In the Gaps Left Unfilled—Historical Fantasy and the Past

In the Gaps Left Unfilled—historical fantasy and the past

Maxine McArthur B. Letters (University of Osaka)

A novel and exegesis submitted for the requirements of the Master of Arts (Research)

Faculty of Creative Industries

Queensland University of Technology

2008

Keywords

Historical fantasy, historical fiction, Japan, supernatural, religious beliefs, history and the past, historical fantasy writers, Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, history and fiction, fiction and the past, religious syncretism in Japan, angry ghosts, shamans in Japan, spirit summoning, Salmonson, Tezuka, Hughart, Princess Mononoke, kami.

Abstract The thesis consists of the novel The Fox and the Mirror and an accompanying exegesis. The novel is an historical fantasy set in a world based on early medieval (12-13th century) Japan. The main characters are a young female shaman, Hatsu, and a young warrior’s assistant, Sada, who is a Buddhist believer. When Hatsu’s village and shrine are destroyed by warriors and her summoning mirror is stolen, she is abandoned by her kami1. To experience the kami’s presence again, she must follow the thief and retrieve the mirror before it can be used to resurrect an ancient evil. Sada must capture Hatsu and bring her back to his lord, or his family will suffer. Yet he is entranced by Hatsu and feels guilt at the destruction of her village. He must choose whether to abandon his former life and stay with Hatsu, or betray her. In the novel I have tried to invoke the feel of a place and time where the supernatural is as real as the physical world; I also try to imagine how a religion as alien to Japanese native beliefs as Buddhism became a part of that country’s spiritual culture. In the exegesis I reflect upon how I used various kinds of history, both written and unwritten, to build the world, characters and narratives of The Fox and the Mirror, and thereby explore some ways in which historical fantasy, as a sub-genre of historical fiction, is capable of presenting an ‘authentic’ view of the past, in spite of its non-realistic nature. I identify three main ways historical fantasy writers can provide an authentic view of the past: by using telling details from an historical era; by incorporating documented events and persons into the story; and by portraying the world as people in the past believed it to be. Historical

1 “Kami” is often translated as “god”, however this carries nuances of European deities that are not necessarily appropriate. Kami are material as well as spiritual—a tree can be both kami and tree. Ancestral spirits may become kami after centuries of worship; vengeful ghosts can be turned into kami and their power channeled into good. Kasulis (2004) describes this as ‘a presence that inspires awe’ (12). In The Fox and the Mirror I have tried to portray a world in which kami-nature may reside in anything, from fox to stone to human, and in other religons’ gods as well.

fantasy is different from realistic historical fiction in that it can more easily incorporate elements belonging to shared cultural heritage, such as beliefs regarding the dead and the supernatural. This characteristic involves writers in research using material that involves other ways of knowing the past—in particular the expressions of belief such as religion, popular customs, folk tales, and oral history. With the broadening of our historiological perspectives in the postmodern climate, historical fantasy based on non-documentary forms of history may come to be seen as another way of knowing the past.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Keywords ...... i

Abstract ...... ii

Acknowledgements ...... vi

Introduction ...... 1

Literature Review ...... 6 1. History and fiction ...... 6 2. History and the past ...... 10 3. Historical fantasy and the past ...... 13 Use of historical detail ...... 15 Reference to historical figures and events ...... 17 Ethnographic Viewpoint ...... 18

Case Studies ...... 20 1. Use of physical detail...... 20 2. Use of historical characters and events ...... 28 3. The supernatural as tangible ...... 35

Conclusion ...... 46

Bibliography ...... 49 Reference List A: Exegesis ...... 49 Reference List B: Creative work/ The Fox and the Mirror ...... 53

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signature ______

Date ______

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Queensland University of Technology, Faculty of Creative Industries, for taking the chance on a speculative fiction cohort and offering us the opportunity to engage in this creative research. My sincere thanks especially to our supervisors, Craig Bolland and Nike Bourke, for their patience, and timely advice about all things academic. I could not have completed this thesis without the support of the other writers in our cohort; it has been a pleasure to know them all, and may our friendship continue long after our degrees are attained. Special thanks, as always, to my long-suffering family, Haruki, James and Ray.

Note on names and translations: All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Japanese names are written surname first, except for those that have been customarily used the other way for a long time. If a work is known in an English translation, the title will be provided in English. e.g. Princess Mononoke. If the work is not readily available in English, the Japanese title will be provided, together with an English translation in parenthesis. e.g. Hinotori Taiyō hen [Phoenix series: The Sun].

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In the Gaps Left Unfilled—historical fantasy and the past

“The truth in history is not the only truth about the past” (Lowenthal, 1985: 229).

Introduction My novel The Fox and the Mirror is an historical fantasy set in a world based on early medieval (12-13th century) Japan. Note that I do not say

‘set in medieval Japan’. Historical fiction research raises questions pertinent to my exploration of the process of writing an ‘authentic’ historical fantasy: is it possible to portray the past from our present viewpoint in a way that is true to the past, i.e. does our present viewpoint always get in the way? How much should the writer be held to facts and how much should they be allowed to invent?

The land, social customs and most of the beliefs in The Fox and the

Mirror are as close to what is known of the past as my research can achieve; the names and some geography, however, are different, and the story does not feature recognisable historical personages. One reason for this is that my protagonists are commoners, and recorded history says little of their characters or doings. Another reason is that my characters talk to ghosts, and supernatural creatures are part of their world. That is, it is ‘fantasy’.

Fantasy, historical or otherwise, usually involves magic or supernatural forces, things that aren’t real. Historical fantasy does not

expect the reader to believe the past was ‘like that’. What it can do is make the reader aware that the way they see the world is historically (and culturally) specific.

The reader of The Fox and the Mirror, for example, may be drawn to think about how, in our time, we put death at a distance; in pre-modern

Japan (and still, to a certain extent, in Japan today), the remembered dead were part of the family. Also, people’s actions or inactions had repercussions in the spiritual plane. For example, lack of reverence towards ancestors and the kami (the spirits who reside in all things; some have more power than others) around them might bring vengeance from an angry spirit. Kami were neither solely good nor evil; they could be neutral or both. The whole world was a moving thing, in and out of balance. Every year the seasons returned, yet every year they were different.

Historical fantasy can show that our way is not the only way of thinking. It can nudge the reader to reflect upon how they see the contemporary world by contrasting it with the past.

In this exegesis I explore some ways in which historical fantasy, as a sub-genre of historical fiction, is capable of presenting an ‘authentic’ view of the past. For the purposes of this exegesis, ‘authentic’ indicates a representation based on thorough research that eschews anachronisms, and that may be based not only on written historical records but on other ways of knowing the past, such as folk ethnology, mythography, and the

arts.

Certain historiological arguments support the assertion that historical fiction can provide an authentic view of the past. Various commentators argue, for example, that there is no one historical ‘truth’

(therefore fiction may present ‘truths’ not found in history books); that history depends on the historian2 (it is dependent on the way we look at the world, and a fiction writer’s way of looking is just as valid—if based on research); that history is only one way of knowing the past—other ways include memories and relics, oral and unwritten or secret histories3.

‘Historical fiction’ is difficult to define, mainly because it encompasses a wide variety of other genres; a work of historical fiction may also be a mystery, a thriller, a romance, a literary work, a Western, and so on. Sarah Johnson’s definition is perhaps the most practical:

‘novels set prior to the middle of the last century in which the historical background plays a strong role in the story’ (Johnson, 2005: xviii). In this exegesis I will use Johnson’s broad definition, although this is more useful for genre novels rather than literary works such as historiographic metafiction4.

Johnson defines historical fantasy as stories that are set in an historical period and reflect its customs; in which magic or the divine is

2 See Carr (1961) for a still-relevant discussion of historical facts and the role of the historian. A more recent overview may be found in Tosh (2006) esp. 173-213. 3 See Lowenthal (1985) 185-249. Yanagita Kunio’s folk ethnography emphasises oral records. 4 Hutcheon (1998) sees historiographic metafiction as ‘novels that are intensely self- reflective but that also both re-introduce historical context into metafiction and problemitize the entire question of historical knowledge’ (285-286).

part of the plot; in which the plot revolves around a battle between good and evil. She argues that much historical fantasy centers on myth and legendary characters such as King Arthur, and is set in pre-industrial

Europe or Britain (Johnson, 2005: 651-652).

I include time-slip fantasy5 and alternate histories6 in my definition,

for example, Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s Tomoe Gozen series. Although

Salmonson’s series is set in a ‘frame’ of an alternate Japan, it relies heavily

on historical detail. I also include works like Tim Powers’ The Anubis

Gates and Sarah Gentle’s Ash series. Although the present features in their

plots, the main action and characters are in the past.

Historical fantasy differs from other historical fiction only in that it

is freer to treat past beliefs, such as belief in magic and/or the

supernatural, as real. Researching such beliefs necessarily involves the

writer in ways of knowing the past that are not restricted to the concrete,

verifiable facts of much written academic history.

I have based my consideration of how historical fantasy writers

bring their research to life and offer an authentic view of the past on my

own experience in writing The Fox and the Mirror, on other writers’

experiences (as related in articles and interviews), and, to a lesser extent,

on the texts themselves. In doing so, I have identified three major ways in

5 Stories in which a character/characters travels to a time period different to their own. Usually this involves a contemporary character visiting the past. A recent example is Connie Willis’s Victorian romp, To Say Nothing of the Dog. 6 Stories in which the timeline of history has been altered by events that did not actually happen. For example, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) is set in a world in which the Japanese won WWII.

which an authentic view of the past is created:

a) by using physical detail, i.e. worldbuilding;

b) by referring to documented events or characters, either as part

of the plot or as background;

c) by portraying the world as people in the past might have seen it,

in terms of beliefs.

The methodology used in this thesis is creative practice as research.

In exploring how I used various kinds of history, both written and unwritten, to build the world, characters and narratives of The Fox and the

Mirror, I reflect upon the questions that arise for the practitioner—that is, the writer—in the process of writing historical (fantasy) fiction.

Literature Review

1. History and fiction

Most of the history I know, I learned through fiction. But these two ways of knowing the past—through history texts and through fiction—have not always been distinct. Aristotle saw fiction, which shows what might happen and explains why, as superior to history, which shows what did happen (Lowenthal, 1985: 224). History dealt with the particular, while literature dealt with the universal. This was echoed in the 19th-century view of the historical novel, in which the novel, as represented by Scott and Thackeray, was seen as the vehicle that communicated the spirit of the past, because it dealt with common things. The historical novel was seen as superior to history because the past was partly created

(Butterfield, quoted in Lowenthal, 1985:226-227 and Rehberger 1995:4-5).

In the 20th century, this perception changed—literature was seen as dealing with the concrete and particular, while historians drew conclusions about history’s grand plan. Literature and history became separate disciplines; historical fiction was unacceptable to history because it distorted history, while being equally unacceptable to literature because it was a slave to historical fact (Rehberger, 1995: 5). Postmodern theory once more saw a blurring of the boundaries between history and historical fiction, with the appearance of genres such as historiographic metafiction, which rearranges the past in a way more analogous to

memory and oral tales—there is a loss of linear structure, of orderly chronology, as the genre challenges the notion of history-as-fact (see

Hutcheon 1998).

In Historical Fiction: A Guide to the Genre (2005), Sarah Johnson presents exhaustive annotated lists of over 3,800 titles, organised into sub- genres, focusing on English-language novels for adults mainly published—except for a few “classics”—from 1995 to mid-2004. The sub- genres she identifies range from Traditional and Sagas through Westerns and Romantic, to Literary and Mysteries, Alternate History and Fantasy, with significant overlap between many sub-genres. Johnson’s Guide offers a useful overview of contemporary publications. Johnson is aware of historical fiction’s reputation as a “lowbrow form of literature” (Johnson,

2005: 2), but she points out that in the late 1990s and early 2000s a greater number of literary authors are writing historical fiction, although it may not be classed as such by publishers or booksellers. Some examples given are A.S. Byatt’s Possession (1990), Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace (1996),

Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain (1997) and Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) (Johnson, 2005: 465-562).

Johnson also acknowledges that trends in history influence topics chosen for historical novels. For example, the post-1970s shift from political to social history led to an emphasis in historical fiction on previously unexplored people and themes. Women’s role in history

became a focus, as did the history of racial minorities (Johnson, 2005: 4).

The shifting focus within historical fiction is a reflection not just of wider social phenomena, but also of reader expectations at a more intimate and specific level. In her study of historical fiction, Johnson argues that:

Readers seek out authors who evoke or re-create the past by providing detail on all aspects of life in earlier times: customs, food, clothing, religious beliefs, architecture, and much more. This historical frame must be presented as authentically as possible so as not to shatter the illusion...The ‘fiction’ part of historical fiction adds emotional intensity (Johnson, 2005: 5).

It seems fair to conjecture that writers of historical fiction devote a great deal of time to researching the concrete details of the past partly because such worldbuilding is what readers want. According to Johnson, readers need to see both how different the past was, yet be reassured that human nature has not changed too much (Johnson, 2005: 9).

Criticism of historical fiction by historians arises because historians feel that modern sensibilities can stand between writers and the spirit of the past. Historians like Mark McKenna signal the “dangers that arise when novelists and reviewers of fiction claim for fiction, at the expense of history, the sole right to empathy and historical understanding”

(McKenna, 2005: 3). Inga Clendinnen refers to the “challenge” mounted by novelists to the presumably sacred role of historians as custodians and interpreters of the past (Clendinnen, 2006: 15). She sees claims, by

novelists such as Kate Grenville, to understand the people who lived in the past as problematic; arguing that historians must be wary of using their own imagination because it is a product of their own experience and culture and is limited by this (Clendinnen, 2006:20-22). Fiction writers, on the other hand, must use their imagination, backed by research, to try to feel what it must have been like to live in the past. This experiential approach to writing is suspect to historians. For example, Clendinnen throws doubt on the ability of Grenville’s experience of fear in a modern powered vessel to shed light on how an experienced sailor in a sailboat would have felt 200 years ago. In a way, she argues, writers cheat, because “the insights of empathy are untestable” (Clendinnen, 2006: 27).

However, neither McKenna nor Clendinnen deny that novelists’ freedom to create is what enables great stories to have a coherency not found in life; what they object to is historical novelists setting themselves up as authorities on the past. Clendinnen sees the difference between history and fiction as a difference in the relationship between writer and reader; the real world of history demands a different response than the false world of fiction. The novelist has an aesthetic contract with her reader to entertain. The historian has a moral responsibility to present the truth as far as she can see it, in order to better the present (Clendinnen,

2006: 32-36).

The politicisation of children’s literature is blamed for the

propagation of dodgy historical fictions that makes stories palatable to current tastes. MacLeod argues that works such as Catherine, Called Birdie

(1995), by Karen Cushman, and Patricia MacLachlan’s Sarah, Plain and Tall

(1985), “evade the common realities of the societies they write about”

(MacLeod, 1998). By transposing modern sensibilities onto the past the

writers betray first their readers, who end up believing the past was like

the present, and secondly those numberless multitudes in the past whose

lives were “nasty, brutish and short”7. To divide characters into those

who think like we do, that is, the rebels, and the others, is to somehow condemn those who didn’t rebel—which was most people. Macleod calls it a “failure of imagination” not to accept that those in the past thought differently to us (MacLeod, 1998). In Clendinnen’s words: “an unexamined confidence in empathy tempts us to deny the possibility of significant difference” (Clendinnen, 2006: 27).

2. History and the past

As the novelist Margaret Atwood says, “All novels are in a sense

‘historical’ novels” (Atwood, 1996: 1507). That is, they make reference to a time separate to the reader. To understand how historical fiction in general, and historical fantasy in particular, can present an authentic view of the past, we need to consider the difference between history and the

7 From Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651.

past.

History is only one way of knowing the past. In The Past is a Foreign

Country, David Lowenthal discusses “the ultimate uncertainty of the past”

(Lowenthal, 1985: 191) and the illusion of history—we can never verify historical facts through observation, only the past preserved in the present is knowable. Or, as E.H. Carr put it some years earlier: “The dead hand of vanished generations of historians, scribes, and chroniclers have determined beyond the possibility of appeal the pattern of the past” (Carr,

1961: 14). What we call history is merely stories based on the tiny percentage of facts that we have available from the huge, mostly unknown, body of the past.

Ann Curthoys and John Docker in Is History Fiction? (2005) seem to agree with this position; while rejecting the idea that postmodernism has destroyed historians’ ability to find truth in the past, they add that “the temptation to declare that the historian can objectively establish the truth about the past is to be resisted. There always has to be a question mark hovering over any claim to having attained an objective, let alone scientific, status for one's findings” (Curthoys and Docker, 2005b).

Historical novelists are also aware of the provisional quality of history: Mary Gentle comments that “history is a construct—one that’s expected, as Plato says, to have a higher degree of veracity than other fictional constructs like novels, but a construct nonetheless...In that sense,

a secret or an alternate history is as (fictionally) valid as the most rigorous academic study” (Gentle, 2000).

Brian Wainwright sees history as: the historical record as interpreted by historians, using a wide variety of sources. Its continual reassessment and re-evaluation means it is mutable. To some degree, what we call history reflects our current prejudices and obsessions as much as it does the reality of what happened. It contains strong elements of interpretation (quoted in Polack, 2006a).

Writers strive to give the best illusion of the past to their readers as possible, while recognizing its essential inaccessibility. Elizabeth

Chadwick says, “I am aware that I am a product of my own century and

upbringing and that my writing has to be an illusion of the Middle Ages,

but I try to make it feel real to myself and to my readers” (quoted in

Polack, 2006a).

In the same vein, Connie Willis writes that: the real appeal of the past is that it's the true forbidden country. Even when you write stories about the Outer Magellanic Cloud or the star pillars in Orion, there's a chance we can go there, and we know we'll get to the future eventually, one way or another, but the past you can never go to, not even to correct your mistakes. It's the place you can't ever go home to, even to take one last longing look, and yet it's always with us, every moment (Willis, 2001).

Lowenthal suggests that history is less than the past because of the

immensity of the past, because of the inescapable difference between

events and accounts of events, and because of the bias of historians. Yet history is also more than the past; hindsight gives us a more comprehensive view, and historians make creative choices to better tell a coherent story, making history more predictable and structured than the past. While oral narrative arranges and rearranges events in order of significance, the invention of the calendar allowed people to see history as

“one interlinked, continuous process” (Lowenthal, 1985: 222). However, as the postmodern discovery of cultural and minority histories testifies,

“the sequential structure alone cannot capture complex historical reality”

(Lowenthal, 1985: 223).

Lowenthal sees history’s role as one that “extends and elaborates memory by interpreting relics and synthesizing reports from past eyewitnesses” (Lowenthal, 1985: 210). Sources of historical understanding are therefore not restricted to documentary sources, but include oral narratives, art (including fiction), architecture, landscape. Historical knowledge includes things guessed at, inferred, the pictures we build up through experience; myth is also a part of history. “Soothsayers and priests, storytellers and minstrels are historians too” (Lowenthal, 1985:

212).

3. Historical fantasy and the past

Recognition of the usefulness of myth and other non-documentary sources in historical understanding carries important implications for the

historical fiction writer, and particularly the historical fantasy writer, in that many of our richest sources lie in myth and legend. Indeed, for the writer who wishes to foreground the experiences of common people in pre-modern times, like myself, folklore and legends form the mainstay of our research. There are few written records that detail what ordinary people thought and did. And yet, as Iwasaka and Toelken put it in their study of Japanese death legends: “Common people’s persistent cultural experiences—their traditions—are historically meaningful” (Iwasaka and

Toelken, 1994: 50).

The Japanese folk ethnologist Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) argued for acceptance of the “invisible history” of the common people of Japan, as opposed to the traditional view of history as a chronicle of the elite and their doings. He took as his material the popular traditions of illiterate commoners (Mori, 1980: 93) and believed that ancestor worship lay at the core of common religious feeling (Mori, 1980: 99). Yanagita believed that the continuing vernacular culture or oral tradition—“invisible history”— was as historically significant as the material remains of elite culture—

“visible history”, because of the biased focus of the latter. Visible history does not concern itself with the lives of illiterate villagers, so how else are we to know about them, other than through oral traditions? Yanagita maintained that the only way to grasp that tradition was for the researcher to talk directly to the people, and to let the people talk for

themselves, not in answer to questionnaires. “The study of everyday life requires us to look analytically at those shared expressions which can be a) seen, b) heard, and c) believed” (Iwasaka and Toelken, 1994: 55).

From a writer’s point of view, what can be seen, that is, traditional items and rituals of everyday life, are important because they are the details that make a setting come alive. What can be heard, that is, dialect, songs, proverbs, legends etc., are potent reservoirs of stories. Some of these sources, as well as written history, are used by writers when they include actual (or culturally significant) characters and events, as suggested below. What can be believed includes beliefs and worldviews that are not necessarily articulated, but are expressed in taboos or ideas.

Yanagita stressed that the researcher must share in the experience, must forego their objectivity and become involved in order for the belief to make sense. In the same way, a writer often tries to share how people in the past might have felt.

I would like to suggest that there are three main ways by which historical fantasy writers can present an ‘authentic’ view of the past, that is, one without anachronisms, one that is true to the spirit of the times, and that can satisfy historical experts as well as a general audience.

Use of historical detail Firstly, most writers who set their stories in the past are aware of the importance of researching the physical environment. Gillian Polack’s 2006

project on writers’ historical awareness and their work (“Conceptualising

The Past: How Fiction Writers Talk About The Middle Ages”) showed that writers of historical fiction, historical romance, and historical fantasy all engage in extensive research and “go out of their way to find telling detail to make their history come alive” (Polack, 2006a). Writers of historical fantasy and speculative fiction were found to be more likely to

give the internal cohesion of the narrative precedence over accurate

historical detail, while writers of historical fiction and historical romance were most careful to get the details right. Carr’s observation about the duty of the historian is applicable to the writer: the duty is not just to ensure facts are accurate, but to get “all known or knowable facts relevant…to the theme on which he is engaged” (Carr, 1961: 28).

A majority of writers agree that it is the details of the daily realities of life that make the past come alive for readers. These details then direct

plot choices—as the science fiction writer must work with the laws of

nature (if she is to be taken seriously), so the historical fiction writer must

work with the facts we know about the past.

Polack found that “communication with readers is a crucial

component to interpretation of the Middle Ages for most writers. The

other crucial component...is achieving the highest level of historical

accuracy possible. Genre and audience constraints do not hamper serious

consideration of historical interpretation” (Polack, 2006a).

The first and most obvious way, then, that historical fantasy can provide an authentic view of history is to use accurate physical details in the world of the story. In the next section I will also look into the difficulty of finding sources for older periods, especially for the details of daily life and especially for the lives of commoners. Yanagita Kunio’s

‘seen’ shared expressions of invisible history provide possible sources.

Reference to historical figures and events Secondly, historical fantasy may refer to known characters or events, either as part of the plot or as background. This is common in historical fiction as a whole. Often the historical characters are not main characters in the story, thus giving the writer freedom to invent the lives of their own characters, people who could have existed. Admiral Nelson is referred to many times in C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series, but we never ‘meet’ him; the closest we come is when Hornblower is placed in charge of arranging his funeral (Forester 1953, Hornblower and the

Atropos). Some writers are cheekier, of course; Donald Jack’s irreverent

World War I flying ace Bartholomew Bandy and George MacDonald

Fraser’s lucky cad Harry Flashman relate their meetings with a variety of historical personages, invariably portrayed in an unflattering manner.

Historical fantasy tends to use historical characters less than other historical fiction, unless it is alternate history-type fantasy such as

Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, in which William Gladstone is

Prime Minister of an England where magicians rule the un-magical populace (Stroud, 2003-2006). Even then, Gladstone is an ‘historical’ character, who lived before the events in the trilogy. Another example is

Jack Dann’s The Memory Cathedral (1995), based on letters dismissed as a hoax by orthodox historians, in which he imagines a ‘secret history’ where Leonardo built flying machines, which actually worked, for an

Arabian noble. Dann is unusual in that he makes Leonardo himself the core of the narrative, rather than focusing on an imaginary character.

Historical fantasy is more likely to use characters from myth or legend, the quintessential example being King Arthur8, who has featured in

countless historical fantasies from Malory to Mary Stewart.

Ethnographic Viewpoint The third way historical fantasy can create an authentic view of the past is

by portraying the world as people in the past may have seen it. As

Yanagita said about folk ethnology:

It is important to try to look at the old days with a feeling for the time and situation. We need, in a word, sympathy. This can be said not only when we study the lives of our ancestors but also when we study other peoples of the present time. It is essential to empty ourselves if we would understand the reality (Quoted in Mori, 1980: 102).

In The Fox and the Mirror, my characters meet ghosts, ghouls and ogres. These things exist. Hatsu can talk to the dead and they talk to her.

8 The King Arthur of fiction is usually based on the mythic Arthur, rather than the possible historic Arthur.

If this seems ‘fantastical’ to us, it was not to the people of the twelfth century. Fantasy is well-placed to show the supernatural as tangible, because this is expected of the genre. As Ann Swinfen comments in In

Defence of Fantasy (1984), “Its major difference from the realist novel is that it takes account of areas of experience—imaginative, subconscious, visionary—which free the human spirit to range beyond the limits of empirical primary world reality” (p.231).

In the next section I show how, by using ‘soft’ historical sources such as literature, oral tales, myth, legend, religious texts and art, as well as material from disciplines such as archaeology, folk ethnology and anthropology, fantasy can also be ‘historical’.

Case Studies In this section I examine in more detail how historical fantasy can provide an authentic view of the past, using my own novel The Fox and the Mirror

and other works of historical fantasy in reference to the three strategies for writing authentic historical fantasy outlined in the previous section, that is: use of physical detail, reference to historical figures and events, and portrayal of the belief systems of the characters as real.

1. Use of physical detail.

Attention to accurate historical detail is important for most writers of historical fiction and historical fantasy. In her survey, Gillian Polack found that writers “go out of their way to find telling detail to make their history come alive. Actual time spent researching ranged from a few weeks to many years” (Polack, 2006a). Fiction is the art of the concrete, of

the particular, and of the senses; readers want to suspend their disbelief

and enter a different world, and it is the physical details that allow them

to do so. Worldbuilding is important in any fictional narrative, but especially so in genres such as historical fiction and science fiction, in which the world of the story is different to the readers’ world. Jack Dann, a writer who works in both these fields, supports this. “When you're writing a science fiction novel, you're extrapolating the future. When you're writing a historical novel, you're extrapolating the past” (Dann,

2006). Sally Odgers agrees. “I specialise in creating worlds in my

stories . . . This extends to creating fantasy and futuristic worlds. I approach writing historical fiction in a similar way, in that I take facts and probabilities and add possibilities” (quoted in Polack, 2006a).

Many works are enriched by those details that only come with extensive research—the squeak of the castle floor in Lian Hearn’s medieval Japanese fantasy (Across the Nightingale Floor, 2002); the unexpectedness of the frozen Thames in The Anubis Gate (Powers, 1983) are two that spring to mind.

In the case of historical fiction written in almost any pre-modern period, however, writers face the problem of how to know what those details are. In my case, the past really was a foreign country. Although I had lived in Japan for some years and felt reasonably close to the culture and people, and had been inspired by a three-month residency in the countryside of Yamaguchi Prefecture in 2004, I did not realise how foreign the Japanese past would be. When planning The Fox and the Mirror,

I knew that I wanted to write about commoners—the kind of people who do not appear in the great war tales or court diaries, who have minor supporting roles in samurai dramas (mostly as servants or corpses). Part of my motivation was the need to be different to other fantasy or historical fiction set in Japan, the majority of which concentrates on warriors, aristocrats, or priests. Mostly I wanted to know what the other people were doing during this period of history. The focus of traditional

history is not ‘fair’; the past was not exclusively populated by elites. As an ordinary human being myself, I am aware that my life may be of little interest to future historians—but to me it is full of drama. Surely those peasants and commoners felt the same?

When I began my research, I soon found that it is excessively difficult to find traditional historical resources (particularly written materials) that are not about the elites. Fortunately, I am not an historian.

Given the dearth of written material on the daily life of ordinary people in the late Heian period (12th century)9, I fell back upon the

“untestable” (Clendinnen, 2006) device of extrapolation—from my

personal experience of present-day life in Yamaguchi, which has some

elements unchanged from the Edo period (the weather, and the

mountains), I considered how life through the seasons might have

proceeded, although I did not assume that things would be the same. This

extrapolation was backed up by folk ethnology, which in turn is based on

archaeological reports, oral history, and parish records. I also considered

portrayals of the common people in art, for example the 12th century fans in Shitennoji Temple in Osaka, which show daily activities such as washing clothes and children’s games, and consulted histories of folk customs and some recent feminist history.

In The Fox and the Mirror the land is undergoing a severe drought. I

9 I have included lists of non-fiction sources in the bibliography, according to topic. A number of sources appear in multiple topics.

included this detail because it emphasises the hardship of peasant life, and also because one of the best-known folk tales of the region is about a priest who, in the summer of 1354, sat for days in one of the limestone caves under the plateau and prayed for rain during a major drought. In the end the prayers were successful but the priest was washed away in the following flood. Hatsu’s final wish—for rain—makes sense in this context. I have not copied the legend, but I feel that I have been true to its spirit. Recently, I came upon a scholarly paper that showed fairly conclusively that the Heian centuries in general were drier than those before and after, and more famines were due to drought than to unseasonal rains (Farris, 2007).

In considering what my characters should wear, I found that silk kimonos are from a later period, and in any case silk was not used by commoners; cotton was not generally available until the 16th century, so

Heian peasants used flax (linen) or fabric made from mulberry fibres.

With regard to food, folk culture sources of the region indicate that in the limestone mountains water was scarce, so little rice was grown.

Commoners ate millet, beans and yams. Any meat intake was from game, which was plentiful in rural areas. Itinerant traders sometimes brought fish from the coast. Pharmaceuticals were brought by wandering mendicants, who also brought news.

More documentary historical sources are available for taxation and

land tenure issues. The political situation was complex—taxes were paid to local sources who may or may not have collected for the larger lords, main temples, or central government officials. Even though Hatsu’s village is destroyed as the book opens, I still needed to know its position in the larger society.

Perhaps the single most important area of research was that of shamanism and beliefs about the dead. One of my two main characters, the girl Hatsu, is a shaman. I needed to know about her dress, tools, dances, daily work, position in society, beliefs and so on. The anthropology text, The Catalpa Bow (Blacker, 1975, 1986), was one of my most valuable sources, as were articles about contemporary shamans and stories in ancient tales about wandering priests and women with strange abilities.

There are certain facts that I consciously took liberties with—for example, the tree-less plateau. Each year in early spring the grasses are burned in a large-scale bonfire that has taken on cultural significance for the local communities involved, as well as being a huge attraction for tourists. It is not historically clear when the annual burning to clear the plateau for grazing began, and it is possible that in the period of my novel it would have been forested like the rest of the mountain tops. However, the open ground at the top of the world made a huge impression on me when I visited Yamaguchi, and the idea of a place apart from the rest of

the world, a border between the spirit world and this one, is central to my book. So I ‘assumed’ the burning took place in the time of my novel.

What I have done is used reading to gain an understanding of a historical reality. This understanding was then used to inform how I go about solving the problems of plot and character that arise in the writing.

Know the world, know the story.

Yet even with the help of contemporary and other sources, there is too much left unknown. Margaret Atwood has spoken of this with her customary flair. In writing Alias Grace (1996) she struggled with the reliability of sources, and the paucity of the “now-obscure details of daily life” on record (Atwood, 1998:1514). She set rules—she was not to alter solid facts, and “every major element in the book had to be suggested by something in the writing about Grace and her times”, but “in the gaps left unfilled—I was free to invent” (Atwood, 1998:1515).

Historical fiction writers who are serious about history stick to the truth. This often has benefits for the narrative, as Proud states, “I have found, time and again, that if I stick to the empirical truth then it is possible to reach a deeper, richer level of understanding and the narrative benefits incomparably as a result” (Proud, 2004: 31).

But detail by itself is merely window-dressing. It must be necessary to the story. This is why fiction writers may read history differently to historians. Browsing through an historical text, especially at

the beginning of a project, I do not quite know what I’m looking for, but I know when I find it. Whole chunks of information may be passed by, whereas snippets of facts, ideas, and minor occurrences are noted with glee. For example, on one of my index cards I have written merely:

“market in Heijo-kyo’s north-east closed each day with three drum rolls” and on another: “snapping forefinger and thumb to expiate guilt or trouble, sending it flying away in the direction of the finger”. The same text may also provide completely different material at a later stage in the project, because I am more familiar with the world of the novel.

An example of an historical fantasy that encompasses so much un- ordinary detail that the reader expects it to collapse under the colourful

weight, is Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart (1984). Subtitled, A Novel of an

Ancient China That Never Was, it might be classed with the ‘secret history’

fantasies in the next section, but I wish to examine it here because of its

facility in integrating the historical details (outlandish but soundly

researched) with the plot. The details are the plot, in the sense that everything meshes together and contributes to the effect of the whole.

The book follows the adventures of Number Ten Ox, a naive peasant, and the aged scholar Li Kao, “a sage with a slight flaw in his character” (that is, being a thief and a drunkard) as they search for the

Great Root of Power in order to save Ox’s village children from a terrible poison. They careen across Tang dynasty China from the Duke of Chin’s

labyrinth to a ruined city in the western desert to the Great Wall to a chamber of natural bells formed in the rock, using guile, wit, courage, execrable taste, parachutes, and a bamboo-rotor helicopter powered by gunpowder. Such is the sheer exuberance of detail supplied by the author that the reader has no trouble believing all of the above. For example, the growing of silk worms:

The eggs that Ma the Grub handed out were quite beautiful, jet-black and glowing with health, and the leaves on the mulberry trees were so thick that the groves resembled tapestries woven from deep green brocade, and the youngsters raced around singing, ‘Mulberry leaves so shiny and bright, children all clap hands at the sight!’ Our village crackled with excitement. Girls carried straw baskets up the hill to the monastery, and the bonzes lined them with yellow paper upon which they had drawn pictures of Lady Horsehead, and the abbot blessed the baskets and burned incense to the patron of sericulture. Bamboo racks and trays were taken to the river and vigorously scrubbed. Wildflowers were picked and crushed, lamp wicks cut into tiny pieces, and the oldest members of each family smeared cloves of garlic with moist earth and placed them against the walls of the cottages. If the garlic produced many sprouts it would mean a bountiful harvest, and never in living memory had anyone seem so many sprouts (Hughart, 1983: 12-13).

Hughart rejoices in the commonplace. The book is a celebration of the sheer immensity and depth of Chinese culture and history, and also an offering to the myriad souls who lived and died there through the ages.

This is encapsulated in Miser Shen’s deathbed prayer for his murdered daughter. This prayer is heart-rending, and Hughart appends his only footnote, giving us a clue to the original version.

‘Alas, great is my sorrow. Your name is Ah Chen, and when you were born I was not truly pleased. I am a farmer, and a farmer needs strong sons to help with his work, but before a year had passed you had stolen my heart. You grew more teeth, and you grew daily in wisdom, and you said “Mommy” and “Daddy” and your pronunciation was perfect...Now they tell me that I must try to forget you, but it is hard to forget you. ‘You carried a toy basket. You sat at a low stool to eat porridge. You repeated the Great Learning and bowed to Buddha. You played at guessing games, and romped around the house...When you picked up fruit or rice, you always looked at people’s faces to see if it was all right before putting it in your mouth, and you were careful not to tear your clothes’ (Hughart, 1983: 181).

It is a long prayer, and I challenge any parent to read it and remain dry-eyed. But is it the history that moves us or the fiction? I think the reason Hughart appended his footnote was that he knew we are indeed more moved—or perhaps moved in a qualitatively differently way—with the knowledge that the author of the prayer really lived and experienced that sorrow. We distinguish between the “aesthetic purpose of fiction” and fact that draws us “as close as it is now possible to get to a terrible past actuality” (Clendinnen, 2006: 34, 36).

2. Use of historical characters and events

Both historical fiction and the sub-genre of historical fantasy often appropriate documented events and persons, either as background or as characters in the story. A narrative will be worked around what is known, which gives greater verisimilitude to what is invented. Fantasy in particular takes advantage of ‘secret history’—that is, the gaps in ‘real’

history; what might have been.

Jack Dann writes about an actual historical personage—Leonardo da Vinci—in The Memory Cathedral, but the events of the book are included in no history text.

I took advantage of a few cracks in known history. I based the idea of Leonardo being in Syria on letters Leonardo wrote to the Devatdar of Syria ostensibly when he, Leonardo, was in the Middle East. Most historians don't take these letters seriously and shrug them off as tall tales and fables....So I extrapolated, wriggled around in the cracks of history, and put Leonardo in a position to be of use to the sultan of Egypt in a small war that wasn't recorded in the history books. I wanted to see what Leonardo would do if he could actually bring his inventions to life....So is this alternate history? I think I am probably picking the nits here, but I would think it is secret history, the history that could have been, but we don't -- or can't know -- if it had been (Dann, 2004).

British writer Mary Gentle agrees: One of the games which I enjoy, which is to fit -- in Ash's case -- a secret history into the interstices of history as we know it, so that you can't see the join. Much of what's in Ash can be looked up in the textbooks and found to be true. Or as true as any history is....I can't remember how long ago it was that I first came across the key fact. Which is, as Pierce Ratcliff says, that Burgundy does disappear, as far as history is concerned. The Grand Duke of the West, Charles of Burgundy, gets killed on the battlefield at Nancy in 1477, and from being the kingdom in Europe that everybody's watching, suddenly it's just -- gone. And that fascinated me: how does something so central, so key to the medieval experience, just get written out of history -- as if Europe was an airbrushed Soviet photo? (Gentle, 2000)

These authors ‘play’ with historical fiction, using its conventions and tropes to wriggle through the interstices of history into fantasy, to create past worlds that could have existed—and how do we know they

did not? Fantasy is able to go that one step further than realistic historical fiction. What realistic writer would have Leonardo’s flying machines actually airborne? Or devise a solution to Burgundy’s disappearance as radical as Mary Gentle’s?

In The Fox and the Mirror, I did not refer to a specific ‘event’, or even hint at historical characters. The lord Iida Sadamu in Across the Nightingale

Floor (Hearn, 2002) is manifestly the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, but where would I find a named or even described commoner in written history?

Instead, as the writing of my novel progressed, the focus turned to the conflict between the Buddhist believer Sada and the shaman Hatsu as it reflected the merging of Buddhism and native beliefs. However, when I began to research exactly how this merging happened at the level of individual worship, I found a fuzziness, a plethora of vague expressions.

Nobody, it seems, really knows.

In writing The Fox and the Mirror, I became not so much interested in a gap in recorded history, as in an unanswerable question: the undocumented grey area of praxis in which real people faced new beliefs and integrated them with the old.

I gained a certain amount of knowledge from historical and religious studies research on the reconciliation between Buddhism and native beliefs. This research highlighted a divergence between older and more recent sources . Older texts tend to view the ‘new’ Buddhism as

organising and giving structure to the ‘old’ beliefs (kami) and forcing them into a subordinate or at least underlying position, by virtue of its scriptures, its scope and its association with the centre of political power

(e.g. Agency of Cultural Affairs, 1972). Often the old beliefs were seen to have continued as a stratum of folk customs beneath Buddhist religious observances (e.g. Hori, 1968). Recent monographs and papers, however, present a more complex picture: arguing that pre-modern Shinto

“functioned as a ‘component’ of a complex cultic system, which was

Buddhist in nature but also included non-Buddhist elements” (Teeuwen and Rambelli, 2003:5). A number of historians dispute the very existence of Shinto as an organised religion before the modern period (Kuroda,

1981; Teeuwen, 2002; Yoshida, 2003).

Hori gave me a major hint by saying that “Buddhism gradually lowered its standards to accommodate the Shinto framework specifically to cooperate with popular Japanese shamanism” (Hori, 1968:199). He gives as an example the belief in goryō, or vengeful spirits. In the process of exorcising goryō, Buddhist priests used shamans as mediums in order to communicate with the spirits and thus pacify them.

The gradual and mutual reconciliation between Buddhism and native beliefs fit my plot, in which the vengeful spirit that threatens destruction would be defeated not in a battle, but by Hatsu finding out what the spirit wants. It also fit my personal idea that history is usually a

slow process of attrition and adjustment, especially for common people.

Unless I knew how Buddhism and native beliefs grew together, however, the conflict between my two characters could not be resolved.

Folk practices related to death (see Iwasaka, 1994; Goodman, 1995;

Smith, 1974; Hori, 1968), which can be observed even today in Japanese households, such as maintenance of a family altar, seem to indicate that ancestors are the key. Buddhism succeeded in Japan because of the people’s fear of angry spirits and/or tatari10—Buddhist rites transform the

spirit of the dead into kami, and overcome the pollution of death. Angry

spirits and violent kami are pacified by worship and turned into forces of

good. Vengeful ghosts can be saved and sent to the Pure Land (in the case

of the Amidist sects).

This conclusion requires extrapolation, from my own experiences

in Japan, from the sources detailed above, and from literature and folk

tales.

The three-part manga Hinotori Taiyō-hen [The Sun, the tenth, eleventh and twelfth volumes in the Phoenix series] by Tezuka Osamu

(1928-1989), also explores the relationship between native Japanese beliefs and Buddhism. Tezuka, the prolific and influential ‘father of manga’, worked on the Phoenix series from 1956 to 1989. It remained unfinished at

10Usually translated as curse, but closer to “Misfortune or disaster brought about by gods [shinbutsu lit. ‘kami and Buddhas’] or angry ghosts.” Kojien Japanese Dictionary, 3rd edition. Shinmura Izuru ed. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991, p.1488.

his death. The settings of the various sequences in the series range from the distant past to the far future. The series deals with humans’ search for immortality, which is found in the blood of the Phoenix.

The Sun (1986-1988) was the last sequence written in the series. In it,

Tezuka goes back in time to the early years of Japan’s recorded history (to the Asuka Period in the 660s) and follows the journey of characters in this time, while juxtaposing a parallel story set in that future 21st century, following characters whom we gradually realise are reincarnations of the characters in the past.

The Sun dramatises the coming of Buddhism to Japan as an actual war between religions, shown in ferocious battles between Buddhist deities on one hand, and the wolf-kami tribe who adopt the hero, and other native spirits, on the other. There is a clear demarcation between native kami living in harmony with, and protecting villagers, and the invading Buddhist deities. The Buddhas have captured the seat of political power, the king, and therefore are winning, despite resistance from native spirits on the peripheries. Buddhist temples are built and people forced to worship. The main character’s (and therefore the reader’s) sympathies are firmly on the side of the native kami, with the powerful Ni-ō (Sanskrit: Vajradhara) and similar Buddhist guardian deities portrayed as arrogant bullies:

[Four guardian Buddhist deities swagger into the wolf-kami tribe’s shrine like yakuza taking over a streetside

eatery] First deity: We are the advanced troops from across the sea. I am Kōmokuten. Second deity: I am Zōchōten. Third deity: Tamonten. Fourth deity: Jikokuten. We’re the Buddha’s protectors. [laughs nastily] Kōmokuten: Listen, evil spirits. [reads proclamation] From tomorrow you will cede this land to us. You will surrender to the mercy of our master or disappear to some far place—anywhere! One of the wolf-kami, incredulously: That’s ridiculous. Wolf-kami leader’s son: We have lived on this land for hundreds of years now. We get on well with the humans. We protect them. Jimonten [waves hand dismissively]: Protection? Tell your humans that from tomorrow their new master will protect them. [All the guardian deities laugh as at a good joke] (Tezuka 1986-1988, 127-133)

The scene ends with the guardian deities burning the stores of rice that the villagers had given the wolf-kami, and sailing off into the air, laughing. The wolf-kami hold a council of war and the battle begins.

The core of Tezuka’s narrative is the essentially humanist viewpoint that sees all religions as potentially dangerous to humans unless religion is kept separate from the state. He uses the coming of

Buddhism to illustrate this, despite the recent historical evidence suggesting that the merging of the two belief systems was relatively peaceful. In doing so, he reinforces a commonly-held view of the past: that the new forcefully overwhelms the old .

I have not been able to find any historical criticism of this portrayal of a religious war and its influence on Japanese history. The Sun is a brilliant example of Tezuka’s talent at its best—entrancing visuals, characters in meaningful conflict, heart-stopping pace, and a coherency of theme with plot that I find totally enviable. Yet I do think that his disregard for the ‘truth’ of history matters; it is an example of the didacticism that bothers McLeod in children’s historical fiction, in which the writer ignores inconvenient historical facts in order to make their ideological point (MacLeod, 1998). However, I admire the virtuosity of

Tezuka’s art.

Does the novelist merely have a contract with her reader to entertain? Or does the act of using historical material and setting a story in the past mean the novelist, too, shares the historian’s “moral responsibility” (Clendinnen, 2006: 32) to present the truth as far as they know it? Perhaps Tezuka could not have written such an entertaining story if he had considered the complexity of history—but I think he should have tried.

3. The supernatural as tangible

Historical fantasy writers have an advantage in giving shape to the beliefs of the past. Fantasy writers and readers are used to laying aside our rational point of view—it is expected of fantasy that it will include marvels. If the portrayal of marvels is backed by solid research, then it can

become historically ‘authentic’: a representation of the beliefs of a historical period. Criticism of historical fiction that imposes contemporary views on the past becomes, thereby, irrelevant, in the sense of McLeod’s criticism of girls’ roles in revisionist children’s fiction, although at the same time the reliance of much fantasy on a medieval template invites the further criticism of conservatism. Alison Light touches on this issue in her feminist study of historical romances:

The transposition into a historical past is necessarily double- edged. On the one hand, contemporary mores can be differently placed and explored: these heroines are able to take up what would usually be seen as the masculine reins of public power and sexual autonomy; on the other hand, precisely because they are not ‘ordinary’ women, and this is not realism, such figures are self-proclaimed ‘escapist’ (Light, 1989: 66).

The supernatural is a ‘safer’ area than such anachronistic politics. Non- anachronistic representation of beliefs such as belief in the spirit world, witchcraft and gods is used less to explore contemporary mores than to add a dimension not found in realistic fiction.

The supernatural is a familiar feature of fantasy. Guy Gavriel Kay says that if a supernatural element fits the story, he includes it. The Last

Light of the Sun (2004) deals with the transition from pagan faiths to monotheism; “it struck me as appropriate to tell the story as if the way people very likely saw the world…were really so” (Kay, 2005).

Sara Douglass reminds readers that “before the sixteenth century,

people lived in an enchanted world that was literally filled with the forces of good and evil: saints and angels, demons and sprites, spiteful elves and homely goblins. All of these creatures and beings truly existed, because the medieval world—and world view—allowed them to exist” (Douglass,

2006).

The aforementioned Bridge of Birds also illustrates how the supernatural can be an integral part of an historical fiction world. Not only do Master Li and Number Ten Ox physically battle various monsters and ghouls, but the key to the mystery is the romance between a god and a mortal. Master Li, who can build a parachute and a helicopter and calculate the worth of a cartload of magnets, and who comments “The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science” (Hughart, 1983: 140), accepts without question that gods and ghosts exist and can interact with humans.

I, too, wanted to show the world of the early medieval Japanese “as if it were really so” (Kay, 2005). In order to imagine how my characters in

The Fox and the Mirror might have seen the world, all my sources indicated that it was not enough that characters believe in ghosts—they must believe that the living have an obligation to the dead, that the dead remain close to the living, and that what the living do or neglect to do can invite reactions from the dead.

Yanagita’s analysis of expressions of shared belief in everyday life

among contemporary Japanese supports this assertion. That is, observations of how people’s beliefs in the present can supplement

‘invisible’ history in helping us to understand what people believed in the past.

Some examples of present beliefs have been shown to me by my husband’s family, who live in Osaka: the first serving of the first rice cooked every day is placed in tiny bowls and offered at the family altar, and fresh flowers are also continually renewed ‘for the hotoke’ (lit.

‘Buddha’, meaning spirits of family dead); the kitchen kami’s shelf is cleaned and fresh paper folded regularly, incense is also burned and rice offered—nobody can explain why, but there is an understanding that it is for protection from accidents in the kitchen; twice a year the family graves are swept and washed, offerings made, and sutras read; sutras are also read before the family altar at home on the anniversaries of more recent deaths. The recently dead are always spoken of as if present. Other widespread customs show the dead are ‘special’—their kimono are folded differently to the living, they use different cutlery and bowls and food.

And, most moving of all, at crossroads one often finds little homemade shrines for the Bodhisattva Jizō (Sanskrit: Ksitigarbha), the guardian of souls in hell and protector of children. I witnessed this in my own neighbourhood in Amagasaki in the early 1990s. A small, pitted concrete statue of a naked cupid standing on the corner of a nature-strip, probably

a garden ornament separated from his fountain, was clothed in hand- knitted capes and loin-cloth, and an umbrella tied behind him to keep off the weather. Small offerings of food or flowers were frequently renewed, and each season he would get a change of clothes. When I returned on a visit in 2004, after eight years’ absence, he was still there, wearing a new outfit.

Ghosts and the beliefs associated with them are a key element of

The Fox and the Mirror. The plot revolves around the efforts of a young female shaman, Hatsu, to defeat the attempt by an ambitious priest to re- introduce a powerful angry ghost to the real world. The ghost was an

Empress-magician in a far past age of the world, who now seeks revenge for her betrayal and defeat by the shamans whose tradition Hatsu succeeded.

Hatsu can’t pacify the Empress’s ghost herself; it is too strong. The ghost wants oblivion, and Hatsu cannot give it that. She can only send the ghost back to its wandering existence beyond the Bridge that spans the worlds. She needs help from the ‘Prince’, the new religion, Buddhism.

The Prince (from Prince Siddhartha) can release the Empress back into the circle of rebirth, through which she will have to make her own way towards nirvana and oblivion, as we all do.

The choice of a shaman as main character allows me to emphasise medieval beliefs about ghosts and the dead; Hatsu can see the ghosts and

spirits that appear as the barriers between this world and the world of the dead dissolve. They are as real to her as living creatures. Her job is to act as a medium in the true sense—as an intermediary between the worlds.

She must protect the living by listening to the grievances of the dead, and she must succour the dead by making sure the living perform their duties.

We see her summon a wayward spirit three times in the story, and always she tries merely to understand its needs, never to force it to leave.

The living world influences the dead—for example, Sada places a bow in Hatsu’s hands that she uses in the other world—and the world of the spirits spills into ours—the angry spirit of the boy in the black valley causes miscarriages and accidents to children. Sada witnesses the corruption of the priest and his religion, and draws a connection between this corruption and the drought that ravages the land.

I have also assumed other supernatural creatures are ‘real’—

Japanese folklore has a rich tradition of ghoul and faerie stories, not to mention the plethora of kami, as hinted in the phrase “the numberless [lit:

‘eight million’] gods” (yao yorozu no kamisama). Oni, a kind of ogre, and shape-changing foxes, a half-bird half-man creature, a blood-sucking shape-shifter and other less harmful faerie make their appearance. They are part of the shared beliefs of the time.

Part of this belief is that ghosts and the dead are not evil. Nor are kami. They can commit evil deeds, but that is because of inadequacies

among the living, in failing to acknowledge them. I tried to avoid black- white representations of evil in my narrative—the plot resolution comes not from defeating the ghost but from satisfying her need.

Another medieval Japanese fantasy that emphasises the ability of kami to do either good or evil is Miyazaki Hayao’s 1997 anime movie

Princess Mononoke. ‘Mononoke’ is a difficult word—[mono is] “a changeling spiritual quality that moves among the forms of ghosts, goblins, animals and humans” (Kasulis, 2004: 16), “strange and unusual things” (Kadokawa Shinjigen, 1978), or “the spirit that resides in things”

(casual conversation with native speakers), and it carries the connotation of the supernatural world apart from humans. Princess Mononoke is full of examples of the otherness of kami and the natural world. The Shishigami

(Deer-headed kami) both gives life and takes it away—it cures Ashitaka’s injury, but once its head is taken, tatari (see footnote 5) follows. The lesson is that kami are neither good nor evil. If we do good to them we will receive good; do bad to them and we will be cursed. The woman Eboshi the forest-killer is also Eboshi the leper-saver. San, the violent young woman who tries to protect the forest and the old gods, is not evil, she is merely being herself.

Although Susan Napier examines Princess Mononoke in the context of the re-positioning of women and minorities in Japanese historiography

(Napier, 2001: 477), and Kraemer as a lesson in liminality (Kraemer, 2004),

I prefer to see it as Miyazaki’s reminder to the Japanese of the connection with nature that they might lose should they forget that their land and history were once filled with great and terrible kami.

I will look at one more historical fantasy set in Japan that relies on ghosts and the world of the dead as an integral part of the plot. The Golden

Naginata by Jessica Amanda Salmonson (1982) is not strictly historical fantasy because it is set in an imaginary world called “Naipon”. I use this book as an example even though it is problematic in terms of anachronisms, being a romantic mélange that seems aimed at what

English-language readers would like to think about the Japanese; sort of a jidai-geki (Japanese historical samurai drama) for foreigners. Elements from folklore, mythology and religion are mixed together in a way that might irritate purists, but to me suggests the ways in which the Japanese themselves mix these elements in their beliefs and daily lives. I am interested in how the supernatural is an integral part of the world of the

story and plays a pivotal role in the plot.

The main character, a samurai woman named Tomoe Gozen (who

was an actual historical character mentioned in The Tale of the Heike and other literary sources), is visited by the ghost of a murdered swordsmith and given the task of tracking down his killers and avenging his murder.

She is also pursued by a spirit in the service of the King of Hell, a

deranged shape-shifter/witch, the restless ghost of a comrade she killed, and a mischievous bird-sprite (tengu). In the course of the story she must retrieve a magical weapon—the golden naginata (a kind of halberd) of the title—from a mythical beast, and use it to finish her task of revenge. In the process, she gains victory for her master and therefore confirms her loyalty to the way of the samurai.

In this imaginary Japan, as in Hughart’s China, the world of the supernatural is part of the real world. The characters feel this is normal, as we imagine people who lived in the past might also have felt, with good reason; in the contemporary Tale of the Heike, for example, warriors from both sides consult oracles, offer prayers to buddhas and kami, and observe religious and customary taboos.

As though just remembering, Tomoe reached suddenly for the spirit-presents she had made with her own hands. These representations of toys and practical objects she placed within a char-stained receptacle built into the monument. With a piece of flint and iron kept there, she lit the spirit-presents. The paper had been treated to smell of incense as it burned…She dropped the paper coins into the receptacle where they flared. “If I misjudge your interests,” she said, “please do not take offense, but give the money to someone else for me, perhaps the family of the swordsmith Okio who died in poverty” (Salmonson, 1982: 107).

In other texts from the early medieval period (Ury, 1979;

Nakamura, 1973), supernatural events and beings are as much a part of the world as peasants, nobles, warriors and priests.

The campfire was dwindling. Tomoe’s meal was

cooked. She pretended not to notice the three birds watching from the tree as she removed the roots from the cooking-stick. Rather than eating, she stoked the fire with the stick. There was a restless sound above her head, like crows nudging each other on their roost. Tomoe lifted the stick above her head, fire on its end, and three baby tengu squawked and fluttered (Salmonson, 1982: 15).

The plot of The Golden Naginata is also complicated by Tomoe running away from an arranged marriage, at least in the first part of the story. Tomoe expresses some strongly feminist opinions, as in the following exchange where she discusses her arranged marriage with a female fellow-warrior:

Azo added, ‘But when my father eventually arranges my marriage, I will be glad to serve Naipon by serving my husband.’ ‘How can you say so?’ asked Tomoe, leaning toward Azo. ‘You are famous too! You would trade it for a husband?’ ‘Women must provide heirs. We are still allowed to fight.’ ‘Hai! Like my mother fought—and died bearing my younger brother.’ ‘Death is always near a samurai,’ said Azo. ‘Man or woman.’ ‘Death by these!’ exclaimed Tomoe, pulling her sword out a ways and shoving it back. ‘Not by this!’ She struck her own belly (Salmonson, 1982: 6).

This aspect of The Golden Naginata raises not only the question of

how much anachronism is acceptable in a fantasy world so closely based

on history, but also leads to the issue of genre constraints. For the

professional writer, there is necessarily a tension between being faithful to

the historical viewpoint and writing a story that contemporary readers

can relate to, and therefore will buy—or that a publisher thinks they will buy. This means working largely within the acknowledged boundaries of the genre. In her survey, Gillian Polack found that “Engagement with readers does not solely depend on good writing. It also rests on the existence of familiar landmarks and terrain...It is working within the genre constraints that builds some of the bridges between book and reader that the publisher needs in order to market the work” (Polack,

2006). Dave Luckett answers the question ‘Why do you use historical themes (and the Middle Ages in particular) in your writing?’ by pointing out that he knows the period in question and that “the setting is a marker for a recognisable genre, and that in turn allows me to work with a set of conventions and reader expectations” (quoted in Polack, 2006).

Like Croce’s historians, for whom all history is contemporary history, so historical fiction writers must write for and of our own times.

As Margaret Atwood says, “The past no longer belongs only to those who once lived in it; the past belongs to those who claim it, and are willing to explore it, and to infuse it with meaning for those alive today. The past belongs to us, because we are the ones who need it” (Atwood, 1996: 1516).

The first draft of The Fox and the Mirror was criticised by readers as being too cold, too distant, too ‘Japanese’. They felt that a contemporary

YA reader would not empathise with Sada’s obsession with his family and his honour. I made the decision to rewrite the story, toning down

what I had seen as historical accuracy in the character representation, changing Sada’s motivation and making the whole tone of the story closer and more emotional. I emphasised the romance more in order to appeal to the novel’s target audience of over-14s while still keeping close to what my research had suggested about the past. Perhaps it is a better story this way, perhaps not, but it is more likely to be published.

Conclusion In this exegesis I have explored a range of ways my own historical fantasy,

The Fox and the Mirror, and other works in the genre, present an authentic view of the past, in spite of the non-realistic nature of historical fantasy.

I classify historical fantasy as a sub-genre of historical fiction in the sense that it gives us a window into the past and allows us to reflect upon the present through the past; it is different from realistic historical fiction in that it can more easily incorporate elements belonging to shared cultural heritage, such as beliefs regarding the dead and the supernatural.

This involves writers in research using material that involves other ways of knowing the past—in particular the expressions of belief such as religion, popular customs, folk tales, and oral history.

I identify three main ways historical fantasy writers can provide an authentic view of the past: by using telling details from an historical era— the more these details are integrated into the narrative, the more effectively they will draw a reader in; by incorporating documented

events and persons into the story—again, the more integrated the events and persons are with the story, the more persuasive it will be. The reconciliation between Buddhism and native beliefs in The Fox and the

Mirror is symbolised both by the reconciliation between Sada and Hatsu, and in the appearance of the kami Yamanonushi as the Prince. And, lastly, fantasy is ideally positioned to offer an authentic view of the past by portraying the world as people in the past believed it to be. Reading fantasy is an escape not only from the physical details of our mundane world, but also from the shackles of our worldview. We want to be teased with thoughts of ‘what if?’

I think it is possible for fiction to be true in many ways to the known past, by using the widest range of sources possible, and by using not only physical detail and events from documented history, but also cultural and spiritual aspects of past experience. Due to genre constraints and the intellectual leanings of the writer herself, the present viewpoint is inescapable. As E.H. Carr says, all our historical ‘facts’ are coloured by who recorded them.

The consensus among historical fiction writers appears to be that writers must not ignore facts but are free to invent in the gaps provided their inventions do not warp the facts. Dave Luckett’s explanation of historical accuracy is perhaps the most succinct: “the practice of representing the actual economic and social structures of past societies, so

far as they are known, or in the absence of knowledge, using logical inference and extrapolation to achieve the same end” (quoted in Polack,

2006). The facts should not be seen as constraints on what can be invented—on the contrary, the more the writer knows about history, the better able they are to perceive where the gaps lie. A solid framework of fact can support invention better than a spindly one.

Given the essentially unknowable nature of the past, it seems safe to say that history is an ever-developing narrative. Within the competing discourses of the past there is room for the playfulness in the gaps of our present knowledge that is historical fiction. With the broadening of our historiological perspectives in the postmodern climate, historical fantasy based on non-documentary forms of history may come to be seen as another equally-authentic way of knowing the past.

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Reference List B: Creative work/ The Fox and the Mirror

Lifestyle and customs

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Geography

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