities.

Hannibal is perhaps my single favourite chap from history. He won arguably the greatest battlefield victory ever, had arguably the largest ambush ever, and slapped the Romans about in Italy for a decade. Even when the Romans got top commanders like Marcellus, Nero, Quintus Fabius Maximus and Scipio, he still prowled around the country until he was recalled home. During the march through the Arnus Marshes, conditions were terrible. So bad, in fact, he lost an eye to exposure.

Caesar and Alexander were both epileptic. My understanding is their fits became rarer as they aged (although Alexander didn’t age all that much). For Caesar, this may explain why he did his best work when he was older. Hmm. It doesn’t explain how Alexander destroyed the Theban Sacred Band when he was 17 and spent his 20s conquering the whole Persian Empire…

Claudius had a stutter and club foot and was taken for a fool, but he was rather sharper than many thought (and certainly saner than either his predecessor or successor). His clumsy foot and tongue were made famous for modern audiences by the TV series I, Claudius (which I can strongly recommend).

Tamerlane was a 14^th/15^th century version of Genghis Khan, from whom he claimed descent (which is entirely possible given the number of children Genghis Khan had). His name, of which there are various versions, can also be read as Timur the Lame, because he was lame. He also had a withered right arm (I think this was due to injury whereas his lameness was from birth). When electing a leader by who would win a foot race to a stake, he lagged behind his rivals but threw his cap onto the stake to claim it, and duly became leader. As a warlord, he was unsurpassed in cunning (planting crops on a road three years ahead of time so his army would have food in the future), but also pretty damned brutal.

Enrico Dandolo was the Doge of Venice in the 12^th and early 13^th centuries. He was around 90 during the Fourth Crusade. He was also blind, but despite this literally led the assault on the hitherto impregnable city, achieving the stunning feat of conquering it. Blind he was, and old too, but orbs of steel did within his codpiece dwell.

More recently, there’s the famous British example of Nelson. Being disabled didn’t stop him giving the French a damned good thrashing. More than that, it provided some comedy disobedience, when, at the Battle of Copenhagen, he raised his telescope to his blind eye and claimed he could not see the signal of Admiral Parker ordering a retreat (Nelson went on be victorious). He also, of course, had his right arm amputated.

I almost, appallingly, forgot Antigonus Monopthalmus, perhaps my favourite of the Diadochi. His nickname (Monopthalmus) means one-eyed. When he received the battle wound that deprived him of sight in one eye, Antigonus refused to seek medical attention and kept fighting until the battle was done.

I think it’s also worth raising the example of David Blunkett. He was Home Secretary under the previous Labour Government, despite being blind. That’s a phenomenal achievement, not least because although blind people can read Braille there’s no way to quickly skim or scan that (because it involves feeling bumps on paper) the way a sighted person can with a visually written document.

Thaddeus

Review: Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong

This is a work of historical fiction, based on the downfall of the Han dynasty in China (which lasted from around 200BC to 200AD). A word of warning: the book is hefty. There are various editions, the one I read (published by Foreign Languages Press and translated by Moss Roberts) was in four volumes and over two thousand pages long.

The plethora of names, some of which are very similar, can be a bit much to handle, but this also means that when you’re some way into the book the call-backs to earlier chapters allow for a complex, interwoven story (when a character saves another’s life, that may well have repercussions, good or ill). It also means a lot of characters get some depth.

Despite the number of characters, I never found the story too difficult to follow because the style is quite simple (and where things aren’t obvious, notes will explain). The large size of both the book and the period covered enables dramatic changes to happen both to characters and the kingdoms. Twists, treachery and death all happen with pleasing frequency.

It seems to follow history quite closely, and the notes make plain when this isn’t the case. Magic and supernatural things happen infrequently, more commonly supernatural explanations are given to natural phenomena (a helpful rain shower extinguishing fire, for example).

It could have done with a good proof-reading. The typos never caused me any confusion but, even given the book’s length, there are more than might be reasonably expected.

There are extensive endnotes, which range from the concise (explaining what date, in the Christian calendar, is being referred to in the text) to the lengthy. I generally found these to be useful and interesting (although I prefer footnotes to endnotes).

If you’ve read Journey to the West, or Outlaws of the Marsh, this should be to your liking (it’s more political than those books, however). If you’ve not read those, I’d advocate checking a sample just to see whether the style is something you like or not.

This is my second time reading the book, and I liked it rather a lot, more than the first time. The ebbing and flowing of power to and from the various factions and main characters, and the fact events occurred more or less as in the book, makes it deeply engaging.

Thaddeus

Basil II’s Odd Childhood

Basil II, as mentioned in the previous post, was a bit of a hard case. But it’s quite surprising that he actually reached adulthood at all.

It’s not historically unusual for a trusted general/grand vizier/uncle of an emperor to seize power. What is unusual is for that to happen and the legal emperor to be not only allowed to live, but retain their (theoretical) position. And it’s double unusual with a side-helping of surprise when this happens twice to the same emperor, who ends up becoming a huge success himself.

The White Death of the Saracens is not the sort of nickname you earn by being a pansy, and Nicephorus II Phocas, Emperor of Byzantium, deserved it. The trajectory of Islamic military history is an upward curve from its founding to the siege of Vienna, but there were occasional blips (and a few serious ruptures) along that thousand year journey.

Romanus II died suddenly in his mid-20s, leaving a power vacuum (although both his children had been crowned co-emperors, they were five and three at the time). Proclaimed by the army as emperor, Nicephorus Phocas marched into Byzantium and became ruler of the Eastern Empire in fact as well as name, aided by his talented nephew (and fellow general) John Tzimisces.

He enjoyed significant success in the East, as might be expected from his nickname, and took the late Romanus’ widow, Theophano, as his lover. However, after a few years another man took Theophano into his bed: John Tzimisces.

Tzimisces had helped Nicephorus to the throne, but had, some time later, been deprived of military command. It proved a fatal decision for the Emperor. Conspiring with Theophano, Tzimisces and others entered the palace late at night. Finding the Emperor’s bed empty, he panicked, only to discover Nicephorus was sleeping on the floor.

Tzimisces kicked him to death, all the while berating his uncle’s ingratitude for the assistance given when he had sought to become emperor.

And then there was the question of Basil and his younger brother Constantine. Bizarrely, they survived a second usurpation of imperial power. They lost neither their lives nor their nominal status, although, being far off adulthood, they had no practical power. It is worth noting that Basil and Constantine were nephews of Tzimisces (and therefore also related to Nicephorus), but also that such a relationship has often failed to stop regicide.

On the battlefield, Tzimisces continued the policy of his predecessor (knocking the stuffing out of the Saracens), and enjoyed similar success. He also died suddenly, possibly due to poisoning. Upon his death, Basil II, just about old enough to become emperor in truth, took on the reins of power. Although he also fought in the East, it was his campaigns in Europe which earnt him his nickname: the Bulgar-Slayer.

Thaddeus

Review: The Raven’s Banquet, by Clifford Beal

This is a little outside my usual area, as it’s historical fiction set in the 17^th century. The story follows Richard Treadwell, both in the present (just after the English Civil War) and the past (a couple of decades earlier when he’s fighting as a soldier of fortune on the continent).

The start (in the past setting, which comprises the majority of the story) was a little slow, and it took me a bit of time to get into the story. However, once Treadwell joins the army in Europe the story there gets going and progresses nicely. His fellow soldiers are nicely written, not shirking from their significant flaws and gradually revealing the self-made trap into which he has wandered. Grim realism is the order of the day, with the romance of war soon dissolved by the bitter truth. I rather like that approach.

There is a mild fantastical element, but it is only very slight and presented such that it could be down to his mind cracking slightly under the strain. It’s well-written in its deliberate ambiguity.

The present day (as it were, it’s 1645) starts with more vigour, and although less happens (for most of it Treadwell is a prisoner) the storyline still progresses and the fact it’s a much smaller part of the book means it doesn’t drag.

Dialogue is written in ye olde style, and generally works well, although the odd phrase (break my bollocks!) did make me smile. The cast was pretty small. A little more time to develop people other than the protagonist would’ve helped flesh the world out a little.

I found the setting to be quite interesting and unusual (primarily continental Europe in the 1620s). It’s not really my sort of period, but that added to rather than detracted the story (the novelty of the period intrigued me).

The ending perplexed me. It’s set up to a certain event which then never happens, so abruptly does the story terminate. The book is a prequel, so perhaps that event occurs in the succeeding (chronologically) book, but for this one the end was abrupt to the point of being detrimental to the story.

Overall, I enjoyed it, particularly once I got a few chapters in. My to-read list remains of comically enormous proportions, but once it’s whittled down I’ll consider checking out the author’s other work.

Thaddeus

Review: Hannibal: Enemy of Rome (Hannibal 1), by Ben Kane

This is the last of the books I got for Christmas, and I just finished it recently. As the name suggests, it's historical fiction, a genre I used to read quite a lot (mostly Bernard Cornwell) but which I haven't really touched for some time. Hannibal's one of my favourite historical figures, which made me somewhat wary (doing justice to a colossus of history is nigh on impossible).

I had very mixed feelings about the book. Concisely, the plot moves at a cracking pace, it's broadly historically accurate (the useful section at the back enables the author to point out where he deliberately altered things for the sake of the plot), the characters are often two-dimensional, and the writing (whilst always clear) can be a bit simplistic.

The two main characters are Hanno, a young Carthaginian, and Quintus, a young Roman. The two are pretty similar in social terms, until Hanno ends up enslaved and sold to Quintus just as the Second Punic War is about to kick off. There are various coincidences, but unless the plot were to focus on real world key players (they feature but are not the focus) then it necessarily has to be so. Hanno and Quintus are more well-rounded than most other characters, but not especially deep.

There was also a ton of head-hopping. There was no consistent focus on a single character's perspective in a given scene/chapter, so we continuously learn what's in the head of character A, then B, then C. It's a little strange. I'm not particularly bothered by head-hopping, but if you are then this could perhaps put you off.

Perhaps my favourite aspect of the book was the cracking pace. There's never a feeling of waiting around for something interesting to occur, or that a section is padding to bulk out the book.

The mini-bibliography at the back was useful (I was pleased to see Theodore Dodge near the top of the list), and if/when I decide to buy something new on the subject I'll probably check it again for ideas.

Hannibal: Enemy of Rome is a fast-paced, light read that's enjoyable but not especially deep or challenging.

Thaddeus