Flipped!: David Welsh On Fumi Yoshinaga's Ōoku: The Inner Chambers



By David P. Welsh

There's just something about Fumi Yoshinaga. She's one of a still relatively small number of name-brand manga-ka, creators whose every doodle is all but guaranteed to be purchased by her admirers. For me, this is because she's never encountered a convention that she couldn't cheerfully ignore.

She's obviously not the only possessor of that iconoclastic streak. Even Osamu Tezuka, who helped define many of the qualities of popular manga categories, would happily break rules he'd all but written. As Yoshinaga had the benefit of decades of manga history in place before she began her career, she could be reasonably confident in what she chose to ignore.

I would go so far to say that Yoshinaga's manga is practically a genre of its own. For the musical comedy fans reading this, I would equate her to Stephen Sondheim. As is the case with Sondheim, whose music is often described as inventive but not particularly hummable, Yoshinaga's narrative rhythms are often unexpected. Yoshinaga is as fond of language as Sondheim; her roster of characters is rich in chatterboxes. And, like Sondheim, she continually demonstrates a willingness to play with tonality within a single piece -- lighthearted next to topical next to caustic next to haunting next to romantic.

It's no surprise that all of these qualities are on impressive display in Ōoku: The Inner Chambers (Viz), her latest work to be licensed for publication in English. It shared this year's Tezuka Grand Prize for Manga with Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life (Drawn & Quarterly), having been a finalist for the award for three consecutive years. Ōoku doesn't represent a new creative direction for Yoshinaga; it's an ambitious continuation of the course she's already charted.

Ōoku is a period piece with a what-if twist. Set in Japan's Edo era of shogun and samurai, Yoshinaga inserts a plague that decimates the male population. The sharply diminished pool of men is treated with great care; husbands are the prerogative of the elite. Out of necessity, women assume traditionally male roles, from humble to lofty. The nation is led by a woman, and deep within the shogun's palace is the sacred space, the ōoku, where the shogun's concubines and their attendants reside. Of course, it's populated entirely by men.

The inversion allows Yoshinaga to explore gender roles in ways she hasn't before. That's consistently been one of her themes, but this is her most direct examination to date. What's most surprising to me is the lack of rancor that comes with the post-plague shift away from tradition. Women seem to have moved fluidly into power, and men seem largely untroubled by their ostensibly weakened position. (There's always something condescending about being revered and protected.) It's not yet about oppression or rebellion, though it is about inequality and change.



Change is embodied by the newest shogun, Yoshimune, who opportunistically assumes the seat of power when her child predecessor dies. Yoshimune is a pragmatist, and she's frugal. One of her trusted advisors even describes her as parsimonious. She thinks the maintenance of the inner chamber, with its 800 men devoted to the pleasure of the shogun, a ridiculous extravagance. She's also a canny strategist, looking for ways to upend tradition without giving too much offense. And she's more of a sensualist than a romantic. As she notes to the aforementioned advisor, she approves of happy marriages, though they aren't really her thing.

It should be fairly obvious that I found Yoshimune fascinating. She's prickly, funny and sexy, too confident in her authority to really be described as tempestuous, but she's perfectly capable of the well-timed loss of temper. Yoshinaga introduces her gradually, focusing first on a new inductee to the inner chamber, using his experiences to outline its intrigues, pleasures and pitfalls. In these scenes, you get your first sense of what's under scrutiny in Ōoku -- the way human traits can be ascribed to gender, even in the face of events that should overturn those assumptions.

While much of the work feels like vintage Yoshinaga (the chatter, the digressions, the surprises), there's a noticeable visual difference. In previous works, her line was extremely delicate and the backgrounds somewhat minimalist. Perhaps the possibilities of illustrating a bygone era were too much for Yoshinaga to resist, as the pages are rich in detailed settings and attention to props and costumes. None of this detracts from the level of emotional nuance Yoshinaga always brings to her work -- tiny modulations in facial expression and body language, winsome exaggeration, and so on. The sheer volume of attractive men to render seems to have resulted in a bit of repetition; there is a bit of character blur.



Overall, the script is as engaging and readable as you'd expect, though I am a bit curious about some of the translation choices. Akemi Wegmüller uses some archaic English, though not frequently. It's not distracting, but it doesn't contribute anything to the feel of the book. It does make me wish I could read Japanese with the degree of fluency required to spot bits of period language to see what was carried over from the original. Babel Fish offers no translations for "forsooth" into kanji, unfortunately.

If Yoshinaga has been buzzing around the edges of your comics consciousness, Ōoku would certainly be a fine place to begin your explorations. Sharing the Tezuka with Tatsumi gives the book a literary legitimacy that certainly can't be gainsaid. But there's absolutely no shortage of fine Yoshinaga comics available in translation. I've already written about Antique Bakery (DMP), but I can also wholeheartedly recommend the four-volume Flower of Life (DMP), one of the funniest high-school stories you're ever likely to read. And if you're in the mood for something a little sexier, then I point you towards the law students in lust of Ichigenme... The First Class is Civil Law.

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* Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, written and illustrated by Fumi Yoshinaga, Viz, 216 pages, ISBN: 1-4215-2747-2, $12.99.

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* art from volume selected by David Welsh

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