The Sword and Laser discussion

As noted elsewhere, the history of the fictional Nikara has some fairly obvious real-world parallels.
The eponymous Poppy Wars are based on the Opium Wars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium...

Although the federation of Mugen is based on Japan, and the specific war in the book on the second Sino-Japanese war https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secon...

The massacre and atrocities at (view spoiler)[ Golyn Niis (hide spoiler)] are based on the rape of Nanjing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanji...

And the (view spoiler)[ Mugenese experimentation on the Speerlies (hide spoiler)] is based on the notorious Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial army https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731

While the ending has obvious parallels to (view spoiler)[ the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WW2 (hide spoiler)]

The names of the provinces seem to be similar to the Chinese zodiac. I believe the Keju is based on the real-life Chinese bureaucracy exams, and I’m sure there are other parallels if you know what you’re looking for.

There are other aspects of this book I’m less familiar with, and I wondered if anyone who’s more familiar with Chinese history and culture knows of any real-life parallels to Empress Su Daji (‘the Vipress’) and the trifecta, or Speerly island?

The Keju is most definitely based off the Civil Exams of China where theoretically any peasant with mud between their toes can take and if they did well, achieve status.

This is going to be six degrees, but in one of the classes a problem is presented where troops are short of arrows and Kitay's solution is to use scarecrows on boats in the dark to gather the enemy's own arrows to use against them. This was an elaborate scene in John Woo's film Red Cliff which was based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is semi historical. So it may have happened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The legend of Bodhidharma facing the wall and meditating for years before teaching monks martial arts is almost an exact retelling of the origin of Shaolin Martial Arts. In real life, the Shaolin monasteries had been burned down several times. And the five animal styles that master Jiang is referring to are probably the Five Animal styles of Tiger, Crane, Leopard, Snake, and Dragon. They are Southern Shaolin styles.

The Wudang mountains are real and if you are are a Hip Hop fan you'll have heard of the Wu-Tang Clan who are huge fans of kung fu movies. And these movies usually had some kind of rivalry between Wu-Tang martial arts and Shaolin as the monks of Wudang were Taoists and the monks of Shaolin were Buddhist.

The legend of martial artist travelling as opera performers was real and based on the Cantonese Red Boat operas who led a rebellion against the Qing Dynasty.

The Red Emperor is a reference to the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang who unified the country, standardized weights and measurements, the monetary system, and the written language. After his death, though the empire fell into disarray.

Some of the lessons and quotes about war/combat are taken directly from Sun Tzu's The Art of War. The one coming directly to mind is the story of the general who tried to train the emperor's concubines. There were others but I finished the book back in February so I'm forgetting them.

Even though it's interesting to spot these details, I think this might be why I couldn't appreciate the world-building in this book. I noted some of these same historical touchstones and the story of getting arrows at the battle of Red Cliff didn't jive with the 1930's political set-up complete with an enemy that had bombed an entire island out of existence in a previous war (surely not with bows and arrows). What sort of technology do you envision society possessing as you read? The setting never really came together enough for me to "see" the world of the book - it sometimes seemed like disparate parts mushed together.

So when I heard Opium War, I didn't really know about Japan's interaction in the war. I knew about the UK/Britain involvement, which I only recently learned anything about through a Planet Money episode on Hong Kong https://www.npr.org/2019/07/19/743480...

TL;DL (too long; didn't listen) version is summarized in Wikipedia: "Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire at the end of the First Opium War in 1842.[17] Sovereignty over the territory was transferred to China in 1997.[18] As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains governing and economic systems that are separate from those of mainland China.[19] Its people tend to identify as Hongkongers rather than Chinese.[20]"

The Planet Money episode was talking generally about Hong Kong but did get into the history a bit.

Something that jumped out at me was three members of the Cike mirrored three of the figures (the monkey, the Pig and the sea-monster) from the Chinese classic Journey To The West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey... Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en
Also part of the book deals with the Monkey god being trapped under a mountain for centuries.
The book was popularised (in the West) in an abridged version by English Arthur Waley although there is a full four volume translation by Anthony C YuThe Journey to the West, Volume 1

I first encountered the story in the 80s when I saw a Japanese adaptation of the books on the BBC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_...
More recently there is a Australian/New Zealand/Netflix TV series called the New Legends of Monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New...

Monkey was a popular cult hit in Australia in the early 80s. It was just weird enough to be good.

I remember Monkey being fairly popular in the UK too, though I was pretty little when it was on in the early 80's (I think it was on on Sundays as I recall watching it with my Grandparents). I loved it even though the dub was awful. I think I found it funny.

Back on topic, I think one of the issues this book has is that the enemy are basically soulless monsters. The descriptions that mirror the Nanking Massacre were horrific, but for me what made the real event so sickening was that I learned about it while studying Japanese and immersing myself in Japanese culture. Human beings committed those acts, brothers, husbands, fathers, people who were capable of love and tenderness, and this atrocity was not so long ago.

I met someone in Japan who, whilst he did not openly deny the massacre in my presence, did tell a class of impressionable students that there was no controversy about the Yasakuni Shrine, a place that venerates some of the war criminals responsible for the massacre. He said the controversy was made up by anti-Japanese and that China has no problem with the shrine, which is not true and demonstrated his unwillingness to look at his country's dark past. To me, it is important that we remember what human beings are capable of.

We see events from Rin's perspective, so it is natural, and a part of the story, that she would see her enemy as inhuman, but I was wishing for some part that would show another side of them.

Japan has a pathological inability to deal with its grim past, even worse than America’s. Their racism is probably more complicated, too.

Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, birthplace of the airplane, we have the superb Air Force Museum which rivals the Smithsonian for cool stuff. We also get quite a lot of overseas visitors due to the AF base. Holding parties at our house was often a multicultural event. A few times we had Japanese kids and it was mind-blowing to everyone, Americans and Europeans alike, that none of the Japanese kids knew that the US and Japan had ever been in a war.

One guy was so indignant at this outrageous suggestion that the next day we took him to the AF museum. He was, as my British friends say, utterly gobsmacked. He said there was no mention of this at all in school. He knew about the dropping of the atomic bomb but had no context for it. Completely bizarre.

That said, it’s not like China is a bastion of purity and is an innocent victim in such matters. The rivalry between China and Japan has been ongoing for centuries, and the full-scale invasions by the Mongols probably left a cultural desire for Chinese blood in Japan’s collective subconscious.

China’s use of gunpowder and bombs during those invasions ushered in the modern way of war, all the way back to the 1200s, and Japan’s fluke survival — twice! — due to severe weather certainly instilled in the Japanese that their victory was divinely blessed. (The typhoons which wrecked the Mongol fleets are where we get the word “kamikaze” from, “divine wind.”) That belief led to Japan’s swagger, resulting in an outsized belief in their inherent superiority.

This book’s reframing of that story with most of the aggression on Japan’s side and the divine power on China’s is a peculiar form of revisionist history. Not completely unjustified, but slightly problematic nonetheless.

Trike wrote: "Japan has a pathological inability to deal with its grim past, even worse than America’s. .... "

I actually just saw about this on the BBC News via Reddit. It's absolutely wild. The author of the BBC piece didn't learn about it until she moved to Australia. The whole article is worth reading but here's a quick sample:

I also remember wondering why we couldn't go straight to that period if it was so important, instead of wasting time on the Pleistocene epoch.

When we did finally get there, it turned out only 19 of the book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.

There was one page on what is known as the Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers blew up a railway in Manchuria in China in 1931.

There was one page on other events leading up to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including one line, in a footnote, about the massacre that took place when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing - the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing.

There was another sentence on the Koreans and the Chinese who were brought to Japan as miners during the war, and one line, again in a footnote, on "comfort women" - a prostitution corps created by the Imperial Army of Japan.

There was also just one sentence on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dara wrote: "Trike wrote: "Japan has a pathological inability to deal with its grim past, even worse than America’s. .... "

I actually just saw about this on the BBC News via Reddit. It's absolutely wild. The ..."

It's weird. I remember once chatting with a German lass who was born in the 90's and somehow the war came up in conversation. She immediately apologised, saying she was so ashamed of the actions of her country. I haven't heard that same kind of regret from any Japanese people. I'm not saying everyone needs to feel guilty or constantly apologise for the sins of our fathers - we'd never get anything done - but it's troubling when people try to wipe these things away as if they never happened.

Don't mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6L...

The war atrocity sections are confronting in TPW, but they need to be to (view spoiler)[make Rin's actions believable. Whether we agree with her massacre or not, we can understand how she got there. (hide spoiler)]