Rating: 5 out of 5
After some fifteen years, this is still very much one of my all time favourite books. Though Masaoka Shiki’s story is well in the past by this time, it’s clear that Mr Shiba took to heart Shiki’s principle of drawing from real life. It is this that makes the amount so engaging.
The story is accurate, but the author engages in an illuminating commentary on the qualities that he recognises from his research. Whether someone was suited to their position or not becomes abundantly clear. In many cases, this is a strong yes, which makes the failures – especially the failures related to Nogi’s Third Army all the more heart-breaking. The same feeling echoes through the author’s words with a relatively lengthy commentary on the policy of the remnant domains in the early 1900s.
For me, this is a winter saga due to the numerous cold and snowy conflicts that take place, and I started reading it again in February – though it’s taken a while to get to the end of the second book. The plains of Manchuria somehow come to life more when it’s also snowy outside, a reminder of the horrors the soldiers had to endure in their days.
I’ve not made it to the end of the war yet, but I’m enjoying my slow passage through these pages. Enjoying, even if the words Mr Shiba has put down sometimes make me want to wish that things had been different, better, in some undefined way. Just as, no doubt, the author must have felt while putting those chapters together.
