Who We Are and What This Blog is For

We're Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler, and if you got this far, you probably know we have written seven novels about Seikei, a boy in 18th-century Japan--the age of the samurai. You can find a list of our books elsewhere on this blog. Some of our readers are interested enough in Japanese culture that we thought they might want to read more about it. So from time to time, we're going to post more stories and history about Japan. We hope you'll write us at TandDHoob@gmail.com to let us know what you like and don't like. Of course, if you find mistakes, tell us about them too.

The Picture Below

We thought this was a pretty cool pic to start with. You can see it larger on our Facebook page, "The Samurai Detective Series." It came from a print made in the late 1840s by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. It is part of a series illustrating a play about Taira no Masakado, a warrior who lived in the 10th century. He was a ruthless man who killed his own nephew so he could become governor of the nephew's province. That was not enough to satisfy Masakado's ambition. He led a rebellion against the emperor himself, and sought to create his own empire in eastern Japan. The emperor sent an army to try to put down Masakado's rebellion, and he was captured and killed. His head was brought back to Kyoto, the true emperor's capital city, and displayed in the marketplace.

Now the mythical part begins. Masakado's head flew off on its own and landed in Shibasaki, a small fishing village where the city of Tokyo now stands. The head was finally buried and many people, who  resented the government's harsh treatment, made Masakado a hero. People still visit a shrine built in his honor in Tokyo. His daughter, known as Princess Takiyasha, continued to live in her father's palace, and became a sorceress. When the emperor sent warriors to find her, she summoned up the body of her father in the form of a giant skeleton and he drove them off. This is the scene in the print by Kuniyoshi.

The original print of this picture has three parts. Only two of them are shown here. The third shows the sorceress Takiyasha casting her spell. We'll try to post that too when we get a chance.