Thanks to COVID 19 I’ve been perusing the archives and came across this unpublished anime review from last year when I saw one of the oddest things I’ve seen since, well, the last odd thing I saw. Also, it was a huge excuse to unload a bunch of really nerdy Meiji-era facts.
I love the Meiji period (1868-1912). It was a very unique time in Japanese history as the country rapidly progressed from a feudal society using a class structure and technology that hadn’t changed for centuries to a modern nation trying to sort itself out, taking what it could from abroad and reinterpreting it at home to create something new. Its historic Japan, but not the one foreigners tend to think of. As far as period dramas and anime go, it’s very under-represented compared to the Edo period, Sengoku period or World War II, so anytime it’s used for a show I find myself watching it in the hopes that there will be more Meiji shows in the future.
That’s how I ended up watching Meiji Tokyo Renka.
My first reaction was, “Who is the target audience for this?”
This image perfectly sums up everything.
Meiji Tokyo Renka is about Mei, the modern-day anime protagonist every-girl who has been magically transported to the Meiji era so she can have a harem of bishonen-ized famous literary and artistic figures (and a former member of the Shinsengumi) vie for her affection. That’s the whole plot. It’s like it was dreamed up by someone who enjoyed her literature class way too much.
I mean, what girl hasn’t fantasized about having the glorious mustache with a man attached that was Mori Ogai and Saito Hajime/Fujita Goro, one of the last true bad boys of the Shogunate, fight over her? But y’know, sans the mustaches and all that middle-agedness.
Apparently this concept has made a lot of girl’s hearts go doki-doki (and likely a bunch of Meiji otaku watch in confusion) as the anime is based on a 2011 visual novel that’s already been adapted into a musical, multiple animated movies and a live action TV show with theatre-released movie finale. (This anime and the live-action adaption aired simultaneously)
Okay, so the plot is slightly more complicated than I originally said. Mei has the special ability to see spirits and ghosts, which makes her an outcast with no friends that does her best to block out the world around her. On the night of a strawberry moon a carnival magician invites her to come on stage for a magic trick and she’s transported to the Meiji-era. She has a month to choose if she wants to stay in the past where she’s respected for the same thing that got her ostracized and she’s surrounded by people who genuinely care about her, or return to the present. Wacky shenanigans and little adventures with each member of the he-harem occur all along the way and the pacing is split between comedy and melodramatic fantasy romance. It’s absurd and pretty funny over all. It rarely takes itself too seriously.
Plot aside; this show is one of the most oddly semi-educational things I’ve seen on TV lately because the Meiji in Meiji Tokyo Renka is handled well, fantasy bishonen man-stable aside.
For a Western audience, this show may as well have a fictional cast as Ogai Mori, Lafcadio Hearn/Koizumi Yakumo, Shunso, Kawakami Otojiro and Izumi Kyoka do not make a single appearance in our history books, but for a Japanese you can’t graduate from high school without having been introduced to some of these figure and being able to show on a standardized test why they matter.
As another weird side note, they went through the trouble of making Fujita Goro a main character but never once mention or even allude to his Shinsengumi past. It’s like the show is a huge inside reference to Japanese history that you either know or are just left confused.
Like Mei. Mei is confused a lot. Like the audience.
What Time Is It?
I was half-surprised the show didn’t end up being a magical dream because it’s not set at any point in history but is a pastiche of the Meiji era, mostly centered around people and events in the mid-1880s to the 1890s with some weird outliers.
The first episode exemplifies that and the kind of show this is perfectly as it revolves around Mei and Ogai attending a party at the Rokumeikan hosted by Inoue Kaoru in honor of Nicholas II of Russia’s visit. She eats the roast beef. It sounds straightforward unless you know the background.
Rokumeikan was an expensive tool of Japanese diplomacy, an opulent hall built to prove that Japan can be just as modern as any Western nation. A place that could host fancy dress parties with Western cuisine and ball room dancing with ministers of state and all the most important foreigners. It was a spectacular failure, but a very beautiful one. It served the Japanese government from its opening in 1883 until it was sold in 1890. None of this is actually brought up in the episode; you just have to know the reason Ogai attending a Rokumeikan ball is a huge deal.
Mei’s being in love with beef would almost have been as unusual as her hem line, as at this time it was still a very recent addition to the Japanese culinary scene because it was a religious taboo to many people. It’s a small detail that shows the show’s creators know the period and aren’t just using it like a fantasy setting for their story the way people throw around the Old West.
Inoue Kaoru, who Ogai name checks, was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1885-1887 and the costly Rokumeikan failure was a factor in his losing the post. So we have the time frame down to 1883-1890, but it can be taken a step further because of Ogai. It’s mentioned he’s returned from Europe, which he did not do until 1888. Ogai, while famous now for his literary work, was actually an army surgeon which is brought up in the show. Ogai would eventually become surgeon-general in the Imperial Japanese Army and at the end of his life was the director of Japan’s imperial archives, the forerunner of the Tokyo National Museum.
Then the whole timeline goes out the window because Nicholas II visited Japan in 1891, after both Inoue and Rokumeikan were no longer relevant. He also never made it to Tokyo as a deranged police officer injured him in an assassination attempt at Otsu. This added with the other events made me question if this show was a dream in Mei’s jumbled up mind but it does show that the creator does know the era and is choosing to have fun with it.
It makes as much sense as this.
Speaking of the time frame, since most of the male cast is shown as vaguely young with flowing bright hair, it deflects that in real life this would actually be a group of men in their late 20s-40s trying to win over a high school girl. I’ll give you a moment to cringe before moving on.
Meiji’s Tokyo
Asakusa as seen from atop Japan’s first skyscraper, the 12-story, red brick Ryounkaku. It was built in 1890 and had the country’s first elevator.
Back to non-cringe Meiji-ness, the show puts a good deal of thought into recreating that era’s Tokyo, at least the nicer parts. Though Tokyo was a bustling metropolis, one of the most crowded cities on Earth even back then, it still had a lot of open green space. Most of it has turned into concrete jungle, but pockets still exist, especially Meiji Shrine’s park and Ueno Park, who’s Shinobazu Pond was featured in an episode. (Sadly, we didn’t get to see a horse race)
Mentioning popular restaurants and stores, showcasing long-gone places like Rokumeikan adds to the period feel which actually makes it feel fantastical because of how far removed it is from today.
For the most part, they tend not to directly call attention to the historic details but I loved Mei’s exchange rate system for remembering the value of yen. Today yen is like a penny, but until the mid-twentieth century it was comparable to a dollar as the basic unit of currency. Yen was subdivided into sen, like Americans would cents. Sen was then split into an even smaller unit of currency, rin.
To make sense of this Mei makes a sukiyaki system, remembering that a yen is worth 20 bowls of sukiyaki. The Sapporo Beer Brewery in Hita takes the same tack in explaining the value of beer in 1904, one beer cost 20 sen or 10 bowls of soba; so compared to that it seems spot on.
1 Photograph = 16 Yen = 320 Bowls of Sukiyaki… or slightly more than a Yokohama postal worker’s yearly salary in 1900 (Meiji 33). Isn’t math fun? Unless you’re a Meiji-era postal worker I guess.
This kind of stuff goes on with every episode and being a huge nerd I just kept watching to see what other part of the era they would play with next.
So despite this show not really being made for me, I’ve enjoyed it and hope that after this show in this season and Golden Kamuy last season we get more Meiji period anime and dramas. Though it’s over now, I did hope Meiji himself would pop in to show his dragon countenance. After all the drinking parties in this show I just wanted to see him drink the entire cast under the table then down a second bottle by himself after those lightweights concede defeat. (Fun fact: Meiji’s personal best was single-handedly drinking two bottles of champagne in one sitting. Like a boss.)
The show can be seen on Funimation, Crunchyroll and Amazon.
To learn more about the real Meiji period and these people there’s a lot of places that you can visit around the country. Any house a famous author lived in for any period of time is now a museum; Ogai alone has four homes and two museums, in his hometown of Tsuwano, Shimane Prefecture, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture and in Tokyo. One house both he and Soseki Natsume lived in (at different times) is on display at Meiji-mura in Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture.
Meiji-mura is the best place to visit to experience the period. With so many original buildings arranged like a small town, its trains, trams and even rental costumes. It brings together 60 buildings, a working tram and locomotive from the Meiji era for a cultural park that is the Meijiest Place on Earth®. Last summer it had a tie-in with the previous animated Meiji Tokyo Renka movie, which being unaware of what that was, confused the hell out of me during my visit. Who are these pretty boys with the names of famous authors? Is this a Bungo Stray Dogs knock off? I’d also just recently learned about that anime phenomena after seeing its versions of Kunikida and Dazai at the Kunikida Doppo Museum in Saiki. (Meiji Tokyo Renka is a lot nicer to Ogai than that one is.) Japan was really doing a number on me that summer.
The live action Meiji Tokyo Renka was filmed almost entirely on location there, which made it fun to watch just to figure out what building was being used. I may touch on that in a future article because it’s Meiji.
For Golden Kamuy fans Hokkaido is excellent for Meiji sightseeing. Otaru has a large historic district and many Meiji buildings throughout the town, Sapporo’s Kaitaku no Mura is the pioneer version of Meiji-mura and to the far north you can experience Abashiri Prison Museum, the intact original museum from the Meiji era. Hakodate also has a wonderful historic downtown and you can pay your respects to Saito’s comrades-in-arms from the Shinsengumi, who died fighting at the Battle of Hakodate in 1869. Hijikata Toshizo, the Shinsengumi’s Demon Vice Commander, is practically the mascot of Hakodate.
MEIJI-RANDOMNESS!
One historical anomaly that was probably intentional is in the episode three, which features a hotel. You don’t see much of it, but those columns are distinctly from the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Imperial Hotel which opened in 1923. The hotel lobby, and those columns, is now at the Meiji-mura architectural park which may be why it was used.
My favorite random historical aside is a scene where in the foreground a stranger named “Tatsuno” and another gentleman (Josiah Conder?) are discussing his Tokyo railway station. This is the Meiji-era’s greatest architect Kingo Tatsuno discussing his ultimate Meiji-era work (completed in the Taisho era), Tokyo Station. Their appearance and conversation has absolutely nothing to do with the plot and they never show up again. And yes, Tokyo Station really was built in header bond as discussed. Tatsuno was so bold!
The mid-day cannon which surprised Mei is a real thing. One is preserved at the Edo-Tokyo Tatemono. It amuses me that they added this.
I’ve visited three of his houses and unlike his anime counterpart Ogai lived in modest, average Japanese-style homes similar to what was depicted for Fujita Goro for much of his life, not a Western mansion. He eventually built a mansion, the Kanchoro, which was a two-story Japanese-style building he inhabited from 1892 until his death in 1922.
Mori Ogai / Natsume Soseki house at Meiji-mura. This house showed up last article too. And they were actually written about 18 months apart. Weird.
This is the Takatoro Lighthouse which was built in 1871 for ships off Shinagawa. Nice landmark, except Ogai is taking Mei to Asakusa from where he lived which was in Bunkyo. This is a ways over in the opposite direction from Asakusa. That’s some roundabout joy ride.
I passed by it in 2012 and took a picture because it was odd and I didn’t know what it was. This happens a lot.
Mei not being able to dress herself is 100% accurate to your average modern woman in regards to donning kimono and hakama. You rent it and pay someone to put in on you while standing stock still like a dummy for 10 minutes. I once suggested to my wife she could learn, since women once routinely dressed themselves like this, and was politely refused. Dressing is included in the cost of the rental.
“It’s the guy on the ten thousand yen bill!”
The high point of this show’s history nerdiness was probably Mei’s schoolhouse rocking why electricity is a must for the development of Japan to the future “king of electrical power” and “the guy on the ten thousand yen bill.” Though they would probably be just as confused as to why this random girl is speaking to them as to what she was talking about.
Schoolhouse Rock or maybe the opening to Family Guy.
And then she introduced mops to the Japanese. The end. (Yeah, that happened too.)