NobuVariety!
28/8/13 20:11![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daeva_neesan--Sorry if I'm talking about obscure subjects again, but I have to share my enthusiasm for some stuff with you fuckers XD
You can blame it all on Barbara, who is happily bombing me with tones of inspiration and good stuff XD
First of all, I happened to find the scans of Sengoku Gaiden: Okehazama no Senki by Hideki Miyashita!
It was all RAWs of course, so I couldn't understand much, but I surely browsed through the pages avidly.
I'm not a huge fan of romance in the first place, but I'm quite aware that Kitsuno and Nobunaga's love story was quite epic. Miyashita-sensei was definitely of the same idea, in fact he turned it into an "epic" of its own.
So in this manga, Nobunaga knew Kitsuno back in the days, even before she married that Yaheji guy, even before he got married with Kichou: his ABSOLUTE first love.
I found this thing quite cheesy. I prefer the "standard" story, to be honest, the one where Nobu got to meet Kitsuno during a visit to Ikoma's, after she was widowed.
I was also a bit bothered by the lack of Saito's. No Dosan, nor Kichou. But maybe that's because they had some visibility in other series (I don't remember they appearing in Sengoku either, though)-- I'm very bothered because I'm really intrigued by the relationship of Nobunaga and his father-in-law, but I guess that it wasn't so important for the plot of this specific story for the author.
...Another scene that kinda surprised me (not sure if in a good or bad way yet!), was this one:
I can see how Nobunaga was sure awed with his task of defeating such a formidable opponent (yeah, despite what videogames told you Yoshimoto was QUITE badass), and surely recognized his strenght, but from here to do such-- "polite" acts, it's a different story.
I do understand why the author wanted to do this, the most of the story is about both daimyo's carreers, and how their personalities were similar, despite the basic differences... At some point, expecially during the heat of the battle, you could get that feeling that both Nobunaga and Yoshimoto really longed "to meet" each other, and the impression that Nobunaga was a bit sad that he couldn't kill Yoshimoto himself.
---For the sake of completion, here's the bit of the conclusion of the Okehazama battle as in the Shinchokouki:
"Hattori Koheita took on Yoshimoto but was slashed across the kneecap and fell prostrate. Then Mouri Shinsuke struck down Yoshimoto and cut off his head. [...]
So that was the end of Yoshimoto's fortunes. [...]
"I'll inspect all these heads in Kiyosu," Nobunaga said. The sight of Yoshimoto's severed head gave him no little satisfaction. He returned to Kiyosu by the same route that he had taken to the battlefield. [...]
On his way back to Okehazama from Kiyosu, Kazusa no Suke Nobunaga had the head of Imagawa Yoshimoto carried in front of the horse he was riding. He kept up a brisk pace, he arrived at Kiyosu before nightfall. The following day, Nobunaga personally inspected the heads that had been taken, more than three thousand in all. [...]
Yoshimoto's servitor (some guy who was kidnapped alive by a certain Shimokata Kurozaemon) related his master's last moments, and Nobunaga had him write down one by one the names of those heads he could identify. He gave Yoshimoto's former attendant a sword and a dagger with gold-encrusted sheaths. Moreover, Nobunaga outfitted a party of then monks who, together with the captured attendant, had to bring Yoshimoto's head back to Suruga. Twenty chou south of Kiyosu, [...], Nobunaga had a burial mound erected for Yoshimoto. He also had one thousand sutras read in honor of the memory of the deceased and built a large stupa for him."
The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, Ota Gyuichi (translated and edited by JSA Elisonas and JP Lamers)
...So I guess that, as in Kitsuno's case, Miyashita-sensei sure got the right vibe down, but he decided to represent it in some "excessive" manner, so to overemphasize the whole thing...
Despite these things, it was indeed a wonderful piece. Someone should really scanlate it T_T;
Speaking of monks and sutras, here's another consideration that I'd like to share.
It's about Nobunaga's take on religion.
It's a popular opinion that he was a blatant atheist and agnostic, a perspective supported also by Lamers in his Japonius Tyrannus, and this point is brought up whenever the deal with Portugues missionaries or Honganji monks pop up.
People says, "Yeah, he allowed the Catholic missionaries to build a church in Azuchi, but he never converted because he was an atheist" or "He went on and burned the month of Honganji because he was an atheist"-- Which to me is just a reflection of people's poor imagination when it comes to read people.
Before the Okehazama's battle, Nobunaga took a good share of his time to pray for victory to Atsuta temple. There are also landmarks on the tinier Hioki shrine testifying that he stopped there too to pray for his victory.
He dedicated temples to both Hirate and Kitsuno, and as we read above, he also let monks pray for his Suruga's enemies.
I think that what Nobunaga wanted to stop was the religious interference with power. To said it with the words of someone else, he "rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's".
Whenever he went to mess up or poke fun at religious institutions, it was exactly when the religious institutions acted like daimyos or on 'behalf' of the Emperor.
He let the Jesuits build their cute church because he sensed no "threat" from them, also as a way to keep people calm, letting them doing what they wanted.
While writing, the Azuchi debate comes to my mind, to highlight my point... All in all, yes, maybe he wasn't such a fervent person as Uesugi Kenshin (XD), but I don't think that he was dramatically less religious than other people in his time.
On a totally different note, today I got my first booklet about Takeda Shingen, my second-favourite Sengoku general after Nobunaga :D
I realized that I knew very little about him despite being completely charmed by his historical figure, so I bought this booklet to get to know more about him. Unfortunately I also got to know that there are another TWO books of the same series after this, and a third one, that I'm not sure if it'll ever be published ^__^;;;;
Long story short, there were things that I really disliked and things that I really liked about this publication.
I was extremely bothered to see that there are more issues for me to collect, expecially since they don't really come for cheap, but I can see why, since the authors sure have lots of material to sort out and explain accurately (it reminded me a lot of me with Shinchou XD)... What really bothered me was the "magazine"'s format. It was a tiny slice, less than 80 pages long, not a proper "book". I guess that you can call it an actual book once you merge the 6 issues together. The Brookhurst website sells the first 5 issues (not all of them are Shingen-related) for 90 dollars, and there's also some discount involved. I mean-- NO, GUYS.
The informative bits are quite interesting and all, to be honest, but why talking about how to use a spear by the paragraph about Shingen's childhood? You'd expect some connection, but there isn't.
That's not how you lay stuff out on a page. Or in a book (MAGAZINE!). The book does have some amusing "appendixes" (the one about Takeda's war banners and flags was WONDERFUL). Put those infos there. Or make another book about those. I mean-- C'MON!
On the other hand, there were also things that left me ECSTATIC. First of all, the way the author decided to treat Shingen's life. Of course the tale is chronological, but mister Solum is also very keen on mentioning anecdotes, stories, legends about Shingen, also different versions of them, trying to explain why or how they became part of his "actual" biography. It was a philological choice that showed me all the passion and enthusiasm of the author for the subject.
Another wonderful thing were the "in loco reports".
A ♥ note also for the coloured illustrations and maps in the middle of the book... Sure the placing is a bit weird, but it's because of the printing issues with B/W books with coloured pages... All in all it was an expensive but worthy purchase, now I just have to wait to get enough extra money to buy the other volumes without remorses XD
You can blame it all on Barbara, who is happily bombing me with tones of inspiration and good stuff XD
First of all, I happened to find the scans of Sengoku Gaiden: Okehazama no Senki by Hideki Miyashita!
It was all RAWs of course, so I couldn't understand much, but I surely browsed through the pages avidly.
I'm not a huge fan of romance in the first place, but I'm quite aware that Kitsuno and Nobunaga's love story was quite epic. Miyashita-sensei was definitely of the same idea, in fact he turned it into an "epic" of its own.
So in this manga, Nobunaga knew Kitsuno back in the days, even before she married that Yaheji guy, even before he got married with Kichou: his ABSOLUTE first love.
I found this thing quite cheesy. I prefer the "standard" story, to be honest, the one where Nobu got to meet Kitsuno during a visit to Ikoma's, after she was widowed.
I was also a bit bothered by the lack of Saito's. No Dosan, nor Kichou. But maybe that's because they had some visibility in other series (I don't remember they appearing in Sengoku either, though)-- I'm very bothered because I'm really intrigued by the relationship of Nobunaga and his father-in-law, but I guess that it wasn't so important for the plot of this specific story for the author.
...Another scene that kinda surprised me (not sure if in a good or bad way yet!), was this one:
I can see how Nobunaga was sure awed with his task of defeating such a formidable opponent (yeah, despite what videogames told you Yoshimoto was QUITE badass), and surely recognized his strenght, but from here to do such-- "polite" acts, it's a different story.
I do understand why the author wanted to do this, the most of the story is about both daimyo's carreers, and how their personalities were similar, despite the basic differences... At some point, expecially during the heat of the battle, you could get that feeling that both Nobunaga and Yoshimoto really longed "to meet" each other, and the impression that Nobunaga was a bit sad that he couldn't kill Yoshimoto himself.
---For the sake of completion, here's the bit of the conclusion of the Okehazama battle as in the Shinchokouki:
"Hattori Koheita took on Yoshimoto but was slashed across the kneecap and fell prostrate. Then Mouri Shinsuke struck down Yoshimoto and cut off his head. [...]
So that was the end of Yoshimoto's fortunes. [...]
"I'll inspect all these heads in Kiyosu," Nobunaga said. The sight of Yoshimoto's severed head gave him no little satisfaction. He returned to Kiyosu by the same route that he had taken to the battlefield. [...]
On his way back to Okehazama from Kiyosu, Kazusa no Suke Nobunaga had the head of Imagawa Yoshimoto carried in front of the horse he was riding. He kept up a brisk pace, he arrived at Kiyosu before nightfall. The following day, Nobunaga personally inspected the heads that had been taken, more than three thousand in all. [...]
Yoshimoto's servitor (some guy who was kidnapped alive by a certain Shimokata Kurozaemon) related his master's last moments, and Nobunaga had him write down one by one the names of those heads he could identify. He gave Yoshimoto's former attendant a sword and a dagger with gold-encrusted sheaths. Moreover, Nobunaga outfitted a party of then monks who, together with the captured attendant, had to bring Yoshimoto's head back to Suruga. Twenty chou south of Kiyosu, [...], Nobunaga had a burial mound erected for Yoshimoto. He also had one thousand sutras read in honor of the memory of the deceased and built a large stupa for him."
The Chronicle of Lord Nobunaga, Ota Gyuichi (translated and edited by JSA Elisonas and JP Lamers)
...So I guess that, as in Kitsuno's case, Miyashita-sensei sure got the right vibe down, but he decided to represent it in some "excessive" manner, so to overemphasize the whole thing...
Despite these things, it was indeed a wonderful piece. Someone should really scanlate it T_T;
Speaking of monks and sutras, here's another consideration that I'd like to share.
It's about Nobunaga's take on religion.
It's a popular opinion that he was a blatant atheist and agnostic, a perspective supported also by Lamers in his Japonius Tyrannus, and this point is brought up whenever the deal with Portugues missionaries or Honganji monks pop up.
People says, "Yeah, he allowed the Catholic missionaries to build a church in Azuchi, but he never converted because he was an atheist" or "He went on and burned the month of Honganji because he was an atheist"-- Which to me is just a reflection of people's poor imagination when it comes to read people.
Before the Okehazama's battle, Nobunaga took a good share of his time to pray for victory to Atsuta temple. There are also landmarks on the tinier Hioki shrine testifying that he stopped there too to pray for his victory.
He dedicated temples to both Hirate and Kitsuno, and as we read above, he also let monks pray for his Suruga's enemies.
I think that what Nobunaga wanted to stop was the religious interference with power. To said it with the words of someone else, he "rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's".
Whenever he went to mess up or poke fun at religious institutions, it was exactly when the religious institutions acted like daimyos or on 'behalf' of the Emperor.
He let the Jesuits build their cute church because he sensed no "threat" from them, also as a way to keep people calm, letting them doing what they wanted.
While writing, the Azuchi debate comes to my mind, to highlight my point... All in all, yes, maybe he wasn't such a fervent person as Uesugi Kenshin (XD), but I don't think that he was dramatically less religious than other people in his time.
On a totally different note, today I got my first booklet about Takeda Shingen, my second-favourite Sengoku general after Nobunaga :D
I realized that I knew very little about him despite being completely charmed by his historical figure, so I bought this booklet to get to know more about him. Unfortunately I also got to know that there are another TWO books of the same series after this, and a third one, that I'm not sure if it'll ever be published ^__^;;;;
Long story short, there were things that I really disliked and things that I really liked about this publication.
I was extremely bothered to see that there are more issues for me to collect, expecially since they don't really come for cheap, but I can see why, since the authors sure have lots of material to sort out and explain accurately (it reminded me a lot of me with Shinchou XD)... What really bothered me was the "magazine"'s format. It was a tiny slice, less than 80 pages long, not a proper "book". I guess that you can call it an actual book once you merge the 6 issues together. The Brookhurst website sells the first 5 issues (not all of them are Shingen-related) for 90 dollars, and there's also some discount involved. I mean-- NO, GUYS.
The informative bits are quite interesting and all, to be honest, but why talking about how to use a spear by the paragraph about Shingen's childhood? You'd expect some connection, but there isn't.
That's not how you lay stuff out on a page. Or in a book (MAGAZINE!). The book does have some amusing "appendixes" (the one about Takeda's war banners and flags was WONDERFUL). Put those infos there. Or make another book about those. I mean-- C'MON!
On the other hand, there were also things that left me ECSTATIC. First of all, the way the author decided to treat Shingen's life. Of course the tale is chronological, but mister Solum is also very keen on mentioning anecdotes, stories, legends about Shingen, also different versions of them, trying to explain why or how they became part of his "actual" biography. It was a philological choice that showed me all the passion and enthusiasm of the author for the subject.
Another wonderful thing were the "in loco reports".
A ♥ note also for the coloured illustrations and maps in the middle of the book... Sure the placing is a bit weird, but it's because of the printing issues with B/W books with coloured pages... All in all it was an expensive but worthy purchase, now I just have to wait to get enough extra money to buy the other volumes without remorses XD
