Ryōtarō Shiba

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In this Japanese name, the surname is Shiba.

Ryōtarō Shiba
Ryōtarō Shiba in 1964
Ryōtarō Shiba in 1964
Born(1923-08-07)August 7, 1923
Osaka, Japan
DiedFebruary 12, 1996(1996-02-12) (aged 72)
Osaka, Japan
OccupationWriter
Genrehistorical novel, detective fiction

Teiichi Fukuda (福田 定一, August 7, 1923 – February 12, 1996), also known as Ryōtarō Shiba (司馬 遼太郎), was a Japanese author. He is 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.

Career

Shiba took his pen name from

Meiji periods. His most monumental works include Kunitori Monogatari, Ryoma ga Yuku (see below), Moeyo Ken, and Saka no Ue no Kumo, 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.[citation needed
]

Several of Shiba's works have been translated into English, including Drunk as a Lord: Samurai Stories (2001), 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) and Clouds Above the Hill (2012, 2013, 2014).[citation needed
]

Ryōma Goes His Way

One of Shiba's best known works, Ryōma Goes His Way (竜馬がゆく, Ryōma ga Yuku), is a historical novel about

Sonnō-Jōi (revere the emperor and expel the barbarians). They believed that they should stand up and fight the foreigners to protect the country from outside domination. The Tokugawa had usurped political power from the emperor, but he was still considered by many to be the sacred symbol of Japan. To protect the country, the Sonnō-Jōi faction sought to restore the emperor's political authority by overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate
. Partisans of these two political institutions caused civil war-like confusion, and assassinations were frequent.

In Ryōma ga Yuku, Sakamoto Ryōma, the protagonist, starts out as a member of the Sonnō-Jōi faction but gradually realizes that people need to realize how much stronger other countries have grown during Japan's two centuries of national seclusion. Japan was almost powerless in the face of the technology and well-developed industry of the contemporary Western powers. He believed that Japan needed to adopt elements of Western culture to develop into a country that could stand equally among nations.

Sakamoto Ryōma was not well known in Japan prior to the publication of Ryōma ga Yuku.[4] Ryōma ga Yuku is Shiba's best selling work in Japanese, with 21,250,000 copies sold.

Kaidō wo Yuku

Kaidō wo Yuku (街道をゆく, "On the highways") is a series of travel essays initially published in Shūkan Asahi, a weekly magazine,[5] from 1971 until 1996. Shiba wrote the series with an intercultural perspective, making observations about the history, geography, and people of the places he visited. Though mostly about different areas of Japan, the series includes several volumes on foreign lands as well—China, Korea, the Namban countries (Spain and Portugal), Ireland, the Netherlands, Mongolia, Taiwan, and New York.

The work, now available in multi-volume book form, was also developed into documentary series and broadcast on

public television
broadcaster.

The series ran for 1,146 installments.[3]

Clouds Above the Hill

Main article: Saka no Ue no Kumo

Another well-known work, Clouds Above the Hill (坂の上の雲,

Meiji period. In it, the Akiyama brothers strive to build a Japanese military capable of holding its own in an unstable region and the Russo-Japanese War
becomes the central stage for their involvement in the frenzied modernisation and ascendancy of Japan in the region and subsequently, the world. It is Shiba's second best selling work in Japanese, with 14,750,000 copies sold.

Battles of Khalkhin Gol

Shiba began working on a novel based on the Battles of Khalkhin Gol and conducted research. However, as he delved deeper into his research, his motivation to write dwindled.

"I started hating being Japanese."
"I can't understand this country Japan, which engages in such foolish acts."

In the end, he gave up writing.[6]

Death

Shiba suffered internal bleeding and lapsed into a coma on February 10, 1996. He died two days later.[3]

Works

Novels

Honours

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-136-16224-4
    .
  2. ^ [1] and [2], reference text.
  3. ^ a b c d "Ryotaro Shiba, 72, Historical Novelist." The New York Times. Friday February 16, 1996. Retrieved on July 11, 2009.
  4. ISBN 0231101732
    .
  5. ^ Shukan Asahi Archived January 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, Asahi Shimbun
  6. ^ "司馬遼太郎が「日本人であることが嫌になった」と執筆を断念した戦争". NHK. Retrieved March 27, 2024.
  7. ^ "読売文学賞" [Yomiuri Prize for Literature] (in Japanese). Yomiuri Shimbun. Retrieved September 26, 2018.

External links

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