Personal Blog maintained for archive purposes. This is still my main because I can't switch it to become a sideblog. Go to @riversidewings for my current Tumblr presence, please.
First, Happy New Year, readers! May the year be good, despite everything the world may throw our way.
But on that subject…I have a bit of an update.
My desktop, a workhorse for several years, has recently had some heat dissipation issues– the temperature regularly broke 75C, and prompted bluescreen after bluescreen. We acquired new thermal paste, and that seemed to solve some of the occurrences…
I need primary sources for my National History Day project on the Shinsengumi! Could you please help?
Hi there– so, first of all, I am primarily on @riversidewings these days, but luckily I saw this when you messaged, so I’ll answer it here.
This is a tall order, what you ask of me. Primary sources on Shinsengumi are necessarily in an older form of Japanese, and from looking at the information you’ve shared about yourself on your Tumblr, I don’t get the impression that you’ve trained to be able to read it. Some things exist in compiled, typeset form on the National Diet Library of Japan’s archive, while others are in handwritten form in archives like those of Waseda University. There are a few period sources I can think of in French and English, but those are not really going to go into any depth. After that, there’s the secondary sources, and the work of some amazing scholars like Kikuchi Akira and Ito Seiro, who went through local archives in Tama and Aizu and elsewhere to compile definitive histories and even day by day chronologies, but those are print books and not available for free view online.
I’m afraid that I can only name one English book on Shinsengumi as a whole, which is a deeply flawed title by a man who makes his hatred of them pretty blatant. My podcast Friday Night History has been covering Shinsengumi’s history in a multipart serial, and I’m in between episodes right now.
So, long story short: this is a fascinating topic, and your enthusiasm is admirable, but even if I pointed you at primary sources, I worry that you wouldn’t be able to read it in a way that would give you what you want. I’m sorry I can’t be of further help, but I hope you will take this as a challenge to keep studying. It adds up.
(Friday Night History) Members’ Episode 12: Shinsengumi, Part One
By patron request: Part One of a short history of the Shinsengumi, one of the most popular and in my opinion least understood units of the Bakumatsu era in Japan: https://www.patreon.com/posts/friday-night-1-115803469
As you will note, this post is the first post on Patreon that I have enabled for individual sale. Given the topic it covers, I thought that might be a good idea.
On the Tohoku Roots of the Typhlosion Tale (Analyzing the Pokemon Leak, Part One)
Historical and cultural context for the recent Pokemon leaks
Yesterday, as I write this, I was tagged into some analysis of a Pokemon leak on Bluesky. I haven’t actively kept up with Pokemon since stadium was new. In the time since, I have earned a doctorate in Japanese history and regularly included study of Japanese rural folklore in my research. So what follows is my historian’s analysis of the stories in the leaked document, one at a time, adding…
Thanks to one of my patrons, I’ve learned that the name “One Eyed Dragon” as applied to Date Masamune dates to a 19th century poem by Rai Sanyo, where Sanyo compares Masamune to Cao Cao!
横槊英風独此公
肉生髀裏斂軍鋒
中原若未収雲雨
河北渾帰独眼龍
My attempt at translation:
His spear at his side, this solitary lord of brave manner
Lamenting the weakening of his body, he sheathed his spear.
Surely if the rain clouds had not settled in the heartland
The One Eyed Dragon would have brought all North-of-the-River into his grasp
The Precepts of Date Masamune (Date Masamune Ikun)— my translation
Excessive benevolence will lead to weakness. Excessive rectitude will lead to hardness. Excessive ceremony will lead to flattery. Excessive wisdom will lead to lying. Excessive (blind) faith will lead to damage
Have great patience and a calm heart, and be thrifty: set aside money for all eventualities. The means to thrift is by enduring inconvenience. If you treat your place in this world as that of a guest, then you will have no trouble. Even if your meals are not tasty, praise them and eat them.
If you treat your usual place in this world as that of a guest, then you will find no room for likes and dislikes. Do today what you can do today, keep up with your family ties, and remember to refrain from worldly things.
Okay, time for a rare original post on here, given the tags on the most recent reblog.
So this is an old translation and I made a pretty big mistake in the closing line. Let’s try this again– original first, then new translation.
仁に過ぐれば弱くなる。 義に過ぐれば固くなる。 禮に過ぐれば諂(へつらい)となる。 智に過ぐれば嘘をつく。 信に過ぐれば損をする。 氣長く心穏かにして、萬（よろず）に儉約を用て金銭を備ふべし。 儉約の仕方は不自由を忍ぶにあり。 此の世に客に來たと思へば何の苦もなし。 朝夕の食事うまからずともほめて食ふべし。 元來客の身なれば好嫌は申されまじ。 今日の行をおくり、子孫兄弟によく挨拶をして、娑婆の御暇申すがよし。 Excessive benevolence will lead to weakness. Excessive rectitude will lead to hardness. Excessive ceremony will lead to flattery. Excessive wisdom will lead to lying. Excessive blind faith will lead to damage. Have great patience and a calm heart, and be thrifty: set aside money for all eventualities. The means to thrift is by enduring inconvenience.
If you treat your place in this world as that of a guest, then you will have no trouble. Even if your daily meals are not tasty, praise them and eat them. If you treat your usual place in this world as that of a guest, then you will find no room for playing favorites. Do today what you can do today, remember to greet your kinfolk, and then you can confidently take your leave from this world.
This last bit– 娑婆の御暇申すがよし。娑婆 is the mundane world of the living, this world we’re in right. now. 御暇申すがよし is “you can go ahead and take your leave”– in context, I’m rendering as “you can confidently take your leave,” given what precedes it.
(Again, thank you all for your continued love for this translation, but, translations are living things and the original was done while I was still in school!)
ALT
