酔って候

by Ryōtarō Shiba, 司馬 遼太郎

幕末の混迷期、なすすべを知らない三百諸侯のなかで、自らの才質をたのみ、また世間の期待を集めた賢侯たちがいた。土佐の山内容堂、薩摩の島津久光、伊予宇和島の伊達宗城、肥前の鍋島閑叟。「藩主なるがゆえに歴史の風当りをもっともはげしく受け、それを受けることによって痛烈な喜劇を演じさせられた」（「あとがき」より）彼らを題材に、著者ならではの視点で幕末を探る短篇連作。

Genres: Nonfiction, Japanese Literature

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Ryōtarō Shiba (司馬 遼太郎) born Teiichi Fukuda (福田 定一 Fukuda Teiichi, August 7, 1923 – February 12, 1996) in Osaka, Japan, was a Japanese author best known for his novels about historical events in Japan and on the Northeast Asian sub-continent, as well as his historical and cultural essays pertaining to Japan and its relationship to the rest of the world.

Shiba studied Mongolian at the Osaka School of Foreign Languages (now the School of Foreign Studies at Osaka University) and began his career as a journalist with the Sankei Shimbun, one of Japan's major newspapers. After World War II Shiba began writing historical novels. The magazine Shukan Asahi printed Shiba's articles about his travels within Japan in a series that ran for 1,146 installments. Shiba received the Naoki Prize for the 1959 novel Fukuro no Shiro ("The Castle of an Owl"). In 1993 Shiba received the Government's Order of Cultural Merit. Shiba was a prolific author who frequently wrote about the dramatic change Japan went through during the late Edo and early Meiji periods. His most monumental works include Kunitori Monogatari (国盗り物語), Ryoma ga Yuku (竜馬がゆく; see below), Moeyo Ken, and Saka no ue no kumo (坂の上の雲), all of which have spawned dramatizations, most notably Taiga dramas aired in hour-long segments over a full year on NHK television. He also wrote numerous essays that were published in collections, one of which—Kaidō wo Yuku—is a multi-volume journal-like work covering his travels across Japan and around the world. Shiba is widely appreciated for the originality of his analyses of historical events, and many people in Japan have read at least one of his works.

Several of Shiba's works have been translated into English, including his fictionalized biographies of Kukai (Kukai the Universal: Scenes from His Life, 2003) and Tokugawa Yoshinobu (The Last Shogun: The Life of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, 2004), as well as The Tatar Whirlwind: A Novel of Seventeenth-Century East Asia (2007).

(from Wikipedia)

Alternative Names:

Fukuda, Teiichi
Ryotaro, Shiba
Shiba, Ryoutarou
Ryoutarou, Shiba
Sima, Liaotailang
司馬遼太郎
司马辽太郎
Shiba, Rëotaro
Шиба, Рёотаро
司马辽太郎
司馬, 遼太郎
司馬遼太郎
司場遼太郎

Reviews

[Adam Gutschenritter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the Ghost of Saga and the Inebriate Lord of the Cetacean Sea was great. I didn't really like the Fox-Horse, but I enjoyed seeing the meiji restoration from a variety of perspectives and how the personalities and egos interplay with each other.

[Steve]

Shiba Ryotaro (1923 – 1996) was primarily a writer of historical fiction for which he painstakingly carried out vast amounts of research, not unlike William T. Vollmann. Historical fiction does not have a very high standing in the West, though some of our finest writers have turned their hand to it. But Shiba was an enormous success in Japan with his series of sometimes extremely lengthy novels treating significant persons and events in recent Japanese history. Donald Keene, who knew Shiba well and wrote about him (along with Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio and Abe Kobo) in his Five Modern Japanese Novelists

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ,

reports that there were special Shiba corners in Japanese bookstores because of the constant demand for his books. Keene and others have suggested that Shiba's prestige grew to the point that for many Japanese, Shiba was the voice of Japan, that he had a finger on that which makes Japan Japan.

Needless to say, I had to read some of Shiba's texts, and I started with the books dealing with the termination of two and a half centuries of Japan's isolation from the outside world and the end of the Tokugawa rule.

Drunk as a Lord is a collection of four texts, three of which focus on the life and activities of important players in the turmoil leading up to the Meiji restoration at the end of the Tokugawa Bakufu. What emerges quite clearly is that the Bakufu was already tottering on its last legs - the appearance of Perry's fleet in 1858 just put a last stick in an already riled wasp's nest. But the story I really enjoyed was "Date's Black Ship," about an outcast at the very bottom of Japanese society who, because of his special genius for engineering and ability to cobble together his own parts, became the heart and mind of a daimyo's dream of manufacturing the first Japanese steam ship. What a fascinating story! Despite the amateur's brilliance, the hurdles set up by the arrogant and ignorant samurai "running" the project doomed it. The abuse he had to endure from all of his superiors - which were everybody else - and the stoic patience with which he did endure it (result of a lifetime's training) really emphasize for me the distance between Tokugawa Japan and the world in which I live.

The Last Shogun (1967) gives us the life of the last ruler of the Tokugawa Bakufu, in fact the man who personally ended it by abdicating and retiring to his domain (though there were yet some battles fought by the new imperial army with a few of the supporters of the Bakufu who refused to accept Tokugawa Yoshinobu's fait accompli). Although in three of the pieces in The Drunken Lord the reader is shown aspects of the developments leading up to the collapse of the Bakufu, it is in The Last Shogun that one finds a full picture. And a fascinating sight it is, too, to see the major players hemming and hawing, hedging their bets, changing sides in a shifting, multi-sided struggle in contrast to the fanatics on every side who take their swords and slice some more or less randomly chosen official to pieces, usually ending up in the same state. Oh, the greedy, cowardly and opportunistic officials in the imperial court are truly a sight to behold! And the nefarious machinations of the Ming dynasty eunuchs have met their match in those of the Ooku (the "great interior"), the women in the shogun's castle.

Keene was careful to make clear that his admiration of Shiba was as a person and as an intellectual, not as a great writer on the level of a Kawabata or a Mishima. He also suggested that Shiba may not translate well.(*) On the evidence of these two translations, Keene had a point, but the generally workmanlike prose is clear and obviously guided by intelligence and a deep understanding of Japanese history and the nature of our poor species.

(*) When Keene wrote Five Modern Japanese Novelists, Shiba had yet to be translated into English, and Keene made no effort to translate Shiba himself.

[Koit · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most excellent collection of four stories of the Bakumatsu era, written in that most beautiful style of Mr Shiba.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was interesting to read about Bakumatsu events from the perspective of four different hans. However, it does presuppose some knowledge/understanding of the major events of the era.