and Takeda Shingen, a daimyo renowned for his ferocity, craftiness, and general badassery. I think I need to write a book about him one of these days. Mongol grenades also appear in this book; they were real, and by Mongol standards they’re maybe the tenth-coolest thing in the arsenal. When Kublai Khan invaded Japan, he brought flamethrowers, mortars, and even primitive rockets. He also brought his death-dealing war wheels, huge iron monstrosities that were filled with black powder, ignited, then sent rolling downhill into the ranks of the enemy. Even the samurai could not stand against them; if not for a pair of timely typhoons that raked the Mongolian fleets, Japan would almost certainly have become a protectorate of the Mongol Empire.
A final note about medieval Japan concerns women. Legally speaking, they had little say in matters of marriage and no rights whatsoever when it came to divorce. A man could divorce his wife by writing a short letter (three and a half lines long, to be precise), citing whatever reasons he liked. If she refused to leave, he could throw her bodily out of the house and no one could gainsay him. A woman could not rely on the law to protect her from an abusive husband, but by custom she could take shelter in a convent; two or three years as a nun effectively annulled her marriage.
This was but one of many double standards, almost all of which were to the woman’s disadvantage. The one counterexample in this book concerns ritual suicide (which, if you’ll recall, is the way Lady Oda ended her life after she learned Daigoro killed her son in a duel). Men of the samurai caste were expected to commit seppuku, or self-disembowelment. This was held to be the most painful form of death imaginable, and since samurai women were not deemed strong enough to go through with it, their method was different: they placed a knife point upward on the floor, then fell throat-first onto it. The idea was that if they lost their nerve at the last moment, they would have already lost their balance and their fate would be sealed. Whether women were not brave enough to perform seppuku, or simply not stupid enough to do it when given a better alternative, is a judgment I leave to you.
The most important historical discrepancy in this book is also the most obvious: no terrorists ever blew up Haneda’s Terminal 2. There was no ricin scare in Tokyo hospitals, nor any conspiracy to cause traffic deaths. The Divine Wind’s activities aside, I took 2010 as it was given to me. Matt Murton did break Ichiro Suzuki’s single season hit record, Jemaah Islamiyah was the most feared terrorist organization in East Asia, and there really is a pool hall called Billiards Bagus near Yamada-sensei’s home in Machida.
Incidentally, I know where Yamada’s house is—or rather, I’ve chosen which house is his on Google Earth, and I map Mariko’s comings and goings from there. For Daigoro’s peregrinations I use Google Earth and also period maps from his era. You can find a link to the best of these maps on my website, www.philosofiction.com, where you’ll also find links to armor diagrams, descriptions of period clothing, and other items of historical interest.
This brings me to another point. In talking with readers—which I very much enjoy, so please do send me an e-mail—one of the topics that often comes up is the degree of research required for these books. It has been suggested to me that I could get away with doing a lot less digging. You can imagine the Venn diagram mapping the sets of 1) people who read my books; 2) people who know so much about the Japanese educational system that they’d correct me if I had said Tokyo had 1,403 public elementary schools and not 1,304; and 3) people who will publicly lambaste me for getting the number wrong. These are not huge populations we’re dealing with here.
Nevertheless, I did spend a night researching Tokyo public schools. In 2010 the count was 1,304, and this probably has no influence whatsoever on the review you’re planning to post on Goodreads. So why bother with the research?
Part of it is that I also write as an academic, and so it’s ingrained in me to cite a source for just about everything I put to paper. (I’m always tempted to put a footnote after my name, citing my own birth certificate as the reference.) Another part of it, as I’m sure my friends and family will attest, is that I like to be right about stuff. The largest part is that worldbuilding is very important to me, especially when I’m building a world in which you’re supposed to believe in the supernatural. And then there’s the last part—a tiny part, I swear: if I get the rest of the details right, I figure you’re less likely to catch me when I tell you bald-faced lies.
For instance, Google Earth will not show you a Kikuchi Park in downtown Tokyo, for the simple reason that there isn’t one. I wanted a first-floor pool hall across the street from a public park, and when I couldn’t find one, I made it up. I named it Kikuchi Park because I’d just seen Pacific Rim and I really enjoyed seeing Rinko Kikuchi kick ass with a bo staff.
Many of my characters get their names this way. Mariko is the name of Logan’s great love in the Wolverine comics, and also the name of Miyamoto Usagi’s love interest in Usagi Yojimbo. Daigoro is both named and nicknamed after Ogami Daigoro, the Wolf Cub in the cult classic samurai series Lone Wolf and Cub. Furukawa Ujio shares his initials with another great schemer, Francis Underwood of House of Cards. Captain Kusama’s last name is one letter away from kisama, Japanese for “son of a bitch.” Three characters are named for my former Japanese professors. Others are named for friends.
Finally, the Kamaguchi-gumi shares all but one letter in common with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest yakuza clan. In the earliest drafts of Daughter of the Sword, my yakuzas did belong to the real-world Yamaguchis, but upon further consideration I decided this might well be suicidal. Yakuzas have been known to take punitive actions against authors who malign them in their books. So I’ll reiterate: my Kamaguchis are not based on any real live Yamaguchis, not one teeny bit.