Thank you very much for such a detailed reply and for the recommendations on which anime are especially good to watch from a historical accuracy perspective. I've heard of Yoshikawa Eiji but not actually read any yet (my Japanese is at the level of a little duolingo so waaaaaay off reading a novel) so thanks for the tip and I'll see if I can feature one of his novels on my substack in the near future.
Thinking more broadly about history and historical fiction, both are categories of storyteller, it's just that the rules of engagement differ for both: History requires you to stop when you can't include a footnote to cite your source whereas Historical Fiction enables you to cross that line and imagine the possible, which can only be successfully done when you've thoroughly done your homework. I remember reading Amy Stanley's Stranger in the Shogun's city and thinking that this story was crying out for a historical fiction take given the gaps in the documentation to explain why Tsuneno acted as she did. Perhaps these genres of writing are not so opposed after all.
Thanks for writing this. Are there any historical fiction novels in English that you would recommend for reading about Japanese history? I suspect for many, reading historical fiction is how they learn history so it'd be good to promote/profile some which are more historically accurate.
I think you're right that a lot of historical 'knowledge' about Japan can be traced to specific works of historical fiction, and I think that's true both in Japan and in the West. I remember being an undergrad in the UK when Memoirs of a Geisha came out, and a lot of my friends read it as a truthful portrayal of what 1930s Japan had been like.
With the obvious caveat that historical fiction is always fiction, I think a good place to start is with materials produced in Japan rather than fiction written by Westerners. In some cases, I'd maybe recommend anime rather than novels. For instance, the anime version of the Tale of the Heike (https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G79H230XN/the-heike-story?srsltid=AfmBOoqUJ2YQ1nxcrqzZau4BpcIO6TabXl7Zry0of8kalr-NdQutYwbT) is really, really good - faithful to the original Heike in spirit and showcasing a lot of the politics of late Heian Japan, as the warrior class begins its ascent.
Another option is to use fictional works as a kind of guiding thread to highlight other texts or episodes in Japanese history that may be of interest. I did this in the class I just taught, whereby we did Here Comes Miss Modern (https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G79H23XN2/haikara-san-here-comes-miss-modern?srsltid=AfmBOooAv-JDddPgVqKk0AoJEim3X2fJ0euKG7smgMYlQZvxnMnZSgt4) as a way of looking at Taisho Japan, but we also branched out to read some of the texts that the anime alludes to, like the writings of the early Japanese feminist Hiratsuka Raicho, and highlighted the subplot of the Japanese invasion of Siberia in 1922, which is not exactly common knowledge even in Japan.
I'm not sure if you read Japanese or not, so as novels go, I'll stick to works available in English translation. If you want the Warring States period you could consider William S. Wilson's translation of Yoshikawa Eiji's Taiko, though it's very long and sometimes seems like a series of endless battles. The early 20th century author/doctor Mori Ogai wrote a lot of historical fiction set in the Tokugawa period, some of which is available in translation (https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Fiction-UNESCO-Collection-Representative/dp/0824813669), though it varies in terms of accessibility. Beyond that I guess it depends on what period you're interested in.
I have two personal notes. First, I have an impression that some 'ninja' authors (namely Hayes) Pare rather dismissive, if not antagonist, towards a solid (historical) academic scholarship. E. g. here (9:45) Hayes expresses his empathy with Cummins for being under fire by "academic purists": https://youtu.be/hovm3NWnUYw?si=dfdLd7bUWMS7UF-Y&t=585 Perhaps it's just to keep and protect their shtick (but it might have to do with them being too deep in their shtick, that it became their identity, and they're just intuitively protecting themselves... Who knows, I'm not a psychologist).
Second, "the uncertain boundary between fiction and history as something interesting and even postmodern" reminds me very much of J. B. Peterson's takes on the *truth* in the Bible (historical truth? Metaphorical truth? Symbolic truth? ...), and the takes of others on Peterson's inability to admit that people might actually care about *historical* truth. I'm sure there are more cases out there though :-)
Woof, both of those open a can of worms, but yeah, let me reply in order:
1) I think that's definitely true. In one of his more recent books - I think "In Search of the Ninja," though I don't have it with me - Cummins characterizes academic scholarship as pedantic and obsessed with minutiae, versus what he's doing which is popular-oriented and sees the big picture (paraphrasing - I don't have the book in front of me right now). In practice I don't think Cummins has been exactly under attack (except perhaps from me), because the attitude of most professional academics to his kind of stuff has generally been to ignore it rather than attack it, as with the Yasuke book.
But from the p.o.v. of ninja writers, an anti-academic (anti-elitist?) stance definitely works as a marketing device. It reminds me a bit of alternative medicine marketing, much of which is focused on painting corporate medicine as evil rather than on demonstrating the effectiveness of their own treatments. And the thing is, the critique advanced by Cummins/alt medicine *does* actually have the kernel of a point; very often academic scholarship *is* insular, dismissive of the popular, and focused on topics that very few general readers care about - just as corporate medicine can indeed be impersonal and rapacious. The anti-Ivory Tower thing, I would imagine, also clicks with people who get into ninjutsu for what they see as the esoteric/mystical stuff - similar sort of audience to the Ancient Aliens crowd, who also get a lot of mileage out of attacking academia for not taking their stuff seriously.
The flip side, of course, is that although the academic side is perhaps slow and narrowly oriented, it's far more accurate - it rarely makes the kind of horrifying errors we routinely see in the 'ninja' literature. Just like mainstream corporate-funded Western medicine, for all its evils, generally works.
2) Well, yeah - that's a major part of literary studies, after all. There's entire branches of literary aesthetics from the late 19th century onward dedicated to figuring out the connection between 'beauty' and 'truth' (or whatever) in literature, and almost any socially or historically-oriented reading of a literary text proceeds from the assumption that it reflects some kind of more abstract truth about the society that produced it. That's fine, completely standard literary methodology, so long as you're clear that that is what you're doing. I think what we are seeing with the ninja stuff is a kind of methodological slipperiness, a desire to have it both ways - to claim first that you're doing history, and then when challenged on the factual status of your materials, to retreat to saying that it's about symbolic truth. The problem with Gingetsu's argument, as I pointed out a while back, is that it works fine at the macro-scale but completely fails when applied at the level of granularity he wants to use it. So with the play Precious Incense, I doubt anyone would contest the idea that Nikki Danjo's magical powers might reflect a sense of societal dread or unease about the activities of the real-life Harada Munesuke in subverting the order of succession in the Sendai domain - magical powers are unnatural or uncanny, reflecting the idea of disrupting the Heaven-sent order of the lord's succession. That's a perfectly fine literary reading, but it breaks down if we use it at the micro-scale, to insist that Nikki Danjo's specific magical powers in the play reflect things that actually happened in the real world.
Lastly, I can't shake the feeling there's a gendered aspect to all of this. We might note that almost all major ninja writers are men, and I can't help but get vibes of the old 18th and 19th century idea that fiction is for women and children, and history for men, because men deal with real facts, not that silly imaginative stuff.
Thank you very much for such a detailed reply and for the recommendations on which anime are especially good to watch from a historical accuracy perspective. I've heard of Yoshikawa Eiji but not actually read any yet (my Japanese is at the level of a little duolingo so waaaaaay off reading a novel) so thanks for the tip and I'll see if I can feature one of his novels on my substack in the near future.
Thinking more broadly about history and historical fiction, both are categories of storyteller, it's just that the rules of engagement differ for both: History requires you to stop when you can't include a footnote to cite your source whereas Historical Fiction enables you to cross that line and imagine the possible, which can only be successfully done when you've thoroughly done your homework. I remember reading Amy Stanley's Stranger in the Shogun's city and thinking that this story was crying out for a historical fiction take given the gaps in the documentation to explain why Tsuneno acted as she did. Perhaps these genres of writing are not so opposed after all.
Thanks for writing this. Are there any historical fiction novels in English that you would recommend for reading about Japanese history? I suspect for many, reading historical fiction is how they learn history so it'd be good to promote/profile some which are more historically accurate.
I think you're right that a lot of historical 'knowledge' about Japan can be traced to specific works of historical fiction, and I think that's true both in Japan and in the West. I remember being an undergrad in the UK when Memoirs of a Geisha came out, and a lot of my friends read it as a truthful portrayal of what 1930s Japan had been like.
With the obvious caveat that historical fiction is always fiction, I think a good place to start is with materials produced in Japan rather than fiction written by Westerners. In some cases, I'd maybe recommend anime rather than novels. For instance, the anime version of the Tale of the Heike (https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G79H230XN/the-heike-story?srsltid=AfmBOoqUJ2YQ1nxcrqzZau4BpcIO6TabXl7Zry0of8kalr-NdQutYwbT) is really, really good - faithful to the original Heike in spirit and showcasing a lot of the politics of late Heian Japan, as the warrior class begins its ascent.
Another option is to use fictional works as a kind of guiding thread to highlight other texts or episodes in Japanese history that may be of interest. I did this in the class I just taught, whereby we did Here Comes Miss Modern (https://www.crunchyroll.com/series/G79H23XN2/haikara-san-here-comes-miss-modern?srsltid=AfmBOooAv-JDddPgVqKk0AoJEim3X2fJ0euKG7smgMYlQZvxnMnZSgt4) as a way of looking at Taisho Japan, but we also branched out to read some of the texts that the anime alludes to, like the writings of the early Japanese feminist Hiratsuka Raicho, and highlighted the subplot of the Japanese invasion of Siberia in 1922, which is not exactly common knowledge even in Japan.
I'm not sure if you read Japanese or not, so as novels go, I'll stick to works available in English translation. If you want the Warring States period you could consider William S. Wilson's translation of Yoshikawa Eiji's Taiko, though it's very long and sometimes seems like a series of endless battles. The early 20th century author/doctor Mori Ogai wrote a lot of historical fiction set in the Tokugawa period, some of which is available in translation (https://www.amazon.com/Historical-Fiction-UNESCO-Collection-Representative/dp/0824813669), though it varies in terms of accessibility. Beyond that I guess it depends on what period you're interested in.
And if you don't care about historical accuracy at all, there's always Yamada's Basilisk in manga form...https://www.amazon.com/s?k=basilisk+manga&i=stripbooks&crid=18ZG5Q29LOMN1&sprefix=basilisk+manga%2Cstripbooks%2C154&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
Wonderful, as always!
I have two personal notes. First, I have an impression that some 'ninja' authors (namely Hayes) Pare rather dismissive, if not antagonist, towards a solid (historical) academic scholarship. E. g. here (9:45) Hayes expresses his empathy with Cummins for being under fire by "academic purists": https://youtu.be/hovm3NWnUYw?si=dfdLd7bUWMS7UF-Y&t=585 Perhaps it's just to keep and protect their shtick (but it might have to do with them being too deep in their shtick, that it became their identity, and they're just intuitively protecting themselves... Who knows, I'm not a psychologist).
Second, "the uncertain boundary between fiction and history as something interesting and even postmodern" reminds me very much of J. B. Peterson's takes on the *truth* in the Bible (historical truth? Metaphorical truth? Symbolic truth? ...), and the takes of others on Peterson's inability to admit that people might actually care about *historical* truth. I'm sure there are more cases out there though :-)
Woof, both of those open a can of worms, but yeah, let me reply in order:
1) I think that's definitely true. In one of his more recent books - I think "In Search of the Ninja," though I don't have it with me - Cummins characterizes academic scholarship as pedantic and obsessed with minutiae, versus what he's doing which is popular-oriented and sees the big picture (paraphrasing - I don't have the book in front of me right now). In practice I don't think Cummins has been exactly under attack (except perhaps from me), because the attitude of most professional academics to his kind of stuff has generally been to ignore it rather than attack it, as with the Yasuke book.
But from the p.o.v. of ninja writers, an anti-academic (anti-elitist?) stance definitely works as a marketing device. It reminds me a bit of alternative medicine marketing, much of which is focused on painting corporate medicine as evil rather than on demonstrating the effectiveness of their own treatments. And the thing is, the critique advanced by Cummins/alt medicine *does* actually have the kernel of a point; very often academic scholarship *is* insular, dismissive of the popular, and focused on topics that very few general readers care about - just as corporate medicine can indeed be impersonal and rapacious. The anti-Ivory Tower thing, I would imagine, also clicks with people who get into ninjutsu for what they see as the esoteric/mystical stuff - similar sort of audience to the Ancient Aliens crowd, who also get a lot of mileage out of attacking academia for not taking their stuff seriously.
The flip side, of course, is that although the academic side is perhaps slow and narrowly oriented, it's far more accurate - it rarely makes the kind of horrifying errors we routinely see in the 'ninja' literature. Just like mainstream corporate-funded Western medicine, for all its evils, generally works.
2) Well, yeah - that's a major part of literary studies, after all. There's entire branches of literary aesthetics from the late 19th century onward dedicated to figuring out the connection between 'beauty' and 'truth' (or whatever) in literature, and almost any socially or historically-oriented reading of a literary text proceeds from the assumption that it reflects some kind of more abstract truth about the society that produced it. That's fine, completely standard literary methodology, so long as you're clear that that is what you're doing. I think what we are seeing with the ninja stuff is a kind of methodological slipperiness, a desire to have it both ways - to claim first that you're doing history, and then when challenged on the factual status of your materials, to retreat to saying that it's about symbolic truth. The problem with Gingetsu's argument, as I pointed out a while back, is that it works fine at the macro-scale but completely fails when applied at the level of granularity he wants to use it. So with the play Precious Incense, I doubt anyone would contest the idea that Nikki Danjo's magical powers might reflect a sense of societal dread or unease about the activities of the real-life Harada Munesuke in subverting the order of succession in the Sendai domain - magical powers are unnatural or uncanny, reflecting the idea of disrupting the Heaven-sent order of the lord's succession. That's a perfectly fine literary reading, but it breaks down if we use it at the micro-scale, to insist that Nikki Danjo's specific magical powers in the play reflect things that actually happened in the real world.
Lastly, I can't shake the feeling there's a gendered aspect to all of this. We might note that almost all major ninja writers are men, and I can't help but get vibes of the old 18th and 19th century idea that fiction is for women and children, and history for men, because men deal with real facts, not that silly imaginative stuff.