Samurai Shortstop, by Alan Gratz
Sep. 19th, 2007 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Since I know almost nothing about most sports, I was pleased to find myself enjoying this book overall, though I did end up skimming through a few particularly game-focused passages; most of the training sequences were still interesting for the personal interplay and development of the characters involved. The predominant theme is the gradual fusion of bushido into baseball at an elite Japanese high school during the Meiji era, though it's nicely presented through the tight narration of a first-year student trying to adjust to this new world.
As usual for most young-adult fiction (including manga and anime) with a school setting, there's very little detail about actual classwork-- the school's guiding philosophy almost explicitly neglects a formal curriculum in favor of establishing a sense of uniform solidarity among the students. There are, however, some violent hazing rituals among the boys, and in the opening scene, shortly before the school year begins, the young protag witnesses and (to a small degree) assists the seppuku of his uncle, a former Ishinshishi who had continued to oppose Westernization.
Surprisingly, Gratz doesn't include a glossary of Japanese words, though there aren't all that many of them sprinkled throughout the text; the only one that gave me pause for a moment was eta, the name for the despised underclass of commoners whose daily occupations involved handling dead animals: butchers, tanners, and so on. He does make most of these words self-evident within their contexts, though, and he also lists a bibliography of historical sources at the end.
I give it two paws up: dunno if I'm likely to hunt it back down from the library again for a re-read, but I don't have any reservations about recommending it to someone who already has some interest in any of the various areas that it touches on. The opening scene can be read (and/or listened to, though I haven't listened to the audiobook version myself) here at the author's website; for what it is, the seppuku isn't presented too agonizingly, and imho the hazing scenes don't get worse than that, so if you can deal with this, the rest of the book should be fine. Especially if (unlike me) you have any real knowledge about baseball.
As usual for most young-adult fiction (including manga and anime) with a school setting, there's very little detail about actual classwork-- the school's guiding philosophy almost explicitly neglects a formal curriculum in favor of establishing a sense of uniform solidarity among the students. There are, however, some violent hazing rituals among the boys, and in the opening scene, shortly before the school year begins, the young protag witnesses and (to a small degree) assists the seppuku of his uncle, a former Ishinshishi who had continued to oppose Westernization.
Surprisingly, Gratz doesn't include a glossary of Japanese words, though there aren't all that many of them sprinkled throughout the text; the only one that gave me pause for a moment was eta, the name for the despised underclass of commoners whose daily occupations involved handling dead animals: butchers, tanners, and so on. He does make most of these words self-evident within their contexts, though, and he also lists a bibliography of historical sources at the end.
I give it two paws up: dunno if I'm likely to hunt it back down from the library again for a re-read, but I don't have any reservations about recommending it to someone who already has some interest in any of the various areas that it touches on. The opening scene can be read (and/or listened to, though I haven't listened to the audiobook version myself) here at the author's website; for what it is, the seppuku isn't presented too agonizingly, and imho the hazing scenes don't get worse than that, so if you can deal with this, the rest of the book should be fine. Especially if (unlike me) you have any real knowledge about baseball.