I'm pleased to announce that Kaminishi: Four Seasons, the sequel to Kaminishi, has been published by DSP Publications.
For more information, please visit my writing blog:
Kaminishi: Four Seasons - Released Today!
Showing posts with label Kaminishi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kaminishi. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Kaminishi: Four Seasons
I'm pleased to announce that Kaminishi: Four Seasons, the sequel to Kaminishi, has been published by DSP Publications.
For more information, please visit my writing blog:
Kaminishi: Four Seasons - Released Today!
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Kaminishi Review and Interview
Kaminishi has received a great review:
Michele 'n Lisa Reviews - Kaminishi Review
... and I was also interviewed by the site:
Interview - Travel Through Time With Jan Suzukawa
Monday, February 28, 2011
Kaminishi - Now Available at Amazon and B&N
Kaminishi is now listed at Amazon.com in both ebook (Kindle) and print versions, and also at Barnes & Noble's website. This means that the book can be ordered at Barnes & Noble or at your local bookstore, and then picked up at the store when it comes in, if this is how you prefer to buy books. ;)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Kaminishi - Release Date
Kaminishi will be released by Dreamspinner Press in both ebook and trade paperback formats on February 21, 2011.
For more information:
Kaminishi - Release Date and Cover Art
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Kaminishi - Publication Announcement
I am pleased to announce that my m/m romance novel Kaminishi has been accepted for publication by Dreamspinner Press. The estimated release date is February 2011.
More details to follow.
More details to follow.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Romance of the Shinsengumi
I am currently finishing the writing of a novel called Kaminishi. It's a time-travel yaoi romance about a samurai warlord and a modern-day American graduate student. It's mostly set in Japan in 1851.
Now, 1851 is a tricky year to try to recreate. That was two years before Commodore Perry arrived with his black ships - so the Japanese characters, particularly the samurai, need to be described as looking authentically late-Edo period in their clothing. While doing research for this novel, however, I discovered that there are a lot of movies that are set either in the very late-Edo period - the Shinsengumi period, when the shogunate was about to lose power and bite the dust as an institution - or in the Warring States period, around 1600, with Kenshin Uesugi, Nobunaga Oda and all those guys. But there aren't a lot of movies set in-between those two times, or more specifically, in the period just before Perry landed; in other words, the period I need to recreate visually for the reader in terms of what people wore, what the cities of Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo) looked like then, what foods they ate, etc.
The Shinsengumi period (1860s) still had samurai, and it is late-Edo - the end of the Edo period, in fact - so it's been tempting for me to try to use movies and anime set in that time period for research. The problem is: not only Western ideas, but Western fashions had already begun to infiltrate Japanese society, even the samurai, by then.
Some samurai began wearing Western-style soldier dress. But thankfully - not the Shinsengumi. ;)
The Shinsengumi fascinate me and it's easy to romanticize them, as it is to romanticize the last of any breed, culture or group. They were the samurai holdouts, the representatives of a dying era and cult of ideals.
As part of my research, I recently watched Peace Maker Kurogane, a rather uneven anime series about the Shinsengumi. The protagonist is an annoying brat named Tetsunosuke Ichimura:
Tetsu joins the Shinsengumi, for whom his older brother Tatsunosuke already works as a bookkeeper:
Both Tetsu and his brother Tatsu actually existed and are documented Shinsengumi members. I kind of doubt the real-life Tetsu looked like that, however. ;)
Peace Maker Kurogane begins as a rather comical and lighthearted series, but in the last four or five episodes it turns gut-wrenchingly, hideously violent. It's as if a 24-episode TV series started off as Pokemon and then turned into Silence of the Lambs around episode 19 or 20 or so. (One could write a post just on bizarre tone shifts in anime. And Peace Maker Kurogane should top the list.)
If you watch any movies or anime about the Shinsengumi, the major players become familiar quite quickly. For us fangirls, Soji Okita is a favorite.
Historically, Soji Okita was supposed to be tall and dark. He was an excellent swordsman, and he died of tuberculosis. If you're watching a Shinsengumi story and a samurai suddenly starts coughing up blood, that's Soji.
In Peace Maker Kurogane, Soji is so beautiful that he looks female. Soji Okita, for some reason, has been personified as a bishonen in Shinsengumi recreations, including the movie Gohatto where he's played by Shinji Takeda; and the TV series Shinsengumi! where he's played by Tatsuya Fujiwara (Light Yagami in the Death Note movies).
The two leaders of the Shinsengumi were Isami Kondo and Toshizo Hijikata. Here's Kondo in Peace Maker Kurogane:
... and Hijikata:
What I'm about to show you next may shock you a little.
This is Isami Kondo.
And this is Toshizo Hijikata.
One thing about the Shinsengumi that differentiates them from other samurai is: we have photographs of some of them.
Most historical figures are a little misty around the edges. We read about their childhoods and adult lives, their exploits, triumphs, failures... and they seem more like characters in a book than people who actually lived.
But starting in the mid-19th century, even in isolated Japan, some of those figures were forever immortalized by the new technology: photography.
When I look at the photos of Kondo and Hijikata, it jolts me. Suddenly all the romantic imagery of the end of the samurai and Japan's pre-industrial era come smack up against hard reality. The Shinsengumi were samurai in an era when the samurai actually had to fight again. After hundreds of years of an indolent peace in which they largely engaged in cultural pursuits, the Shinsengumi were the last samurai to take up arms; and they went out in a fierce, bloody blaze of glory. Kondo was captured and beheaded in 1868 at the age of 33. Hijikata was killed a year later on the battlefield at Hakodate. He was 34 years old.
A new Shinsengumi anime series, Hakuouki, just started this spring. The legend of the Shinsengumi continues to evoke the dream-like beauty of that historical era in Japan and the long twilight - and violent end - of the samurai culture in our imaginations. The drawing to a close of that era is a theme in Kaminishi. When the novel comes out, in the tradition of kigo, or change-of-seasons imagery, look for a lot of falling autumn leaves. ;)
Now, 1851 is a tricky year to try to recreate. That was two years before Commodore Perry arrived with his black ships - so the Japanese characters, particularly the samurai, need to be described as looking authentically late-Edo period in their clothing. While doing research for this novel, however, I discovered that there are a lot of movies that are set either in the very late-Edo period - the Shinsengumi period, when the shogunate was about to lose power and bite the dust as an institution - or in the Warring States period, around 1600, with Kenshin Uesugi, Nobunaga Oda and all those guys. But there aren't a lot of movies set in-between those two times, or more specifically, in the period just before Perry landed; in other words, the period I need to recreate visually for the reader in terms of what people wore, what the cities of Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo) looked like then, what foods they ate, etc.
The Shinsengumi period (1860s) still had samurai, and it is late-Edo - the end of the Edo period, in fact - so it's been tempting for me to try to use movies and anime set in that time period for research. The problem is: not only Western ideas, but Western fashions had already begun to infiltrate Japanese society, even the samurai, by then.
Some samurai began wearing Western-style soldier dress. But thankfully - not the Shinsengumi. ;)
The Shinsengumi fascinate me and it's easy to romanticize them, as it is to romanticize the last of any breed, culture or group. They were the samurai holdouts, the representatives of a dying era and cult of ideals.
As part of my research, I recently watched Peace Maker Kurogane, a rather uneven anime series about the Shinsengumi. The protagonist is an annoying brat named Tetsunosuke Ichimura:
Tetsu joins the Shinsengumi, for whom his older brother Tatsunosuke already works as a bookkeeper:
Both Tetsu and his brother Tatsu actually existed and are documented Shinsengumi members. I kind of doubt the real-life Tetsu looked like that, however. ;)
Peace Maker Kurogane begins as a rather comical and lighthearted series, but in the last four or five episodes it turns gut-wrenchingly, hideously violent. It's as if a 24-episode TV series started off as Pokemon and then turned into Silence of the Lambs around episode 19 or 20 or so. (One could write a post just on bizarre tone shifts in anime. And Peace Maker Kurogane should top the list.)
If you watch any movies or anime about the Shinsengumi, the major players become familiar quite quickly. For us fangirls, Soji Okita is a favorite.
Historically, Soji Okita was supposed to be tall and dark. He was an excellent swordsman, and he died of tuberculosis. If you're watching a Shinsengumi story and a samurai suddenly starts coughing up blood, that's Soji.
In Peace Maker Kurogane, Soji is so beautiful that he looks female. Soji Okita, for some reason, has been personified as a bishonen in Shinsengumi recreations, including the movie Gohatto where he's played by Shinji Takeda; and the TV series Shinsengumi! where he's played by Tatsuya Fujiwara (Light Yagami in the Death Note movies).
The two leaders of the Shinsengumi were Isami Kondo and Toshizo Hijikata. Here's Kondo in Peace Maker Kurogane:
... and Hijikata:
What I'm about to show you next may shock you a little.
This is Isami Kondo.
And this is Toshizo Hijikata.
One thing about the Shinsengumi that differentiates them from other samurai is: we have photographs of some of them.
Most historical figures are a little misty around the edges. We read about their childhoods and adult lives, their exploits, triumphs, failures... and they seem more like characters in a book than people who actually lived.
But starting in the mid-19th century, even in isolated Japan, some of those figures were forever immortalized by the new technology: photography.
When I look at the photos of Kondo and Hijikata, it jolts me. Suddenly all the romantic imagery of the end of the samurai and Japan's pre-industrial era come smack up against hard reality. The Shinsengumi were samurai in an era when the samurai actually had to fight again. After hundreds of years of an indolent peace in which they largely engaged in cultural pursuits, the Shinsengumi were the last samurai to take up arms; and they went out in a fierce, bloody blaze of glory. Kondo was captured and beheaded in 1868 at the age of 33. Hijikata was killed a year later on the battlefield at Hakodate. He was 34 years old.
A new Shinsengumi anime series, Hakuouki, just started this spring. The legend of the Shinsengumi continues to evoke the dream-like beauty of that historical era in Japan and the long twilight - and violent end - of the samurai culture in our imaginations. The drawing to a close of that era is a theme in Kaminishi. When the novel comes out, in the tradition of kigo, or change-of-seasons imagery, look for a lot of falling autumn leaves. ;)
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