Saotome Taichi: Hakuouki's Prettiest Boy of All

While wandering around the Internet, I ran across this clip from a popular TV show back in 2008 showing a 16-year-old Saotome Taichi　早乙女太一 . Taichi is an "onnagata", a traditional/Kabuki type of male actor who plays female roles. His type of performances, though, are not strictly Kabuki.

This idea of men playing women comes from the fact the first Kabuki female roles way back when were played by women, but their male fans had a nasty habit of starting fights and killing each other over who was the actress's biggest fan. So the government banned women from the stage. (As homosexual behavior was seen as completely normal for centuries, this plan didn't quite work out: fanboys continued to freak out over their male favorites, and the government finally changed the ban from just women to women and adult men.)



Famed SMAP singer Kimutaku, one of the hosts of the TV show, says in a funny moment after the performance, "Wow, I feel a little gay... if this were the Edo period I'd have fallen for you!" I can't blame him, so I went poking around the Internet for other performances and information on Taichi.

It turns out he also takes on more contemporary male roles, and he played Hijikata Toshizo (seen above) in Hakuouki's live stage version back in October 2010.

I know a few of you are Hakuouki fans, so if you haven't seen this clip reel yet, enjoy! (If you're not familiar with the series, Hakuouki started as a girls' dating video game set around 100 years ago, featuring the real-life Shinsengumi group.)



Taichi is the first actor they show individually, wearing a deep purple kimono.

Japan in Pop Culture: Inception

If you haven't seen the latest box office hit, Inception, go check it out. For several reasons: great acting, interesting plot, and, as my friend puts it, men looking hot in suits. Lots of men. ;)

One of the characters, a Japanese businessman, is played by famous Japanese actor Ken Watanabe (thank you, Christopher Nolan, for not playing "all Asians are alike" in your casting and actually using a Japanese person for a Japanese role).

Because of his character's nationality, several tips of the hat to Japan appear in the movie early on: a beautiful room with traditionally painted sliding doors, an awesome mutiple-layer "kimono collar" shirt Watanabe wears, and shots of the country's famous bullet trains, both inside and out.

So if you need another reason to go see Inception, go see it for the Japanese stuff. Or something. :D

Katy Perry in Kimono

Kimono can show up in the most unexpected places: Singer Katy Perry has apparently had a yukata made featuring fast food, which she loves. Yum!

(Thanks to Immortal Geisha forum member claw789 for the heads up!)

Book Review: The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori

Mark Ravina's The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (2005) follows one of the last samurai folk heroes in Japan, the leader of the Satsuma Rebellion (1877) and a hugely influential samurai in the chaos of the mid-late 1800s. It follows Saigo's rise from a low-ranking samurai tax clerk to Imperial adviser and finally national folk hero dying on the battlefield, hopelessly outnumbered by forces sent from the government he helped shape.

If you saw Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai, Ken Watanabe's Katsumoto character is based very loosely on Takamori: a powerful samurai unhappy with the changing times and the government but who, at the same time, has a worshipful, reverent view of the Emperor himself and strong moral ideals.

I picked this book up at my local library as part of my "learn more about samurai" goal, not knowing much about Japanese political history. It is definitely a scholarly text, with a lot of fine details, but written engagingly enough that I was able to read the entire book without losing interest.

One interesting note is that while I knew the Meiji government stripped the daimyo (lead samurai lords) of their titles and such, I never realized how brutally swift they were about it until this book: some of the main lords were called in for a meeting in the capital, not being told what it was about. When the meeting started, they were told that their ancestral titles of centuries, status, money, and lands were being taken from them, forever, as of that moment.

Another noteworthy cultural detail was the "Mito School" philosophy: named after the feudal region it came from, this way of thinking said that not only was Japan unique, it was literally the land of the gods and sacred. Saigo himself bought heavily into this idea, and felt it was worth learning Western technology not because it was desirable in itself, but for the express purpose of kicking Westerners out of Japan and preserving the sanctity of the country.

In general, if you're a casual reader, this is probably not the book for you. But if you want a very detailed look at one of the most famous samurai of his time and possibly ever, along with the unique circumstances that shaped his world, it's an excellent book written in a clear, objective voice and worth a read.

Michael Jackson as a Samurai

I thought this was too interesting not to post, but credit for this goes entirely to member Lindethiel of the Immortal Geisha forums, who posted this unexpected but interesting find a couple of days ago: the late King of Pop dressed as a samurai for a shoot likely from the 1980s. You can see more a couple more shots second row down in the middle here on the fansite www.mjjpictures.com.

I always liked his music, and of course I love kimono and such, but I never imagined you'd see the two combined!

Mao and Mai Asada - Heian Style!

Congratulations to Japan for its silver medal with skater Mao Asada! While looking at her and her sister Mai's official website, I ran across a couple of adorable childhood photos featuring her and Mai, who's in Heian style dress-up. Too cute!

Heian robes, the ones worn by the nobility around 1,000 years ago, were different than the kimono we know today, as you can see in Mai's simplified version. You had a white proto-kimono garment acting as underwear tucked into hakama pants, usually red or scarlet, and then layers of trailing robes worn over it. Here's a shot of the full-on adult woman version, which ranged from 5-20 layers depending on the occasion, rank and so on. Informally, it's known as juunihitoe (十二単 "12 unlined kimono"), and itsutsuginukaraginumo otherwise (五衣唐衣裳 "5 layer Chinese style clothing/costume").

Image copyright user Rori of Wikipedia.