Books: Kaze Hikaru Vol. #6

It’s always an interesting experience to see Japanese history treated in manga form — in fact, a fairly major subgenre of manga there (which hasn’t seen much in the way of translation here) are retellings of history from as far back as ancient China. Here we have one of the most durable bits of Japan’s past — the story of the Shinsengumi — resurrected in the context of a romance between a young girl and one of the historical figures involved, and it manages to be spry and compelling throughout. Done wrong, this kind of thing can seem off-putting or jarring, but here it remains rooted just firmly enough in the historical record to be enjoyable.

Kaze Hikaru takes place in the 1860s, a period in Japan’s history when the Shinsengumi (“Newly Selected Corps”), a militia assembled from both samurai and commoners, rallied around the embattled Shogunate and did their best to keep the country from being Westernized. The Shinsengumi have become popular heroes in Japan — the subjects of endless novels, movies, and yes, manga — although they probably are admired more for the zeal they brought to the job than the specific work they were doing. (Most people reading this will remember the Shinsengumi and the Meiji Restoration as bits of the backdrop from Rurouni Kenshin, where they fictionalized about as freely as they were here. They also figured into Peacemaker Kurogane, where they were fictionalized almost to the point of incoherency.)

Article originally written for AMN. Click here to read full text.