Pausanias of Orestes - Historie c99

Looks like the assassination arc is finally happening. I would be hype, but I wonder how long it'll last considering Iwaaki's release-pace?

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Historie c99:   Mega

Past and Present - 06/2017 (last updated June 15)

Been super busy the past two weeks, and as luck would have it, that also coincided with a whole bunch of shit going down in the world. So my June's edition of Past and Present is mainly me trying to catch up on all the big stuff. I'll post history papers next week. History papers now added.

P.S. Thanks to the guy who recommended me James Scott's Seeing Like a State. I wanna write some sort of loosely-related essay, but give me some time.

Past and Present - 05/2017

I felt like I haven't read enough papers as of late, so I'll start the May edition of Past and Present by posting a whole slew of papers. Hopefully, at least one or two of these will be of interest to people.

Shiji v2: Revenge-Seekers (complete)

Some closing comments on this volume which dealt with two famous revenge-stories in the Spring and Autumn period. Goujian's story is worth remembering for playing a huge role in Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist (Kuomintang) party's rhetoric/propaganda. The humiliation that Goujian endured to eventually enact his revenge deeply resonated among Chinese in light of Japan's aggressive foreign policy during the early 20th century and the Woxin Changdan (臥薪嚐膽) idiom was frequently used as a nationalist slogan. Chiang Kai-Shek, born in Zhejiang which was the same place that Yue was situated, similarly saw the connections between Goujian and himself. He ordered the compilation of Goujian's biography in two versions (one in literary, the other as colloquial) and his personal diaries note how he used Goujian's story to convince himself not to respond to Japanese provocations even in the face of harsh vocal opposition. After defeat in the Civil War to the communists, Chiang and the Nationalists still holding out in Taiwan once again evoked Goujian's story to nurture hope. For more detailed information, I recommend reading History and Popular Memory: The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis.

Meanwhile in Japan, Woxin Changdan (pronounced as Gashin Shoutan in Japanese) was famously evoked regarding the Triple Intervention to settle the First Sino-Japanese War. Japan saw the foreign diplomatic intervention as an under-handed Russian scheme which robbed Japan of greater gains from the war. As Japan was in no shape to confront a Russia backed by France and Germany at the time, it endured the humiliating conditions only to later have its revenge in the Russo-Japanese War.

Now regarding Wu Zixu, the Shiji chapter on his life is notable for concluding with a commentary from Sima Qian:

The poison of resentment in man is extreme indeed! A king cannot provoke it in a minister, much less in a peer! If previously Wu Zixu had been made to follow Wu She in death, how would he differ from an ant? But he rejected a small principle to wipe away a great shame, and his name is passed on to later generations. Now, whether hard-pressed on the Yangtze River or begging food along the road, how could his mind, even for a moment, forget Ying? Therefore, he silently endured and obtained merit and fame. If not a man of virtue, how could he have reached to this?

If you recall the very first chapter of this manga which covered Sima Qian's life, you'll remember that Sima Qian also chose to endure shame by being castrated in order to complete his father's dream of writing the Shiji. It's clear that Sima Qian saw himself in the story of Wu Zixu, but as historian Stephen W. Durrant notes in The Cloudy Mirror, their methods of revenge are different in style. Wu Zixu violated ethical norms by whipping a corpse while Sima Qian simply slaved away in the imperial archives and wrote a book. So if Sima Qian concludes that Wu Zixu "silently endured and obtained merit," then it's more likely a case of Sima Qian becoming carried away by his own biases and describing his own situation instead of Wu Zixu's life.

Hope you enjoyed the short history lesson. I'll do volume 3 in late summer/early fall.

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Shiji v02:   Mega

Shiji v02 c01:   Mega
Shiji v02 c02:   Mega
Shiji v02 c04:   Mega
Previous volumes: Mega

Historie c98

Finally, a new fucking chapter! Unfortunately a short, fluff chapter, apparently due to Iwaaki's work on the recently released tankoban release of volume 10.

On a tangential note, I noticed that Iwaaki's new series, Reiri (he only wrote the story for this), is already at the 3rd volume. Anyone read this yet? Planning on giving it a read this month.

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Historie c98:   Mega

Soil v10 (complete)

It's not an April Fool's joke. Volume 10 is now finally done!

Download:
Soil v10:   Mega
Previous Soil volumes:   Mega
Soil v10 c73:   Mega
Soil v10 c74:   Mega
Soil v10 c75:   Mega
Soil v10 c76:   Mega
Soil v10 c77:   Mega
Soil v10 c78:   Mega
Soil v10 c79:   Mega
Soil v10 c80:   Mega

Past and Present - 04/2017 (last updated Apr. 20)

Been pretty tired and busy lately, which explains why I didn't update much during March. I'll try to do better this month. Also for Soil fans, don't worry, more releases will be coming soon. My editor for that was also tied up last month. And I'll get started on 2nd volume of Shiji this month too.

Patapata Rosine!! (NSFW)

In case this blog was getting a little too serious/pretentious with all my posts on history and politics, here's one for the common rabble. This is part 3 of Studio Tar's Berserk doujin series which was released back in Comiket 90 (Aug. 2016). I would've done it a lot sooner if anyone bothered to point it out to me, but no one did, and so I only found out about it last week when I was, umm... Researching things for purely academic purposes. *Ahem.* The image quality is rather poor, since I was working with fairly low-res raws, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. There'll be more serious manga releases coming later on.

P.S. I still think part 1 was the best.

Download:
Patapata Rosine!!:   Mega
You can get part 1 and part 2 here too.

Past and Present - 03/2017

>mfw watching all the crazy current events

March edition of Past and Present.

War of Ideas - Japanese Naval Strategy in WW2

Having been a kid who played with toy guns and obsessed over FPS games back in the day, I always found war interesting. But there are, of course, many people who dislike military history and I think the video above is a good example of why. Just like people who hate history think it's an endless list of dates and names with no significance to their lives today, people who hate military history think it's just a bunch of battle dates/names and narratives of how side A killed more than side B. But military history is so much more than that. Consider this: The French Revolution wasn't important because of how many smelly peasants got pissed off and went on a rampage across Europe. The French Revolution still excites many today because it highlights the guiding power of ideas in our world. Ideas like a person's relationship to his state, the equality of man, sacral kingship, or the very purpose of society and its laws.

The power of ideas should have broad appeal to any human even moderately curious about the world. After all, we live in a time when ideas like liberalism, Islamism, globalism, and transgenderism are whirling about in a chaotic flux. I bring this up because war, like any human endeavour, is ultimately framed by ideas as well. So if you think military history is a boring list of battles, pedantic analysis about the merits of gun calibres, or inane arguments like if a samurai could beat a knight, then this is gonna be an ongoing series of posts about how ideas, such as what "war" is, influences the course and conduct of wars.

The first post to start this series is on WW2 Japanese naval strategy, or lack thereof, which might be stale stuff for WW2 buffs, but hopefully of interest to people who only ever learned WW2 in terms of  the holocaust, women being used on the home front, and final results of who won and who lost.