Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 6
Okay, so here’s the thing… I started in on the sixth volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers without bothering to re-read either the previous volumes in the series or my thoughts on those five books. As a result, I spent most of my reading time trying to remember who the various characters were and what [...]
Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 5
At the end of volume one of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers, the Shogun Yoshimune asks an elderly monk to explain to her “the logic of the present custom” of using male honorifics and titles to refer to female nobles. After all, if women run the country while men are expected to do little [...]
Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 4
With the opening volumes of Ooku: The Inner Chambers, Fumi Yoshinaga attempts to answer the question of why it is that a culture’s values do not automatically keep step with its demographics. For example, why would a version of Edo-period Japan in which 75% of the male population had been wiped out by a terrible [...]
Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 3
Volume One of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers posed a question of both its world and ours. That question was why there is such a thing as gender inequality when gender inequality is so manifestly absurd. Yoshinaga asks this question by having her characters delve into the past of a fictional Edo-period Japan in [...]
Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 2
By Jonathan McCalmont The First Volume of Ooku: The Inner Chambers ends with the newly installed Shogun asking a question of an elderly monk. This question, though apparently simple, cuts straight to the heart of her kingdom, her culture, her history and her identity: – I wonder if this land was always the way it [...]
Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 1 (2009)
By Jonathan McCalmont 0. A Statement of Subject and Method Fumi Yoshinaga’s Eisner Award-nominated and James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning series Ooku: The Inner Chambers is a multi-volume manga series set in an alternative version of Medieval Edo Period Japan in which a terrifying plague has wiped out 75% of the male population. Using this fictional [...]
Ōoku 1 and 2 by Fumi Yoshinaga – review
When I first stumbled upon Ōoku in the bookstore, I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t connect Fumi Yoshinaga’s name with Antique Bakery (though I should have, as she’s the manga-ka of both series), and I wasn’t clear on what the story was about (a hazard when the bookstore places a manga in the [...]
