wombat1138 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wombat1138) wrote2006-07-30 06:58 pm
wombat1138) wrote2006-07-30 06:58 pm
Entry tags:
Top mysteries of RK:Trust/Betrayal
Some more serious than others; in no particular order. All of them are probably explicable by anachronistic directorial fiat, but this approach is more fun.
1.) Why of all things does lil' Shinta put *crosses* over the bandits' graves? He doesn't seem the kind of kid to've taunted them post-mortem by placing little model execution scaffolds over their bodies, but Christianity had been banned in Japan since the mid-17th century. According to the chronology in RK Profiles, the arrival of Perry's black ships occurred only one year before Shinta was sold to the slavers, surely not enough time to inculcate an urchin with an instinct of how to care for the dead. Until then, aside from the very limited community of European traders permitted in Nagasaki, the only possible cultural source for that would've been some small groups of crypto-Christians semi-analogous to the Marranos in Iberia-- somewhat ironic considering the Amakusa arc in the 3rd tv season, or so I assume since I haven't seen that.
2.) Before Hiko took up pottery (years after Kenshin left), what did he live on? Dunno whether he would've needed actual cash to buy sake or whether he could've gotten it from bartering something (what?), but even beyond that, what did he eat on a regular basis? Was the mere possession of his sword enough to qualify him to obtain sake at all, or were peasants allowed to drink it again by the late Edo period?
3.) What is Tomoe's perfume, and where did she get it? Liquid perfumes weren't introduced for common use in Japan until the early 20th century iirc; the most common perfume-like substance used at the time would've been solid lumps of incense designed to be heated on charcoal rather than being actually set on fire. Was this some sort of Yukishiro-specific product that she and her family knew how to make with a distillation/infusion process, or an atypical application of plum liquor/wine (which I don't know whether it smells like white plum blossom in any case).
4.) What's with the scene in OVA 1.3 when she leaves the house in the middle of the night? Based on that simple action, one might guess that she's off into the woods to report to Tatsumi, but there's no explicit indication of that-- instead, there are succeeding brief shots of her writing desk with the drawer's contents scattered across it (iirc when I freeze-framed that, her mirror and hair-ribbon were there, but not her dagger), her leaning against a plank wall in apparent anguish, and splashes of blood. If it's just a nightmare about Kiyosato's death, why did she go outside? Is this a suicide attempt, an allusion to menarche/menstruation, or (as a long shot) self-induced abortion/miscarriage (how?)?
5.) What is Kenshin doing in the moon-viewing scene? Based on various tidbits here and there, he might be either sharpening his sword or grinding something (herbs? rice?) in a mortar-- is there any definite interpretation that's intended, or is the action meant to be ambiguous?
...I suspect there are other mysteries which I've forgotten about for the mo. Oh well.
Addendum, carried over from an RKDreams discussion a while back--
6.) How did Enishi and Tomoe get from Edo to Kyoto, considering the Shogunate's strict travel regulations? For example, women of the samurai class were forbidden from travelling alone; even if they had escorts, they were required to carry documents with a clear physical description. If the checkpoint guards were suspicious that a woman was travelling in disguise as a man, they could order a strip-search. Violations of the travel regulations were punishable by *death*-- enforced by the guards for the lower classes; samurai were permitted to salvage some of their honor by committing seppuku instead. (The tentative solutions from the board were that the Yukishiro kids made their first contact with the spymasters *in* Edo before they left, providing them with cover stories/documents to pass through the checkpoints and eventually contact the Yaminobu once they reached Kyoto... I have to admit that it makes slightly more sense than my speculation that Oibore's job with the Shogunate involved writing up the standard documents so that Tomoe, then Enishi, could've simply forged their own travel docs by copying some of the real ones, then borrowed their father's official seal to stamp them with.)
Tangential brain-hurty thought-- Aoshi and Tomoe could have met in Edo before she left. Heck, Tomoe might've even met chibi Misao-chan, which sounds to me as if it would produce a matter/antimatter explosion of genki and.... not so genki.
1.) Why of all things does lil' Shinta put *crosses* over the bandits' graves? He doesn't seem the kind of kid to've taunted them post-mortem by placing little model execution scaffolds over their bodies, but Christianity had been banned in Japan since the mid-17th century. According to the chronology in RK Profiles, the arrival of Perry's black ships occurred only one year before Shinta was sold to the slavers, surely not enough time to inculcate an urchin with an instinct of how to care for the dead. Until then, aside from the very limited community of European traders permitted in Nagasaki, the only possible cultural source for that would've been some small groups of crypto-Christians semi-analogous to the Marranos in Iberia-- somewhat ironic considering the Amakusa arc in the 3rd tv season, or so I assume since I haven't seen that.
2.) Before Hiko took up pottery (years after Kenshin left), what did he live on? Dunno whether he would've needed actual cash to buy sake or whether he could've gotten it from bartering something (what?), but even beyond that, what did he eat on a regular basis? Was the mere possession of his sword enough to qualify him to obtain sake at all, or were peasants allowed to drink it again by the late Edo period?
3.) What is Tomoe's perfume, and where did she get it? Liquid perfumes weren't introduced for common use in Japan until the early 20th century iirc; the most common perfume-like substance used at the time would've been solid lumps of incense designed to be heated on charcoal rather than being actually set on fire. Was this some sort of Yukishiro-specific product that she and her family knew how to make with a distillation/infusion process, or an atypical application of plum liquor/wine (which I don't know whether it smells like white plum blossom in any case).
4.) What's with the scene in OVA 1.3 when she leaves the house in the middle of the night? Based on that simple action, one might guess that she's off into the woods to report to Tatsumi, but there's no explicit indication of that-- instead, there are succeeding brief shots of her writing desk with the drawer's contents scattered across it (iirc when I freeze-framed that, her mirror and hair-ribbon were there, but not her dagger), her leaning against a plank wall in apparent anguish, and splashes of blood. If it's just a nightmare about Kiyosato's death, why did she go outside? Is this a suicide attempt, an allusion to menarche/menstruation, or (as a long shot) self-induced abortion/miscarriage (how?)?
5.) What is Kenshin doing in the moon-viewing scene? Based on various tidbits here and there, he might be either sharpening his sword or grinding something (herbs? rice?) in a mortar-- is there any definite interpretation that's intended, or is the action meant to be ambiguous?
...I suspect there are other mysteries which I've forgotten about for the mo. Oh well.
Addendum, carried over from an RKDreams discussion a while back--
6.) How did Enishi and Tomoe get from Edo to Kyoto, considering the Shogunate's strict travel regulations? For example, women of the samurai class were forbidden from travelling alone; even if they had escorts, they were required to carry documents with a clear physical description. If the checkpoint guards were suspicious that a woman was travelling in disguise as a man, they could order a strip-search. Violations of the travel regulations were punishable by *death*-- enforced by the guards for the lower classes; samurai were permitted to salvage some of their honor by committing seppuku instead. (The tentative solutions from the board were that the Yukishiro kids made their first contact with the spymasters *in* Edo before they left, providing them with cover stories/documents to pass through the checkpoints and eventually contact the Yaminobu once they reached Kyoto... I have to admit that it makes slightly more sense than my speculation that Oibore's job with the Shogunate involved writing up the standard documents so that Tomoe, then Enishi, could've simply forged their own travel docs by copying some of the real ones, then borrowed their father's official seal to stamp them with.)
Tangential brain-hurty thought-- Aoshi and Tomoe could have met in Edo before she left. Heck, Tomoe might've even met chibi Misao-chan, which sounds to me as if it would produce a matter/antimatter explosion of genki and.... not so genki.
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And I, too, would like to know what on earth Tomoe was doing in the middle of the night... but I didn't know about the perfume thing. Is it possible she used crushed petals from the relevant tree? If I remember correctly, white plums grew wiht a little bit of foliage...
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No, he is never actually shown boinking anyone in canon. There are strong hints in the OVAs about him having het sex, and eventually his wife has a kid who looks remarkably like him, but as far as absolutely incontrovertible proof....
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For that matter, how did Katsura travel between Kyoto and Choshuu? Wouldn't it have been dangerous for him, being the enemy of the state and all? Did he perhaps travel by boat or disguise himself as a wandering performer or monk?
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I'm not sure how much to trust Hiden, considering that Watsuki seems to've had limited involvement in writing it-- he commented on some of the authors' speculations, but how much of the background info did he really give them and how much did they randomly make up with his permission?
I'd never given much thought to exactly where Takasugi's training camp for the Kiheitai would've been, though. I guess I just assumed that it was somewhere reasonably convenient to Kyoto, but evidently not. (My sense of direction/geography is probably even worse than Sano's.)
Some random attempts at handwaving:
1.) Maybe Hiko didn't have any one specific place to live, but just wandered around the country on his own. (If he had a policy of non-interference with the government, one wonders whether the government had a policy of non-interference with *him*.) However, iirc the various flashbacks/memories indicate that he's been in roughly the same area the whole time, rather than randomly trekking across multiple domains.
2.) Similarly to Tomoe and Enishi being recruited in Edo and then sent to Kyoto, maybe after Kenshin's first local contact with the Imperialists, his obvious potential would've fast-tracked him into being sent to Takasugi somehow. I have no idea to what extent the Wikipedia article on the Kiheitai can be trusted, despite its citation of multiple written sources, but it does say that it included some volunteers from outside Choshu domain. If it was historically possible for them to get there, I guess it's dramatically possible for Kenshin to've managed it.
WRT Katsura, I don't know how much Watsuki (or the OVA) fictionalizes his movements relative to his historical locations at any given time, but again, if he managed to smuggle himself in and out of enemy territory in RL, then those methods probably just need to be bumped up a bit for RK.
(...wow, I didn't realize (or had forgotten) that Katsura had been voiced by Tomokazu Seki. It seems Seki also doubled as Sano's voice on an RK drama CD that I don't know anything else about. Hmmmmm.)