60ty's strolling

  This is a companion to [The tiny gold seal Japan nearly died to fetch], where we watched a “Son-of-Heaven system” hand out recognition at the edge of the world and let the periphery sort itself into a hierarchy for free. Here we watch the same machine run inside the palace walls. A hereditary slave could rise to become the mother of an emperor — the woman the drama Story of Yanxi Palace renders as Wei Yingluo was exactly such…

  This is a companion to [The Heirloom Seal of the Realm: the empty stone that ruled China for a thousand years]. That article looked at the center — the jade in which the Son of Heaven held the whole Mandate. This one looks at the far rim. What a little island at the outermost ring of that world crossed a deadly sea to fetch was not “the Mandate” at all, but something much smaller: mere *recognition*. And the gap…

This article continues from [The He Shi Bi (the jade that became the Heirloom Seal)]. The jade once guarded at the cost of lives was recut into the Chuanguo Xi — the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, the object that declared its holder the rightful Son of Heaven. For a thousand years it was seized, chipped, hidden, and at last lost forever. Why did emperors crave a single stone so badly? And why do replicas still sell today? This is…

In *Kingdom*, King Daoxiang of Zhao is the ruler who drove out the veteran general **Lian Po (Renpa)** and set his kingdom on the road to destruction. History carved two characters over him: *fool king.* But “fool king” hides more than it reveals. Why did he make the same ruinous choice again and again? The answer leads to one man — his lifelong teacher, **Guo Kai (Kaku Kai)** — and to a colder fact: **Zhao’s fall was quietly designed by…

If you read a*Kingdom*, you already know one kind of traitor by heart: **Guo Kai (Kaku Kai)** of Zhao — the minister who took Qin’s gold, drove out Lian Po, and slandered the great general **Li Mu (Ri Boku)** to his death. Guo Kai is a *moving* villain. He schemes, he acts, he tips his country over the edge with his own two hands. The state of Qi was destroyed by the opposite kind of traitor. His name was **Hou…

If you follow *Kingdom*, you already hate one man on sight: **Guo Kai (Kaku Kai)**, the minister of Zhao who took Qin’s gold, drove out the veteran **Lian Po (Renpa)**, and slandered the brilliant **Li Mu (Ri Boku)** into an executioner’s hands. Zhao held two of the age’s greatest generals — and tore off its own arms. Histories call Guo Kai a bought traitor and leave it there. But I don’t think gold is the whole story. Underneath the greed…

In *Kingdom*, the fall of each state usually comes on the battlefield. But **Qi**, the last of the great eastern states, fell almost without a sword being drawn. Its ruler, **King Jian (Tian Jian)**, sat on a mountain of soldiers and surrendered anyway. This is the story of how forty years of peace, a bribed chancellor, and one seductive idea — *”China will be one, so why prepare for war?”* — destroyed a kingdom from the inside. The Boy King…

> **A note before we begin.** This is not a defense, and it is not an indictment. The Manchu–Mongol Independence Movement was inseparable from Japan’s expansion onto the Asian mainland; from China’s point of view, it was part of an invasion. I do not erase that context. What I want to do here is set the labels down for a moment — “traitor,” “spy,” “puppet” — and return four caricatures to being human beings caught in the collapse of an…

If you know Yoshiko Kawashima at all, you probably know her from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor — the flamboyant “Eastern Jewel,” a spy in men’s clothing who supplies Empress Wanrong with opium. It is one of cinema’s most memorable villains. I was born in Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. In Matsumoto, Yoshiko Kawashima is not a movie villain. She is a former local schoolgirl whose grave stands in a quiet temple on the edge of town, and whose memory…

> ※ Two questions fans of Empresses in the Palace (甄嬛传 / Zhen Huan Zhuan) ask most often: Was Zhen Huan a real person? and What does her beautiful name actually mean? This article answers both — first the flesh-and-blood empress the drama was built on, then the classical love poem folded into the two characters of her name. — Part 1 — The Real Woman: Empress Xiaosheng Xian (Niohuru) Zhen Huan (甄嬛, pinyin Zhēn Huán) is not a complete…

Two of the most beloved Chinese historical dramas — Empresses in the Palace (The Legend of Zhen Huan) and The Legend of Mi Yue — open and close each episode with songs that are far more than background music. In Chinese drama, the theme is a distilled statement of the whole story, and these are some of the finest ever written. Below is a short guide to each: what the song means, and the centuries-old poetry hidden inside it. (Each…

> Part of the C-drama song cluster.  it explains the song’s meaning rather than reproducing the lyrics. The older poems quoted (the Sixth Dalai Lama’s couplets and a Japanese court poem) are centuries old and freely quotable. — The 2011 Chinese time-travel romance Scarlet Heart (步步惊心, Bù Bù Jīng Xīn; based on Tong Hua’s novel, and known in Japan as Kyūtei Jokan Jakukei) is carried by a duet that aches from its first note: “Yi Nian Zhi Zhuo” (一念执着, “one…