Interview with the Translator: Hills of Silver Ruins, Shakepeare

Kate: Based on the conflicting belief systems of Asen’s good retainers in Hills of Silver Ruins, how do you think they would respond to Henry V’s speech the eve of the Battle of Agincourt?

Retainer’s Argument: But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all “We died at such a place,” ...Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it, who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

King Henry: So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him. Or if a servant, under his master’s command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant’s damnation. But this is not so. The King is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant, for they purpose not their death when they purpose their services...Then, if they die unprovided, no more is the King guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject’s duty is the King’s, but every subject’s soul is his own.

Eugene: Henry V’s debate with one of his own soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt almost perfectly sums up the moral foundations, not just of a UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice), but of the ideal code of conduct in any large organization. "Every subject's duty is the King's (or the CEO's), but every subject's soul is his own."

One realistic aspect of the Ono's world building in the Twelve Kingdoms is that guys like Rakushun are rare. Even high-ranking officials are not always clear about how the whole system works. The vast majority will have never met the emperor or the kirin. In that situation, situational rationalizations make the most sense: my guy is the right guy, especially if he's the guy in power.

The irony is that Shakespeare's Henry V is pretty much in the same position. In retrospect, it's hard to categorize the Hundred Year's War as a "good cause." It was ultimately one of those interminably stupid conflicts about where to draw the property lines. Likewise, Japan's Warring States period can be treated as a long Shakespearean drama because it didn't matter who won.

Of course, it mattered to them. But not like "City on the Edge of Forever" from the original Trek.

Given such a murky ethical environment, it's impressive that Keitou, for example, at last declares that his soul is indeed his own and allies himself with Taiki. Growing increasingly uncomfortable with being paired up with a nihilist like Ukou, Yuushou is headed in that direction too. Then again, Ukou even creeps out the Macbethian Asen.

Kate: In Chapter 33 of Book IV of Hills of SilverRuins, Risai's attitude reminds me of Hamlet at the end of the play, when he finally accepts his fate: 

"Not a whit, we defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all."

Shakespeare is ubiquitous in manga and Asian live-action series/films! In a recent Thai live-action series, the two characters act out a scene from Romeo & Juliet. They begin to argue about which character is supposed to say, "Wherefore art thou...?" until one uses the line to get back at the other: "Wherefore art thou a jerk?" And I own a manga series in which an art gallery is titled “The Nutshell” as a deliberate reference to “though I am bound in a nutshell” from Hamlet. And when I was a teenager, I saw a fantastic version of Shogun MacBeth live.

Does Shakespeare strike a cord of high romance, related to knights, chivalry, and King Arthur's court? Is Shakespeare somewhat more "translatable" than the very Western, if popular, King Arthur and his knights? After all, King Arthur got turned into Camelot while Shakespeare retains that medieval bite--alongside the War of the Roses mess.  

Eugene: Thanks to men like Thomas Blake Glover, the enterprising Scotsman who armed the burgeoning rebellion against the disintegrating Tokugawa regime in the mid-19th century, the Meiji government closely aligned itself with Great Britain. The strictures of Victorian society certainly would have struck a familiar note at the time.

Well into the 20th century, many of Japan's political elites were full-blown Anglophiles, down to the clothes they wore. This may explain why the preferred formal western attire for Japanese men is the English morning coat.

It is not difficult to find events from the Sengoku period () and the earlier Genpei War () that match up with the kind of historical events that Shakespeare was mining for material. Akira Kurosawa adapted MacBeth in Throne of Blood and King Lear in Ran, both of which take place during the late Sengoku period.

The Heike Story, a recent adaptation of Heike Monogatari (the classic account of the Genpei War and the decline and fall of the Taira clan), has the feel of a grand Shakespearian tragedy.

Especially in Showa period dramas, it can seem that every girl's school in Japan has to put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet. In Hanako and Anne, an entire story arc is devoted to Hanako translating Romeo and Juliet for her BFF Renko to star in. (Though I've noticed of late that anime high school romcoms have taken a liking to fractured fairy tale versions of Cinderella.)