From Kuwabara-sensei's afterword:
- This is the end of Part One.
- There's a five-story pagoda in Yuuya Town on the Mukatsuku Peninsula which is said to be the tomb of Yang Guifei.
- The idea of Youhiki Kannon came from a Buddhist image in Sennyuu Temple in Tokyo called 'Youhiki Kannon', which was Kannon created in Yang Guifei's likeness.
- Isari is fictional (as of course is Tomo burning her sister's face).
So is anyone else amused by the fact that the Ikkou Sect's very existence is ironic? Being resurrected into the Yami-Sengoku basically means their entire previous lives seeking enlightenment as monks were wasted...which I probably shouldn't laugh about, but they don't exactly present themselves in the best light.
Rairyuu keeps calling Takaya an 'enemy of the Faith', which as translation goes is completely legitimate, though slightly illogical in this case. (It's not faith if it's proven to be true, right?) I like it because it's very much what a Christian crusader would've said; it calls out the rhetoric of religion, whether East or West. I consider it a very slight bit of poetic license. The literal translation is 'enemy of the buddhas/Buddhism'--which, if you think about it, is also illogical. Takaya is manifestly not an enemy of the buddhas, so what does that even mean? Somehow it seems like Rairyuu gets to define who's an 'enemy of the buddhas' and everyone just goes with it, including Takaya himself. I really don't get this part.
I have a coupla more thoughts about this arc, which I'll post in a separate comment. But for now, it feels good to be done with it!
I enjoyed the character interactions and revelations in this arc, Motoharu in particular; though I unironically like him, I also feel that as a exemplar of a honorable and brilliant warrior of the Sengoku mold, he's a perfect illustration of why his dated concepts of honor and morality are no longer fit for purpose in the modern world. The funny thing is, sensei actually did his (historical) character an injustice (more about this in a moment).
I have to say, however, that the themes left me cold.
Glorification of the Yamato
A WWII weapon rusting at the bottom of the ocean, which was obsolete even in the war it was created for (when navy doctrine changed decisively from battleships to aircraft carriers) is elevated to the level of the pyramids and the Great Wall, really?
I can no longer conclude Mirage of Blaze is an anti-war work.
I may change my mind again later, but right now, yeah.
Yang Guifei + WWII
Having a deity of Chinese origin juxtaposed with pieces of WWII history (an exceedingly unbalanced and insular view of WWII history) is...um, uncomfortable, to say the least.
This particular (literal!) cultural appropriation is just badly handled all around.
Tomo vs. Isari
The face-burning thing was so unnecessary for the meager points made from it, and absolutely everybody came out of it in a bad light:
- Tomo for committing the crime and then sacrificing her sister a second time.
- Their father and Motoharu for the cover-up and Isari's exile.
- Isari for falling in love (?!) with the guy who exiled her for doing nothing wrong, though this is more of a characterization complaint than an Isari-as-a-person complaint.
I don't buy Isari's very convenient last-minute about-face, because she's right: Tomo did bring her with a premeditated decision to sacrifice her, and no amount of tears erases that cold-blooded fact.
If you're wondering why everyone thinks Motoharu is a stand-up guy "with a strong sense of justice" despite his hideous abuse of power towards poor inconvenient Isari (including Isari herself!), here's an excellent explanation from Frank Gibney in his introduction to The Nanjing Massacre by Honda Katsuichi, p. xvii:
Mixed messaging on beauty
"Every woman wants to be beautiful"--okay, but why? Could it be because even today there are many, many women whose survival depend on their attractiveness to men? Yeah, Motoharu is such a saint for marrying an ugly woman in order to gain her father's loyalty. *eyeroll*
If Tomo serves a goddess who's all about inner beauty, why does she possess the most beautiful girl she can find instead of someone who's beautiful on the inside and plain or even unattractive on the outside? Wouldn't that have supported her point (and presumably the author's) better?
Though Shinjou-no-tsubone's unattractiveness does appear to be a matter of historical fact rather than slander (according to her Wikipedia entry it originates from a Kikkawa retainer), there is no indication she had an inferiority complex, or that it made her "obsequious, mean, and cowardly." In fact, she was quite a strong-willed woman who got into a tiff with her sister-in-law, Mouri Motonari's daughter, and responded curtly to Motonari when he intervened. She built a warm and loving family and co-signed Motoharu's letters to their family circle--this in an age where women's personal names weren't even recorded (Shinjou-no-tsubone means something like "Lady of the New Manor", which is like British titles in that e.g. Lord Grantham's personal name is Robert Crawley, not Grantham). She and Motoharu did appear to be deeply in love; Motoharu never took a concubine, a practice so common for a man of his rank that he probably raised eyebrows by not partaking.
Isn't that a more interesting story that also speaks more profoundly to the idea of "beauty"?
If you think, like me, that the inaction of the Self-Defense Force in response to a huge unknown battleship docking at their harbor is very unlikely (it takes, what, minutes to scramble fighter jets?), here's an interesting story about Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko defecting from the USSR by landing a MiG-25P in a civilian airport. Japan's response? "The Hakodate Air Traffic Controller contacted the SDF but was told to call the police." The police arrested him for "violating Japanese airspace and firearms offenses"!
To be fair, though, the SDF did scramble F-4s, but they couldn't find Belenko's plane.
So basically what you're saying is Kuwabara-sensei knows damn well the country she's writing about. :-)
(Sometimes Mirage makes me want to adapt a line from Buffy: "The police of Japan are deeply stupid.")
By the way, thank you for all your voluminous translation. I've gotten behind on doing updates of the translation community on DW but will do so today. You are amazing!
I actually think the police did pretty well here, given that everybody was probably going "WTF?" and they were left holding the bag. "Well, we can't release him back into your custody, USSR, because he clearly broke the law and has to go through our civilian justice system."
It's fun to get into new (to me) material, even if it's taken me a while to get here. :)
Thank you! :)