Twelve Kingdoms: Interview with the Translator, Short Stories, Part I

Kate: You have translated two collections of short stories connected to Twelve Kingdoms: Dreaming of Paradise and Hisho's Birds. Some of the short stories seem complete stories in their own right. Others read like filler—extra bits that got edited out but hey, here they are! Rather like Tolkien’s endless tales of Middle Earth. Is that a suitable comparison? Any other thoughts about the short stories? A favorite perhaps?

Eugene: "Jougetsu" is a nice coda to A Thousand Leagues of Wind and pays off the major plot points. I get a kick out of "Blue Orchid" because it's obvious the author did a ton of research about beech trees and was determined to share that research with the reader. Hills of Silver Ruins similarly follows the Moby Dick model, which integrates all of the background material into the narrative.

To give Fuyumi Ono credit, we're not just chasing red herrings. All those bits and pieces so exhaustively explicated and explored are beginning to fall into place.

Kate: In “Jougetsu”, Gekki makes the rather extraordinary—and insightful point—that although his assassination of the previous emperor helped the people, he personally didn’t act out of objective compassion but rather, disillusionment. He consequently refuses to take the throne.

Is Gekki’s struggle between the superego and id find its roots in Freud? Or in other philosophies?

Eugene: I ascribe Gekkei's reluctance more to the notion of the "worthy vessel," arising out of the Mandate of Heaven and the Confucian concept of righteous rule. There are Old Testament parallels here, especially in the case of Saul and David. But the Chinese implementation is more deeply embedded in the culture, with higher stakes and responsibilities than the "Divine right of kings."

In medieval China, it was (hypothetically) possible for anyone to become emperor. The problem, especially in Confucian terms, becomes one of ends and means.

Granted, the bestowal and withdrawal of the Mandate tended to be an ex post facto kind of thing, The Twelve Kingdoms solves this problem by manifesting it physically. When the emperor does bad things, youma show up, the kirin dies, and then so does the emperor.

In Hills of Silver Ruins, it's observed Asen could never become emperor based on his own bad behavior (the surname problem aside). Gekkei placed himself in a similar boat, though in his case, the kirin was already dying of the shitsudou, so he was hurrying the process along. Were this China, he wouldn't have a problem.

The question is whether measures taken to overthrow an unrighteous emperor disqualify the regicide. Both Shoukei and Shushou tell him to man up because he's the best man for the job. In any case, we're back in Saul and David territory because the choice of the next emperor is up to the future kirin and nobody else.