.png)
(a holy mythological‐beast, Kirin)
The airing of the “Taiga drama” (series of NHK history drama) 「Kirin ga Kuru 」“Qilin is coming*” (see notes below) has ended. From the time it started, I was wondering what kind of ending it would be. The unexpected last episode was excellent. Somehow, I think it was more suitable for the image of Mitsuhide made in this program than the theory established in academia.
I read Eiji Yoshikawa's「Taikoki」when I was in the sixth grade of elementary school. Both my father and brother were avid readers so even shortly after the war, there were quite a few books available at home, and elsewhere in used book stores. When I browsed books on Japanese history, most of them were old-fashioned where the emperor was highly respected. Therefore, in such a trend, a rather negative image of Mitsuhide was firmly established in my mind.
The reason why there were many foreign literary works I read when I was in junior high school and high school was probably because of the youth culture at that time. When I got to know Ryotaro Shiba in later years, I fell in love with “Shinsengumi Blood Wind” on TV, and I read a lot of his books up to his mid-term of his career. Since I did not diligently attend Japanese history classes in high school, my knowledge or understanding of the history of early-modern Japan depends entirely on Shiba's novels (Historians do not think much about Shiba's view of history, and I understand he is purely a novelist).
The image of Mitsuhide drawn by Shiba is not a person whose life is the realization of an ideal as is portrayed in this TV series. Rather, it is written as a tragic hero who has been forced into a situation where power is inevitable. Of course, I do not know how it really went, but the feeling of regret that Mitsuhide could not bring Kirin (giraffe) in the warring period in Japan is often reflected in the scene where Nobunaga's end is seemingly on the horizon. The depiction of Hiroki Hasegawa's (acted Mitsuhide) facial expressions before and after that scene pierced my heart.
Without Hideyoshi's folly of conquering Korea, and without the dismay of Hideyoshi’s final years (I think this is the difference in intelligence of Hideyoshi compared to Ieyasu, and the limit of Hideyoshi's outlook on life). Hideyoshi could have become a Kirin. I wonder whether "the world where people could live without wars" in the Tokugawa era, which lasted for three centuries, was in fact the most peaceful time in the history of Japan. There are various negative analysis on Edo era, including feudalism, social division, male-dominated society, (and mean magistrates who seem always appearing in historical TV dramas), but the Edo era also created the world-class art and culture, the beauty and silence of Kyoto, and the ethics of the people that supported the splendid shift to the Meiji era. Compared to the history of Western Europe, which was devoted to the war and the colonialism at that time, I wonder “Kirin was there in Japan already.“
To this day since the defeat in 1945, no Japanese youth have died in the war in the last 75 years, knowing that there are all sorts of debates in the process, this is true no matter what. Of course, there are various arguments, including there were no politicians who appealed to the people like Churchill and Merkel; it was Americanism; it was a coincidence, and so forth. But I am convinced that centuries later historians could interpret this era as the best time in Japanese history. Whether it is because of Kirin or not.
＊"Kirin is a (a holy mythological‐beast, a symbol of peace, that always appears when the king (or a ruler) conducts politics with benevolence."
Comments