| Samurai Movies (9) |
November 18, 2021
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| When he thought of food in the Edo period, it reminded him of a movie, "Mibu-gishi-den". 'Mibu' is the name of a town in Kyoto, 'gishi' means a loyal samurai, and 'den' means a life that was told. The movie was based on the bestselling novel by Jiro Nitta, a bestselling writer. He had heard that Mr. Nitta's daughter studied as a college student in the city where the story is based in and sometimes Mr. Nitta would come to this city to visit her. He came to like this city and its people. The protagonist was a lower ranked samurai in this han (clan/domain), but decided to go to Edo and enter the Shinsen-gumi, a kind of militia. The book was published in 2000, but he only read this book recently, then decided to watch the movie. The movie was directed by a famous director and released in 2003, and took a lot of awards in this country. He didn't know, but from Wikipedia he learned that it was originally slated to have a director whose home town was the same, but he suddenly passed away; so the director was changed. He had known of the deceased director, but he didn't know about this story. When he read the book and watched the movie, his thought was why his city didn't use these contents for tourism. It seemed to be a good chance to advertise about his city's historical things, as both the book and the movie were great. But, soon, he had a second thought. It was a story of a samurai who lived in his han, but left it to become a mercenary in Shinsen-gumi. The Shinsen-gumi militia was a voluntary army which supported the Tokugawa Shogunate, their headquarters was located in 'Mibu' in Kyoto. In the last  part of the Edo period, the group of hans which were against the Tokugawa Shogunate gained the support of the emperor, and started to wage war against the Tokugawa Shogunate. Many hans started to support this new movement, so, the Shinsen-gumi militia had a hard time. The protagonist, named Yoshimura, became a mercenary in order to gain money. At that time, after the invention of the steam engine, ships with them started to come and ask this country to open its ports in order to get fuel for the ships or to trade with them. Their nationalities were America, Russia, England, France, etc. The government refused, and started to protect their ports. The government ordered each han to protect their ports. His han had to go to Hokkaido to protect it. It took a lot of money to do this. At this time of the era, his han was very poor because of famines. The Edo period was the coldest era, outside of the Ice Ages. There were poor harvests much of the time. His han had scarcely enough rice to pay its taxes because they needed to help farmers who had a very sparse harvest. Yoshimura escaped from his han and entered into Shinsen-gumi militia in order to get money, and send it back home to his family: his wife, son, and daughter. Back in his han, Yoshimura was a low ranked samurai and couldn't earn enough to raise his family. In the movie, there were scenes with his house in it as well as the neighborhood, they seemed to be very poor houses. He felt embarrassed and figured out why his city had a hard time to use these contents for sightseeing purposes. In the movie, there was a scene that showed about the starvation situation. The Shinsen-gumi militia's samurais were fighting a harsh battle in a samurai residential area. Yoshimura came up to a samurai who was resting, and handed him a rice ball from a bamboo leaf covering. The samurai then started to eat it like an animal. He was so starving. Then Yoshimura came up to his superior who was resting and gave him a rice ball, saying that he went to a supporter and asked for an offering. The superior ate it like an animal as well. Soon afterwards, he realized that there were no more rice balls in the bamboo leaf covering in Hoshimura's hand. He asked Yoshimura in a strong voice tone, "Is this the last one?" Yoshimura nodded. The superior shouted, "Why didn't you say that? I've eaten all of it!" Yoshimura said, eating a grain of rice from the bamboo leaf covering, "We are used to starving." (To be continued ...) |
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No.455
*loyal :忠誠な
*militia :市民軍
*slate :候補者名簿に載せる、石板
*deceased :亡くなった
*mercenary :傭兵
*wage :（戦争などを）遂行する、賃金
*famine :飢饉
*scarcely :ほとんどない、とても〜ない
*sparse :まばらな
*starvation :飢餓
*superior :上司
*grain :粒