Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series is intended to educate and entertain by taking its protagonists to different times and places, real and mythical. These Scholastic books are mainstays of schools, libraries, and primary curricula, and some of the books have companion “Research Guide” publications for kids who want to know more about the historical, cultural or scientific background. Some of these books are aimed at early readers: the first 28 in the series are short, with short, simple sentences appropriate to 1st or 2nd graders; after that the series shifts into the slightly more fantastical “Merlin Mission” mode, longer stories with more complex writing suitable for 2nd or 3rd grade students; the research guides seem to be aimed at 2nd through 4th graders.¹ In these stories, Jack and Annie are given a book which, combined with the magic of the tree house, takes them to a time and place where they can carry out a mission of some kind, while learning about the site of their adventure. The whole thing is supposed to be an encouragement to learning, so to speak, showing the value of book reading. Twice in the series, Jack and Annie have visited Japanese history: in the earlier, shorter work, we get nature-loving ninja and threatening samurai; in the later adventure, we get the nature-loving poet Basho, a magical dragon, and threatening samurai.²

The text that Jack and Annie work from — more Jack than Annie: he’s the cautious, bookish one, and she’s the impulsive, intuitive one — gives an explicit frame to the story, and the book is never wrong. Because of Annie’s impulsiveness, they never get to read through the book carefully, but look up facts as they become relevant: the facts are short, context-free chunks of information that usually explain what the characters are seeing, and remembering these bits often comes in handy at critical moments. In addition to the books they read, they often get guidance from people they meet: many of the adventures feature a “local informant” who helps them navigate local custom and landscape and often is critical to their larger mission; usually they are supposed to return to the Magic Tree House with a specific item or piece of information.³ As with the books that bring them to these times and places, their local informants are never wrong, either, though sometimes they misjudge Jack or, more often, Annie.⁴

The first Japan adventure is Night of the Ninjas⁵ in which Jack and Annie return to an unidentified moment in Japan’s medieval period. Here’s what their book has to say about it:

• “Very little is known about the shadowy warriors called ninjas. Historians believe that ninjas lived in Japan between the 14th and 17th centuries. Both men and women were ninjas. Sometimes they fought to protect their families. Sometimes warlords hired them to be spies.” (15-16)
• “Sometimes ninjas held meetings in hidden mountain caves to plan secret missions.” (31)
• “Ninjas took orders from a ninja master. The master was a mysterious wise person who knew many secrets of nature.” (31)
• “The samurai were fierce Japanese fighters. They carried two swords to cut down their enemies.” (45)

This is the most authoritative information Jack and Annie have available, and the vast majority of it is entirely incorrect. Ninja — the black-suited nemesis of samurai living an independent existence in the hills, etc. — are a figment of early modern imaginations built on a sliver of truth, reified by modern martial artists’ pseudo-historical self-justifications and entertainment industries more than willing to dramatize and amplify the mythologies for fun and profit.⁶ The myth of hostility between ninja and samurai, though, runs through a lot of Japanese historical fiction.⁷ (38) The idea of the ninja as a kind of eco-warrior seems to be a relatively new addition to the mythology: it’s an interesting way of working “harmony with nature” into this Japanese narrative:

“Remember three things,” said the master…”Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature.” (38)

The nature-ninja turns the samurai into a kind of modernist nightmare.⁸ But samurai, described in the book as “fierce,” are all bark and no bite: their armor is made of “bamboo” (45), they wander around the woods at night with torches looking for ninja (37, 58), and they can be fooled by a kid in a hoodie pretending to be a rock. (48-49)

In Dragon of the Red Dawn⁹ samurai are also a threat, again in a distinctly modernist mode, because of the ban on foreigners. As their guidebook “A Journey to Old Japan” (7)¹⁰ says,

• “The late 1600s in Japan were years of peace and prosperity. Art and culture thrived. But it was a time when the country was completely closed to the outside world. No one was allowed to come in. The citizens of Edo were frequently checked to make sure they had passports.” (15-16)
• “Anyone who did not have a passport was considered a spy and punished severely.” (16)

All samurai, in this version of Genroku Japan, are police agents: the only samurai who are mentioned are either former samurai, like the poet Basho, or some form of patrolling security who are quick to draw their swords and challenge people who are out of place. (21, 42, passim) Basho tells Jack and Annie that “You must remember, seek harmony with your surroundings. … Observe the people of Edo and do as they do. If you do not stand out, you will not be noticed by the samurai.” (25-26) Jack and Annie have to learn how to use chopsticks — while eating makizushi, which it’s a little early for — under the gaze of samurai who are on the lookout for foreigners. (42) Oddly, the samurai they face suspect them because of where they are but not how they look, whereas Basho can tell immediately that they are foreigners; this may be part of the magic of the tree house, which also gives them appropriate clothing and gear and skips right over language issues. (25, etc.) In spite of the fact that Jack and Annie repeatedly come under suspicion of being spies, the samurai questioning them are thrice convinced that they are merely poetry apprentices (22, 48-52, 96-98) who do not need to show their passports, twice by extemporizing poetry.¹¹

In addition to their simple duties and simple-mindedness, samurai are part of a very simple political system. As often happens, Osborne has conflated the past and present, Shogunal and Imperial institutions. Here’s what “A Journey to Old Japan” says:

• “In the 1600s, the Imperial Garden surrounded the Imperial Palace in the capital city of Japan. The city was called Edo (Say EE-doh). In the mid-1800s, its name was changed to Tokyo (Say TOH-kee-oh.)” (14)
• “In the 1600s, the military ruler known as the shogun (say SHOW-gun) lived in the center of the Imperial Garden in a palace that had hundreds of rooms.” (17)
• “Often the shogun’s warriors traveled with him. They were called samurai (Say SAM-uh-rye).” … “Samurai were excellent horsemen well trained in the arts of fighting. The code of the samurai was strict. Samurai did not show their feelings. They had great powers of concentration.” (18)

There’s a pronunciation error, the elimination of daimyo from the political picture, the bushido stoicism and assumption that all samurai are the same, and the confusion engendered by referring to the Shogunal keep by its modern title. Osborne carefully refers to the Shogun as “the military ruler” but doesn’t explain the distinction between the Shogunal and Imperial institutions or note that the castle and grounds were not considered “Imperial” until the 1860s.

But the samurai are just an obstacle: the heart of the story is poetry, fire and magic. Despite their failings, Basho admits “Yes, the samurai greatly honor the art of poetry. Poetry helps focus the mind. The samurai believe a truly brave warrior should be able to compose a poem even in the midst of an earthquake, or while facing an enemy on the battlefield.” (61) Basho instructs the children in the art of haiku¹² and shares the frog pond verse which he wrote just yesterday, even giving Jack the piece of paper on which the world’s most famous haiku is written. (62) The guide book tells us that “Basho is one of Japan’s greatest poets. He wrote short, beautiful poems that speak to people as clearly today as they did during the Edo period of Japan.” (59) Some of them certainly do: Basho has about the same linguistic issues as Shakespeare, namely that he’s one of the writers whose work shaped the early modern language, but idiom and usage have changed over time.

Unlike Night of the Ninjas, this book has a precise historical moment. Or, rather, several precise moments: the frog poem was written in 1686, but the main action of the book focuses on the fire that destroyed Basho’s home in 1682, after which he embarked on his famous travels. Also, the cherry blossoms are blooming. Aren’t they always? Anyway, on their first walk through the city, Basho notes the drought-like conditions and remembers the 1657 Meireki Fire.¹³

“When the weather is very dry, the people of Edo worry about fire. … Twenty-five years ago, during a dry spell, half our city was destroyed by a terrible fire. Thousands died.” (30)

Probably a hundred thousand or more. But there’s an up-side to fires, he says later:

“I suppose that is why the ancients called our fires ‘the flowers of Edo.’ … After something is destroyed by fire, a good new thing often takes its place. Just as after the bleakest winter, beautiful flowers return with the spring.” (89)

This is not, of course, the actual source of the “flowers of Edo” idiom, which is both relatively recent at that time instead of “ancient”, and sarcastic rather than heartening. But Basho himself endured several fires that destroyed his home, and did take the opportunity to travel, producing some of his greatest work (including the above-mentioned poem) as a result.

When the fire breaks out, Jack and Annie join the citizens of Edo fighting the fires – no mention of the competitive firefighting teams, their uniforms or equipment, just people with buckets – and then draw on their magic to invoke the Cloud Dragon, “one of the guardian animals of the four directions. She has the power of flight and commands the rain clouds.” (37) Though a very minor figure in Japanese astrology, the Cloud Dragon answers their call with a drenching rain.

There are a few interesting touches: yo-yos, which are a long-standing Japanese toy; hot towels at meals; sumo wrestling as entertainment, though it’s unlikely that Genroku-era wrestlers would have been 400+ pounds. (38, 39, 46)

But as educational materials, these books represent a huge step backwards, a terribly wasted opportunity. According to the Wikipedia page, these books have been translated, along with most of the series, into Japanese. I can only imagine what the Japanese thought of them.

1. Check the Scholastic web site for official suitability levels. Also if you have any doubt about the fact that these are aimed at an education audience….
2. I could put a spoiler alert here, but how many 2nd-4th graders are reading this blog, who haven’t already moved beyond Jack and Annie adventures? Well, my son wants to read this post when I’m finished with it, but other than him?
3. Missions are part of larger projects: the series is built around four-book units which share a problem and theme. Jack and Annie accumulate skills and credentials over the series. This makes up for the fact that the individual books are very short, and acculturates young readers to longer works. That’s the general idea, anyway.
4. I suspect that most of my readers at this point are either familiar with the series, or have stopped reading. But I want to establish the authority of the voices: readers of the series are acculturated, if they read more than one or two, to accept the authority of the guiding book and teachers.
5. Book 5, published in 1995 by Random House, with illustrations by Sal Murdocca.
6. And, as with most Japanese nouns, the plural of “ninja” is “ninja” not “ninjas”
7. And is almost certainly based on self-serving mythologies of post-pacification samurai
8. The picture on p. 46 is the only time they are depicted visually
9. Book 37, Scholastic, 2007
10. Complete with pseudo-bamboo typography
11. including, I regret to inform you, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” Basho likes it.
12. though without any of that picky stuff like syllables or turning words, or seasonal indicators
13. They also see puppet plays on “a row of stages built along the riverbank” (36)

On May 1, 1946 Oscar Olander, a former commissioner of the Michigan State police, entered Tokyo early on the morning of “Food May Day” as part of his mission to investigate the state of Japanese police in the defeated nation. On that day, over a million Japanese joined what was described as a “sea of red flags” to celebrate the day of labor but also make desperate calls for food and the address of other basic grievances.¹ The red flags joined those of the American occupier as Olander writes in his diary,

8:03 we arrive back in Tokyo – we are greeted (?) by a gathering of hundreds of communists starting to celebrate May Day. They are singing a revolutionary song in Japanese to the tune of “Maryland my Maryland” as they wave their many American flags.”²

“Maryland my Maryland,” the state song of Maryland, is actually sung to the tune of “Lauriger Horatius” or “O Tannenbaum.” Mark Gayn, a journalist whose diary entries can be found quoted in almost every book on early postwar Japan and Korea, identifies the song more precisely in his own May 1 entry:

…the men marched briskly, singing the “Marseillaise” and the “May Day Song,” … and the “Akahata,” or the “Red Flag” with its curiously lilting tune, The people’s flag, the red flag, wraps the bodies of our dead; Before the corpses turn cold, their blood dyes the flag…³

You can listen to the song in Japanese here.

The 赤旗の歌 is the Japanese version of Irish Jim Connell’s 1889 “The Red Flag.” When one is in the mood for a blood dripping song for an internationalist revolution, I can’t think of a more powerful song. The opening verse and chorus run:

The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyr’d dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.

Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Within its shade we’ll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.

人民の旗は深紅にして、
幾度　同胞の屍を包めり。
その死屍　冷え固まらん前に
血潮は旗を染め上げぬ。

いざ赤旗を高く揚げよ、
その旗影に我ら生きて死なん。
臆病者は怯み、裏切者は嘲るも
我らここに赤旗を閃かさん。⁴

In terms of cultural history, this song, that here so captures the remarkable transformation witnessed on that first postwar May Day in Japan is a good example of one that has really travelled well with international revolutionary culture (beyond the well-known anthem the Internationale). Searching on inter-tubes with Mr. Google reports that it was sung at conferences of the British labor party, by Chinese communist anti-Japanese partisans as early as 1931, and that it is a popular pick in North Korean song contest and among South Korean protesters.

The Korean version of the song, 적기가 (赤旗歌), can be heard sung at the climactic close of the 2003 movie Silmido based on the events surrounding Unit 684.

Imagine the faces of Japanese police watching the protesters that day in 1946 as they listened to the song, even as their ranks were being purged, mostly, of the Special Higher Police whose very job it was to arrest and ideally convert (転向) anyone who were poisoned with such “red” thoughts. Of course, with the “reverse course” only a year or two later, at least some of the smiles of the revolutionaries would be wiped away as the force of the US occupation turned against the Communist threat.

1. John Dower has a great section on the May Day celebrations in his Embracing Defeat p254-67.
2. Oscar Olander Papers, Box 1 “Our Trip to Japan” Installment #2 p3
3. Mark Gayn Japan Diary Charles E. Tuttle Company (1981), 197-8.
4. See full side by side J/E versions, along with a link to a recording of my absolute favorite Irish version of this song that does not sound exactly like O Tannenbaum here.

Reading The Way of the Sword while listening to the “Restoring Honor” event, I began to wonder if our current shift to discourses of honor and warriors is a side effect of the ubiquity of martial arts in the US over the last 35 years. The values of martial arts, even the most modern ones, include personal and collective honor in ways that were, for a long time, rather absent in most American rhetoric. Sarah Palin said “If you look for the virtues that have sustained our country, you will find them in those who wear the uniform, who take the oath, who pay the price for our freedom.” That’s as good a paraphrase of the Imperial Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors as I’ve ever heard from an American politician.

The cultural and historical problems which made Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior such a weak hash of Harry Potter plotting and dojo delusions persist in the second book of the trilogy. Like the first volume, it’s a quick read, probably most suitable for middle school/junior high readers, though older readers with an interest in the martial arts won’t find it childish. Historians of Japan, however, will find this gaijin-boy-in-early-Edo tale a test of character not unlike the one the protagonist faces: to get through it, you must ignore exhaustion, overcome moments of sharp pain, focus on the goal, and achieve a state of no-mind…. [spoilers ahead, of course, though the fact that it's the middle part of a trilogy probably tells you most of what you need to know.]

As I said in my review of the last book, there is a lot of anachronism here regarding samurai culture, in particular the transposition of a fully-developed Hagakure-style bushido and 20th century dojo culture into early 17th century Japan. The books, after all, chronicle the adventures of a teenage English boy orphaned and marooned when ninja kill his father in Japan. Jack is adopted into the Miyamoto Musashi-like Masamoto Takeshi’s family, and begins his training as a samurai in Masamoto’s Two-Sword Kyoto School. The action is in the 1610s — though, as you’ll see below, not the 1610s that we’re familiar with — but for Bradford’s purposes, the culture is timeless.

Most of the anachronisms are minor, but the sheer quantity is, after a while, exhausting. From food¹ to women’s roles² to culture,³ Bradford routinely sacrifices historical reality to creating a familiar cultural milieu for his readers.⁴ Bradford also has his foreign characters using Western idioms — “The blind leading the blind,” (232) and “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” (344) — but not noting how strange they would sound to the Japanese characters. On the other hand, the Japanese characters talk in koans (or fortune cookies) a lot of the time as well: this culminates in a scene where Jack is preparing for a fight and everyone he talks to repeats their signature aphorism, and Jack then has to remember and use them all during the fight, a triumph of authorial pedantry. (pp. 375-389)

There are some truly weird alterations of history in this book, though, that go beyond behavioral quirks or contextual trappings. While this is a Japan in which Oda Nobunaga ruled the late 1500s⁵, it appears that in this version of history the Battle of Sekigahara hasn’t happened, and the Tokugawa polity does not, in fact, exist! There is a Daimyo Takatomi Hideaki (Toyotomi Hideyoshi?) who rules the Kyoto region and is the daimyo whom Masamoto serves and who supports the school, and a Daimyo Kamakura Katsura⁶ who rules Edo and is the patron of a rival school. While Daimyo Kamakura is gathering forces and beginning a nationalistic anti-Christian movement (46, 131, 171, passim), Daimyo Takatomi is maneuvering against him⁷ and is described as follows:

As you’re well aware, the ruling lord here in Kyoto is Daimyo Takatomi. But Daimyo Takatomi is not just responsible for this province. He governs Japan as one of the appointed regents, and he’s popular among the samurai lords. He likes Christians and foreigners. In fact, he likes them so much, I’ve heard that he’s converting to Christianity himself. (p. 96)

It’s not clear from this or from the context whether Takatomi is regent for the Emperor (who features prominently in the first book) or for the unnamed heir of the unnamed Hideyoshi. In fact, it’s not clear that Hideyoshi unified Japan in this timeline: it’s entirely possible that Oda Nobunaga did it, since he gets credit for most of the interesting military adventures of the recent past, or that Japan never really went through a period of disunity and civil war. Given the frequency with which characters either traveled to China (232, 349) or had contact with Chinese (346), there may not have been a wako pirate problem or invasion of Korea to interfere with the China trade. There are still areas considered “ninja territory” (283) which means that political control over localities is pretty weak. And the final challenges are referred to as “ancient samurai tradition” (352) which, in addition to conflating the school with the entire samurai class, seems to contradict the idea that this is Masamoto’s school, a recent development.

Clearly this is a very different timeline: there were in our history no daimyo outside of Kyushu who converted to Christianity — though the teacher speaking here could just be very wrong — and the anti-Christian movement and gradually escalating persecutions orchestrated by Daimyo Kamakura⁸ bear no resemblance to the nonchalance with which most daimyo greeted Christianity and foreign contact. Christianity was oppressed in Japan, but it was on orders from Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa Shoguns, and it was based on the dual loyalty problem, not on any theological or cultural revulsion against the religion. Granted, theology was cited in the Expulsion edicts, but I don’t know any credible historian who considers that more than a bit of rhetorical cover for the geopolitical considerations regarding contact with European Catholic empires.

Even in the discussions of combat, which is supposed to be Bradford’s forte, there’s an immense amount of sloppy work in this book. There’s the clichéd scene where a brash young bravo duels an older, calmer warrior, and gets efficiently dispatched. There’s the Hong Kong Cinema inspired move by Masamoto Akiko, turning her caught leg into a base for a cartwheel kick, then riding the momentum to land on the neighboring roof. There’s constant references to “the fighting stance,” (e.g. 233) as though there were only one. There’s the preternaturally perceptive blind staff master who trains Jack, et al., in blindfolded balance-beam combat and runs off the green-eyed ninja master almost single-handedly. Sensei Kano⁹ at least has one of the best lines in the book, when the ninja tries to exploit his blindness with scattered spikes: “Tetsu-bishi, how uninspired.” (343, then he pole vaults over them!) In the running for most bizarre detail is that one of the girls at the rival school has “blackened teeth and fingernails that had been sharpened into claws.” (169)¹⁰

Then there are the moments where the characters, in order to move the plot along, must be a little dim. One of the teachers claims that “Iron is full of impurities that weaken it.” (85) One of Jack’s schoolmates is confused when ninja show up in the snow wearing white because “ninja always wear black” (225) though in a society with a substantial ninja problem, the concept of camouflage would have to be pretty well known. Jack is assured several times that the anti-foreign political winds won’t affect him because he’ll be a tough and dangerous samurai, ignoring the fact that skill in combat has very little to do with freedom from oppression for small, visible minorities. (e.g. 177) Jack publicly accuses a schoolmate and rival of cheating in a competition, and none of the adults question his statements or investigate.¹¹ Jack breaks (briefly) under torture (337), which is quite out of character, and fails to recognize the difference between xenophobic prejudice and distrust of an individual who routinely cheats. (326)

There were a few unexpectedly nice touches. The gold-leafed tea room (79) represents an authentic strain in Tea in the 1500s and early 1600s, and suggests that Takatomi is supposed to be an alternate Hideyoshi, but with a very different character. Bradford also correctly notes that tea was not yet an English drink. (82) Though I can’t say I care for it as a plot device, there was a tradition among medieval warriors of premonitory dreams. (e.g. 120) And the Zen parable that teaches that enlightenment gets further away the harder you try is nicely deployed by one of the teachers. (256).

At this point, I have to read the third book, just to see how the alternate timeline comes out, or if Bradford will clarify the bizarre historical process that brought us to this point. As far as these two books go, though, no disclaimer¹² can possibly cover for the history, culture and writing which are on display here.

1. Sushi and Tempura unlikely at formal banquet, p. 38. Sashimi unlikely as student food, p. 87.
2. A daimyo daughter invited to a tea ceremony with her father, p. 43. The budding romantic triangle between her, Jack and Masamoto’s daughter. The fact that the daimyo’s daughter and Masamoto’s daughter — among others — are coequal students at Masamoto’s school.
3. Hard to know for sure, but seems early for origami, especially as Zen metaphor, and the crane isn’t a symbol of peace yet. (90-92, passim). I’ve never heard of hallucinogens used as meditative aids or tests of character in Japan. (358). And while elite samurai were probably mostly literate by this time, the attempt to bar Jack from participating in a critical rite of passage because he can’t write his name in kanji is a maneuver straight out of the 20th century bureaucratic playbook. (45).
4. and their teachers and guardians who want the books ‘educational’
5. and led assaults on ninja territory, (254)
6. a fascinating mix of historically implausible names, continuing the tradition he began in the first book with Masamoto’s sons Yamato and Tenno
7. with Masamoto’s help as a diplomatic envoy (150), which clearly breaks any remaining literary connection between Masamoto and the nearly unemployable Musashi
8. Using the term “Daimyo” as a cognate for “Lord” is awkward, at best, but I don’t want anyone thinking that the Kamakura bakufu was somehow involved in this. It’s not that far gone
9. Yes, Bradford uses “Sensei” as an honorific prefix
10. The blackened teeth aren’t really bizarre, except that she’s the only female Jack encounters in either book who does this, and it’s entirely inappropriate for an unmarried teenager.
11. This happens all the time in the Harry Potter books: when it’s necessary for the plot, the adults are completely oblivious to things like Quidditch equipment behaving radically differently than normal. The other laughably obvious Harry Potter borrowing in this book is a Patronus moment. (363)
12. “Young Samurai: the Way of the Sword is a work of fiction, and while based on real historical figures, events and locations, the book does not profess to be accurate in this regard. Young Samurai is more an echo of the times than a reenactment of history.”

I’m not sure when my family got this game, but I remember playing with it in the late 70s. Though Shogun is described as a “digital” game, there’s no electronics involved: magnets in the board turn the dial in each piece until a number shows in the window; that number is how far the piece can move next time. The pseudo-random element takes some of the strategy out of the game¹ and so it moves pretty quickly. Below you can see a rare early checkmate — most games involve a lot of piece exchanges before checkmate is on the table — that my 7 year-old managed to pull of in his third game. The numbers swinging around in the pieces is quite enchanting, especially for kids.

The game seems to have been invented by a Japanese, but I’m not sure it was ever marketed in Japan. Clavell’s Shogun came out a year or so before this game did, so it’s likely that the title would have been attached to anything with a hint of Japaneseness about it.

The association of ‘Japan’ with ‘digital’ is interesting; the use of ‘digital’ itself is an interesting cultural moment, the transition from ‘transistor’ to ‘digital.’ It’s got to be early in the analog v. digital wars, and the term is clearly being misused, as this is a patently analog game. Like “Shogun,” “digital” is a marketing device intended to invoke emotional responses rather than being descriptive.

1. especially if you play a cutthroat version which doesn’t allow players to test moves before making them

I almost didn’t check Chris Bradford‘s Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior out of the library when I saw it, but some instinct told me that it was something I should read. Perhaps it was the realization that Young Samurai was the first book in a series — oddly, though, there was no information on the other books¹ — and therefore likely to have some serious publicity support from the publisher. Perhaps it was the realization that the publisher was Disney/Hyperion, which more or less guarantees a pretty substantial distribution and readership. Perhaps it was the hope that I might find, finally, some historical fiction worth recommending…..

The book is about a young English boy who’s shipwrecked in Japan in 1611, and gets adopted by a samurai family, while being stalked by the ninja pirates who killed his father and crewmates. So it was a bit Karate Kid and a bit of the story of Will Adams (more Samurai William than Shogun); nothing surprising, really, but all a bit familiar. Aside from fairly predictable ahistorical elements,² commonplaces of martial arts fiction, and the implausible interpersonal relationships, nothing out of the ordinary.

I was about halfway through the book, though, when I realized what I was reading: it was the scene where Jack, the young Englishman, shows up at the school of his adopted father/patron — a formidable warrior — and all the students are introduced to the instructors at a big banquet. I put down the book, walked into the other room and said to my wife, “It’s Harry Potter in Japan!”

[spoilers, of course, under the fold]

“That’s too bad,” she said, “since you liked Harry Potter so much.” She’s right: I read all the books, but never stopped complaining about them. In fairness, my chief complaint about the Harry Potter series was Rowling’s failure to develop a remotely plausible social or historical context for the action; Bradford has adopted an actual place and time, so he should have a perfectly workable milieu, if he doesn’t muck it up.³ I also thought that Rowling dragged the story on interminably; Bradford only has a trilogy planned.

What elements does it share with Harry Potter? The characters and narratives are so structurally similar that I’m surprised it took me so long to see it: orphaned boy enters new cultural world, discovers new skills for which he has a natural talent, attracts the ire of a mysterious and dangerous enemy who has some connection to himself, defeats his enemies with the aid of his fellow students, has a mentor/protector who’s the only person powerful enough to defeat his nemesis and they have a history of conflict, a female friend who is also better-informed and ambiguously interested, a school with multiple instructors (introduced, as I said, at a big banquet), class and purity-based discrimination, and contests of skill which are ultimately decided by the good character — and preternaturally appropriate skills — of the protagonist. I could go on.

Some of the similarities are more or less coincidental: class and ethnicity are common forms of prejudice, certainly present in Japan as much as England, and some martial arts schools did have specialist instructors, and all of them had hierarchical systems. Using the immensely successful Rowling series as a model isn’t really a flaw, I suppose: “fish out of water goes to school” is a literary frame that allows the author to educate the reader along with the protagonist in an almost naturalistic way. But the nemesis/mentor pair, the orphan with a mixed blessing from deceased parents protagonist, the tight circle of misfit/nerdy friends and allies, the unlikely triumphs from first principles and good character, the secret/conspiracy that stretches over multiple books, even the climactic inter-school trial of skill are all there. Rowling should be proud: she’s spawned a genre!

I have historical and cultural issues as well, most of which can be summed up as the result of placing later practices too early. Most of the dojo scenes are like that, depicting 20th century martial arts ettiquette (but, very oddly, glossing over the sempai-kohai seniority structure). The cultural role of the Imperial institution as depicted isn’t plausible until Mito School thought develops in the late 18th and early 19th century.⁴ The female characters, and Jack’s egalitarianism, are really only possible in a 21st century rewriting of the history.⁵ There’s an odd bit when the characters are explaining sohei warrior monks to Jack: they are simultaneously supernatural practitioners of incomparable skill (201) and overweening power-mongers who are obliterated by Oda Nobunaga in his apparently justified attempt to take Kyoto. (164-165) There are several places where practices are described as “Japanese” when they are distinctly samurai class issues. It’s an historical hash.

The language of Bushido is a little anachronistic, but not as bad as the actual Japanese which is used in the book, which is thoroughly modern. I understand why, more or less, but there are times when more accurate renderings might have been more dramatic: For example, the Japanese students use the late 19th/20th century gaijin as a derogatory term for Jack, but the Japanese of the time would have been more likely to use an actually derogatory term like yabanjin [savage, barbarian] or nanbanjin [Southern barbarian] or ketoujin [hairy chinese barbarian] or komojin [red-hairs].⁶

One of the odder aspects of the book is that the head of the school, and Jack’s adopted father, is explicitly modeled on Miyamoto Musashi, the great swordsman and strategist, but Bradford changes his name — Masamoto — and alters significant components of his history, including, most notably, the fact that Musashi only ran a school for a short while and certainly wasn’t a big fan of Bushido as it developed later. Conveniently, Musashi’s school-running days were right around the time that Jack has shown up, which was just in time to see the famous duel involving the oar.⁷ Bradford’s Masamoto is, like Musashi, a two-sword master with a side-speciality in throwing things, but doesn’t seem to have the philosophical side of the historical swordsman. He does, however, have a complicated relationship with his sons. The eldest, Tenno, was killed by the ninja master Dokugan Ryu; the younger, Yamato, is trying to fill the gap, but failing, and his struggle — along with Jack’s outsider issues — forms the emotional core of the book.⁸

Do I have any good things to say about it? Well, it’s a quick read, broken up into 44 chapters, and the writing is pretty good. The ethical and personal lessons learned are worthwhile; though the reiteration of those lessons by Masamoto gets heavy-handed, it certainly sounds like many a “martial arts is about character” lecture I’ve heard and read. I can’t say, though, that I’ve found an historical fiction which pleases me, though.

1. As near as I can tell from the websites, the second book is coming out in the UK shortly, with the third book scheduled for next year and a TV deal in the works, but nothing on the US side about when the sequels might be available here.
2. ninja, yes, and wakou pirates (who are also ninja) off the coast of eastern Japan in 1611, and the post-Enlightenment attitudes of the protagonist
3. He certainly has educational aspirations [PDF]
4. The social connections to the Imperial house are flat-out absurd: one daimyo is described as a “second cousin to the Imperial Line” (183), which boggles the mind almost as much as the idea that the Imperial sigil is the “sun” instead of the chrysanthemum. An imperial official shows up to officiate at the inter-school contest later, which culminates in a race to Kiyomizudera, which is the resting place for a magical sword which is Japan’s great protection against danger. Yeah.
5. Yes, samurai women learned how to fight. Mostly with dagger and spear, and the incessant invocation of Tomoe Gozen as a feminist heroine clearly comes out of 21st century concerns. The idea that a 17th century Englishman with a naval background would be surprised or discomfited by the concept of classes is just a bit of a stretch, too.
6. and the use of “gaijin-lover” as an epithet for Jack’s female friend just doesn’t ring true. Even as foolhardy and dense as the mean kids in this book are, they would be unlikely to accuse the daughter of their teacher of being an outcaste among prostitutes, and she’d be unlikely to take it as calmly as she does. Akiko is an odd duck, though, who practices pearl-diving in her spare time (without revealing anything), but takes samurai ettiquette very seriously.
7. though Bradford’s version is much longer than any other I’ve read, and the oar is a stopgap measure rather than a premeditated decision: these are the kinds of changes he’s making
8. The names almost drove me to drop the book in the first few chapters. The idea of naming a child “Emperor” or “Japan” made me worry that the whole book would be like that. The ninja master’s name is translated in the book as “Dragon Eye” though “One-eyed Dragon” is much more accurate. Also, the green eye clearly means that Dokugan Ryu is of foreign origin, though nobody mentions it and we’ll have to wait for book three to find out for sure.