Times of Botchan 3
The Times of Botchan Vol. 3 by Jiro Taniguchi and Natsuo Sekikawa (1987). Fanfare/Ponent Mon, 2007. $19.99.
Way back in February of last year I wrote a review of the first two volumes of The Times of Botchan. This past month Fanfare/Ponent Mon finally realized volume 3 of the 10 volume series. Why not go read my review if you haven’t already, I’m not going to retread all that ground. This post is more of a heads up about this series than a new review.
Like previous volumes this one has a wandering plot of stories imbedded in stories leading to stories, jumping from one character to another in an occasionally disorienting way. Soseki himself appears for only two breif scenes, first at the beginning of the volume where he attends the funeral of another author, Shimei Futabatei, and we meet Rintaro Mori (a.k.a. Ogai, for some reason, the ongoing multiple names of characters in this manga really needs some explanation). Futabatei’s and Mori’s stories take up the greate part of the rest of the volume, engaging one of the ongoing themes of East meets West that runs through this series. This time in the form of Elise Weigert, a German woman whom Mori falls in love with while serving in the military in Germany. Elise decides to go to Japan to be with him, where we follow her trip and where she meets Futabatei. This story within the story is not concluded in this volume (I assume it continues in volume 4).
Like previous volumes, the story contains a verbose and informative narrator as well as numerous walk-ons by various historical figures (a young Hideki Tojo appears at one point). The narrative captions are essential for understanding the transitions in time and shifts in character throughout. This type of historical work would be extremely difficult without someone giving out information (particularly for an English reader, reading about Japanese history). The more I read of this manga, the more epic it becomes. Taniguchi and Sekikawa are outlining no less than an entire era of Japanese history. The richness of their work is already evident only 3/10ths of the way through. Rereading is necessary and desirable. In a market where historical/biographical works concerning other countries and cultures seem to do well, Times of Botchan could be a big hit, but at this rate, we won’t see the series conclude for many years. Still, I look forward to future volumes.
Tags: Manga
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