Interview With Takeda 3 Creator And Magitech Founder, Ming-Sheng Lee

Ming-Sheng Lee is the founder of Magitech, producer of what many consider to be the most historically accurate and true-to-life Japanese and Chinese PC strategy games. He graduated from Taiei City College of Business in the late 80's when he and a few college friends were thinking of getting into the computer game industry. Since none of them possessed sufficient programming knowledge, Ming then attended Polytech University in New York to get a C.S. degree and then founded Magitech. Ming continues to be involved in all aspects of Magitech's operation, from research, coding, and troubleshooting to marketing and customer feedback. Ming took some time off from working on Strength And Honor 2 to talk about Magictech's latest release, the Sengoku strategic/tactical simulation Takeda 3 (in the following interview, SA is the Samurai Archives while ML is Ming-Sheng Lee).

SA: You founded Magitech in 1993. What prompted you to form your own company rather than work for an established developer?

ML: I guess I was young and didn't know that earning money can sometimes be more important than the passion. I was naive to think that working for other companies would prevent me from making my own games, so I jumped in, created my own company and started this journey.

SA: How did you develop a love for computers and an interest in Japanese history?

ML: I got in touch with computers in the early 80’s. I was fascinated by the new Apple II (6502) personal computer and started working on simple animations for the ground works of gaming. I remember my first animated character was a Japanese Ashigaru infantry. Speaking of Ashigaru, the Japanese theme of Takeda was seeded even way earlier when I was in elementary school. My father took me to Japan several times to visit my grandfather. The castles and the samurai were my bed time stories.

My addiction to tactics and strategy came from my father also, who always told me fascinating stories of history. Not just battles, but finance, economics, and life experience as well. I use the same tactics and strategies I learned from history in the stock market, which other than strategy games is my other hobby to explore my passion for strategic thinking.

SA: All of Magitech's releases to date have been historical simulations, and they have been far more true to history than similar games from other companies. Was the emphasis on historical accuracy done to differentiate the games from other products, or out of a desire to produce a 'simulation' and not just a 'game'?

ML: OK. You got me. The emphasis on historical data isn't really meant to differentiate from other games, but it is my desire to make a historical simulation rather than just a game. Many times I was struggling to change the design into something more suitable for the game market, but there is a part of me that always pulls me back to focusing on the simulation. The balance between game play and simulation is always a challenge for us.

SA: Can you give us a general outline of the different steps taken in the development of a game? What all does it go through between the initial concept and the final release?

ML: First we have a meeting about the concept of the game. If it is a sequel, we discuss features that we would like to add to the game. Normally we write a two-page outline document. We tried a fifty-two page design document once, but it ended up being too complicated. Then we assign tasks and have the team start working on the project. This part is the easiest, but we always have to go back to the design sheets and make some adjustments. Then we have to integrate the other aspects such as the art from the artists and the music from the musicians, more or less putting every piece of the game together. After that, we can start balancing, testing and fine-tuning the game. Part of the team will continue to work on the interface and fix bugs while the other part of the team will start testing all aspects of the game. After we finish the initial testing, we will start working on demo versions for publishers and do localization when a deal is signed with foreign language publishers. It actually takes a lot to finish a game. Coding is the easiest part.

SA: Even with an emphasis on history, compromises always have to be made for the sake of play value. What in your opinion was the biggest compromise Takeda 3 had to make that sacrificed accuracy for playability?

ML: There are many features we have to give up for the sake of game play or due to a lack of resources to expand a feature such as the number of castles, the number of generals, or the scale of the battles. The biggest one I would say is the death rate of a general. Since Takeda 1, we have tried to create a connection between the generals (the game characters) and the players. To achieve this, we make the characters 'die' at a more realistic probability. The player will need to make a decision between saving his/her favourite general(s) and winning a battle. In Takeda 3, however, we are short of portraits. To lose a general at a realistic, historical probability, the player will run out of characters pretty quickly. Thus we have to tune down the 'death rate' so the players are able to finish the campaign.

SA: Takeda 3 features graphics that are much more detailed and impressive than those seen in Takeda 2. The 'Multiplayer/Online' aspect from the original Takeda also makes its return. What other improvements and new features have been made to the game?

ML: Takeda 3's new improvements are really focused on the castle battles. We've made some breakthroughs in path-finding which allow the units to go through mountain roads in fairly complex terrain and castle layers. This really allows us to make the castles look much more realistic than in our previous games.

We also resized the map to show an army’s path more clearly to the player, and we now allow players to build facilities around a castle. These facilities have a direct impact on the player's military and economic strength.

SA: In games such as 'Shogun: Total War' or 'Nobunaga No Yabou', an unskilled player can win by simply outproducing the computer and crushing them with sheer weight of numbers or by using oddball ahistorical superunits like 'sword saints', 'battlefield ninja', or the infamous 'geisha assassin'. The Takeda series, on the other hand, has proved difficult for many players to beat because it stresses the role of commanders, proper formations and tactics, morale, and especially supply. Careless players who use reckless all-out attacks soon find themselves with all their capable generals dead, losses of horses and guns that far outstrip their production, and huge desertion rates attributable to not keeping an eye on their supply lines. In fact, it's easily possible to win a battle that ruins your chances of winning the game. It makes the game an extremely helpful learning tool for explaining just how difficult it would have been in real life to unify Japan. What sort of tips would you give to someone sitting down to play Takeda 3 for the first time to help them lay down a strong foundation for success early in the game?

ML: Watch out for the riflemen/teppo (sorry, I still don't know what to call them properly)! For most veterans of Takeda, mastering a field battle shouldn't be a problem if they properly manage capable generals. The campaign may run into deep muddy ground if the enemies build up strong defences with a high number of riflemen/teppo guarding the towers, however. As for a beginner, I would say carefully plan out your strategy regarding diplomacy. Winning a battle is one thing; but winning a war is another. Choose your allies carefully and watch out for their relationships with one another. You can't make friends with everybody because your friends will fight against each other later and you will be caught right in the middle. You also need to arrange political marriages to cement alliances.

For beginners on the battlefield, try to select all your good generals and put them into one army. That should give you a good start. Eventually, you will need to split your army as your territory expands, but by then you should have mastered the battle system.

Most RTS players will create a lot of armies to outnumber the enemy. Players might want to keep a few castles to use as supply depots, however, instead of creating armies from every castle.

SA: The portraits of the historical figures in the new game are small works of art-detailed, sharp, and colorful. The artist is particularly talented in his depictions of women. Who was this talented individual and how did you end up using them?

ML: The artist’s name is 練任 (Lian Zan). Though I have not personally spoken with him, he is a good friend of our Taiwanese publisher. Alvin Hwan, who works for our main publisher in Taiwan, believes in the potential of Takeda's engine and sponsored our Sango project's portraits with his own money. After that, we liked the style of the portraits and decided to upgrade all the portraits for our upcoming games.

SA: Speaking of women, Takeda 3 includes dozens of female characters-far more than any other Japanese warfare sim to date. Many of them historically were involved in defending castles during sieges. Game wise, they’re of course useful for 'marriage politics' but also for transferring supplies and troops from one castle to another. What prompted you to include this often overlooked aspect of a woman's role in samurai culture and give them a greater part in the game?

ML: It was a time in which women didn't really have the same rights as men in Japan. After researching a few historical records and legends, I decided to include many of the exceptional stories of women in Takeda 3 to tell their stories which unfortunately often get left out of history books.

SA: Unlike 'Shogun: Total War' or 'Nobunaga No Yabou', Takeda 3 replicates the actual terrain, layouts, and look of castles taken from historical records and blueprints. They showcase to good effect how even a small force inside a well laid out castle can hold off and decimate a huge attacking army. Were there any castles you had problems finding documentation for, or that had to be substantially altered for the game?

ML: We researched many books and sites and included as many details as we could. Almost every castle is based on some sort of historical reference. Sometimes we had only a small piece of a picture or layout from the historical records, but we tried our very best to show what it would look like based on the picture. In many cases, we can only show a corner of the castle. It wouldn’t be possible to present a whole castle like Odawara in the game. Sometimes we have to take out or reposition the gates or rivers to make the castle fit the battlefield. We mostly studied how each castle was taken in historical battles and we tried to present it in such a way that the players can re-visit the history and experience how the battles were actually fought. The biggest problem we have with the castles is the limit of the attacking army's units. Due to the speed of most computers, we couldn't have that many units on the attacking side which sometimes makes attacking a castle very difficult. Although we can reduce the number of defenders, it would create some other game play issues in world mode.

SA: The individual biographies for each of the 600+ historical figures in the game are another nice extra feature. From what sources did you gather the information for these?

ML: We did the research about the characters in the game mainly from our in-house library books. Most books are imported from Japan directly. I have a personal interest in the history of Feudal Japan so we put a lot of effort into discovering information about each character in the game. There have been some translation errors when we finalized the descriptions, however, and we were fixing some of the errors right until the last few days before the release of the game.

SA: Magitech has published games in China and Russia as well as Japan and North America. Which country seems to be most receptive to your games and what do you attribute this to?

ML: From the sales side, the Russian market seems to be the most receptive, and China seems to have many players playing our games as well. We are very pleased that we are able to get into Japan's market with a localized Japanese version for them. It shows a great recognition for the hard work that we put in to make the game historically accurate to Japanese history.

SA: The staff of Magitech not only develops the games but also plays and supports them once they’re released. This takes the form of answering questions from gamers on the Magitech forums, releasing patches to enhance and expand gameplay, incorporating suggestions from players in future releases, and even taking part in tournaments and online battles with the player base. Does being actively involved with the people who actually play the games help with designing future efforts? Do players ever come up with tactics and strategies that surprise you and weren’t factored in while designing a game?

ML: Basically, we love what we do here. It is my passion as well as the team's desire to make these games fun and historical. We feel bad when the game doesn't work as we expected and we try our very best to fix or improve the game in every way that we can. Our friends from the forum do help us a lot in finding bugs that we fix, giving us feedback and suggestions for future developments or improvements, and encourage us to continue the titles even when things don't really work very well. It's because of these friends that have made it this far.

When I designed Takeda 1, I expected to see players lose generals and fall into different ending paths. After the game was released, I found out that some players would play the same battle fifty times just to save a generals' life. In the game Sango 1, I accidentally had a general with no skill but setting up fires in the battle of Chang-Ban Po. There were players using this character with one of the best horses in the game to set fires everywhere and turn an impossible battle into a total victory for the player. It is amazing to see players develop their own strategies and tactics using something even the developer didn't think of.

SA: What are some of the other games Magitech has produced? What are you currently working on for future release?

ML: Other than the Takeda series of games, we also make the Sango series, similar to Takeda but set in China's Romance of The Three Kingdoms' era, and the Strength & Honor series which is set during the Roman era with a map that spans from China to Britain. Different from Takeda and Sango, Strength & Honour is more focused on empire management than battles. An empire's internal conflicts are much more emphasized. Strength & Honor 2 is our latest game in development and shall be released in the summer of 2009. In the future, however, we are thinking of making casual games and iPhone platform applications.

SA: Thanks, Ming. We at the SA wish you and Magitech continued success in the future.

Animeigo's 'The Loyal 47 Ronin' DVD

Animeigo claims their recent DVD release of Daiei’s ‘The Loyal 47 Ronin’ (1958) represents the best and most representative version of the dozens of 47 Ronin films and TV shows that have been released over the years-and it would be hard to argue with them. Produced during the ‘Golden Age’ of Japanese filmmaking, it features a cast loaded with familiar genre names, excellent color cinematography, and the gorgeous sets and costuming one expects from Japanese films of this era.

The film is solidly in the vein of traditional tellings of the 47 Ronin legend as performed in puppet plays, novels, and kabuki theater rather than attempting to portray the history behind the ‘feudal drive-by of lore’ (where the Ronin outnumbered Kira’s sleeping guards 47 to 3). While it’s beyond the scope of this review to detail the substantial differences between the legend and the reality, it shouldn’t diminish the enjoyment of viewers (even though the real story would probably make for a far more complex, multilayered, and entertaining film). For those who aren’t familiar with the legend, it’s the tale of the loyal retainers of a daimyo (Asano Naganori) sentenced to seppuku after he makes the mistake of attacking a corrupt Shogunal Minister Of Protocol (Kira Yoshinaka) inside Edo Castle. When Kira goes unpunished, many of the retainers band together under the leadership of Asano’s Chamberlain, Oishi Kuranosuke, to correct this imbalance of justice and avenge their lord. Director Watanabe Kunio infuses this version with more energy than most, making its central character Oishi a master swordsman who engages in several battles with Kira’s ‘hit squads’ and ninja agents during the course of the film. Kira is even more obnoxious, nasty, and spiteful than usual, and Asano more virtuous, long-suffering, and upright (quite unlike their historical reputations). Oishi’s feigned descent into womanizing and drinking along with several sidestories (mostly fictional and lifted, again, from kabuki and puppet theater) involving the other Ronin take center stage-many of which involve the Ronin trying to keep their composure when public opinion turns on them for not avenging Asano in a timely manner. It seems the entire population of Edo is aware of the ‘secret’ planned raid and continually egg on and encourage the Ronin to punch Kira’s ticket to the Pure Land! The emphasis is squarely on a samurai’s duty to his lord and bushido-all other duties, including those to wives, parents, siblings, children, in-laws, and friends, are shown as inconsequential when measured next to this. In turn, these slighted parties willingly and sometimes enthusiastically accept their fates. We found this approach an interesting contrast to more recent efforts involving the Ronin, such as the episode of ‘Abarenbo Shogun’ that features the single member of the 47 not sentenced to seppuku-Terasaka Kichiemon. In this episode, Terasaka roundly condemns his fellow Ronin and everyone connected to them for bringing so much tragedy and hardship to their families and those left behind. But this was 1958, and tradition was still a strong draw at the box office-The Loyal 47 Ronin was Japan’s highest grossing film for that year. It’s hard to imagine another film doing the ‘samurai honor’ angle better and more effectively. The film is even left on an upbeat note when the Ronin are shown marching with Kira’s head to Asano’s grave at Sengakuji-completely leaving out the not-so-glorious aftermath when they paid for their crimes with their lives.

For most samurai film fans, the big attraction here will be the cast. Genre favorites Ichikawa Raizo and Katsu Shintaro both make appearances and the rest of the cast features equally famous Japanese actors (who just aren’t as well known in the west). For example, Kurosawa regular Shimada Takashi (the leader of the Seven Samurai) has a role as Otake Jubei, the father in law of one of the ronin. Raizo turns in his usual solid, if abbreviated, performance as Asano Takumi-no-kami (Asano here is referred to by his title rather than name). He conveys well the increasing outrage and panic Asano feels while being insulted and fed misinformation by Kira in the course of learning proper etiquette and procedure for receiving the Emperor’s envoy. For those whose image of Katsu is the jovial Zatoichi, he’s almost unrecognizable as Akagaki Genzoemon (Genzo to his pals), one of the leaders of the Ronin who is disowned by his brother after stating that the former Asano retainers have no intention of pursuing vengeance (which, of course, is just a lie to keep the plot secret, although it seems everyone and their brother in the movie are aware of it). But by far the best performance in the film falls to Hasegawa Kazuo, who portrays Oishi. He brings just the right touch of pathos, steadfastness, tragedy, and even comedy to the role. When he commences his ‘cowardly drunken womanizer’ act in Kyoto in an effort to throw Kira’s spies off track, you’ll find yourself hating him even though you know it’s just a ruse. While he isn’t afforded the wonderful stirring pre-raid speech that Oishi usually gets in the live all-day versions of Chushingura, he still manages to dominate every scene he’s in.

As always, Animeigo has done a great job with the translation, packaging, and extras. Among the extras are trailers for Animeigo’s other 47 Ronin film (Ichikawa Kon’s 1994 effort) and one featuring a group that took their visual cue from the Ronin (the Shinsengumi, in Mifune Toshiro’s ‘Shinsengumi: Assassins of Honor’). There’s also an image gallery of b/w and color stills and publicity shots. An extensive cast and crew section gives biographies for the myriad of well known actors along with the director and composer. The historical notes (always a favorite feature of Animeigo releases among SA members) are the most extensive Animeigo has done to date for any DVD. While it regrettably uses Wikipedia’s largely inaccurate account (based on plays and novels rather than history) of Chushingura as a jumping off point, it redeems itself with a large helping of cultural notes and other historical background that explain plot points that might not be readily apparent to a Western audience (such as the significance of Buddhist funerary tablets, worldly and posthumous names, the personal nature of medicine caddies, etc).

With an all-star cast, first rate production values, the definitive version of a classic story, plenty of action, and Animeigo’s attention to the little things that fill out a well-done DVD release, The Loyal 47 Ronin should be on every samurai film buff’s shelf. At nearly three hours, it’s also a good value, being twice as long as the average film. It’s available through most major DVD retailers and also on the SA Store. Watching it will fill your heart with the samurai spirit, and you won’t even have to commit seppuku afterwards!

An Interview with Brick McBurly

Love him or hate him, or maybe you’re like one of millions of people outside of Japan whom have never heard of him let alone see one of his films or TV show, Brick McBurly is not only just a real person, but he’s celebrity and a loyal member of the Samurai Archives Citadel Community. We were lucky to have a chance to sit down with the fun-loving star of the Japanese TV Show “Abarenbo Gaijin” and more than a dozen films for an interview over two sittings in bars in Tokyo and Kyoto. As always, hanging out with Brick was a wild and rollicking adventure, and thankfully we were able to get the digital MP3 recorder to work for transcription purposes after Brick accidentally dropped it into a bottle of Mexican beer, thinking it was a lime wedge. So without further ado, let’s get to the interview.

OK: How did you get into show business?

Brick: While attendin' the University of Cincinnati back in the early '90's, the Brickster found hisself in need of some spendin' money. Y'see, when I was young, we were so poor that folks used to call me Patches, so there wasn't a whole lot of money left over for me to live on after tuition, room, and board was paid. One of the coeds I was datin', Trixie, was strippin' at bachelor parties for megabucks and mentioned that some friends of hers were lookin' fer an actor who could perform under pressure. Well, I figured that all the storytellin' I was layin’ on her and my other gal pals qualified, so I went to meet these guys. Turns out it wasn’t the type of performin’ I thought it would be-they was shootin' some soft core adult films, but I couldn't dream of anythin' I was better suited for. Hell, I was still gettin' Trixie's goodies, but now I was gettin' PAID for it! That's how the Pizza Delivery Guy series of films got started (‘Our guarantee-you’ll come in 30 minutes or less’), and eventually I got into the more respectable horror genre by appearin' in low-budget vampire films, poundin' my massive stake into nubile soft girly vampire flesh.

OK: Who were your greatest influences and whose work are you a fan of?

Brick: Well, tops on the Brickster's list is Hollywood's greatest untapped natural resource, Bruce Campbell. The man can play anythin' and pull it off with aplomb-whether it's Ash from the Evil Dead series, Old Fat Elvis from Bubba Ho-tep, or his own bad self in My Name Is Bruce. Sure, he’s givin’ the same performance for every character, but he’s so good at it that it don’t matter. Then there’s Rudy Ray Moore-his Dolemite character was a HUGE role model. Man, what a snappy dresser that guy was! Kurt Russell and Roddy Piper also had a big impact on the development of the Brickster’s on-screen persona, particularly Russell’s performance as the clueless hero of Big Trouble In Little China. Stephen Hayes’ breakthrough role as the Dutch sailor who falls outta the riggin’ into the ocean in the Shogun miniseries is a must see for anyone interested in real ninjitsu. Annette Haven and Kristara Barrington starred in the first AV films I saw, and I must be their biggest fan-even though they’re both prob’ly pushin’ 50 by now, I’d still love to co-star in a film with them. On the Japanese side of things, there’s Katsu-shin, who had the role of a lifetime in the Hanzo the Razor trilogy. I love how Tsugawa Masahiko takes over every film he’s in and really makes his characters larger than life, whether he’s playin’ Tokugawa Ieyasu or Chiyo’s uncle in “Komyo Ga Tsuji”. And everyone already knows what a fan I am of Uchiyama Rina (the only reason to watch the Musashi taiga) and Oshida Reiko of the Delinquent Girl Boss series. Reiko’s in her 60’s now, but the memory of her peddlin’ down the street on a bike in her miniskirt lives on. And she’s STILL smokin’ hot. And of course, I’m a big fan of my wife Koyori’s performances. It must suck for her to always be in the Brickster’s shadow.

OK: And your favorite top five jidai-geki movies are?

Brick: Besides my own? Well, right at the top of the list is Bohachi Bushido. It's the yardstick by which all other jidai-geki films are measured and come up short. I mean, a horde of big-boobed naked kunoichi rollin' on the ground, whippin' out shuriken from god knows where, and jumpin' up on a guy's shoulders for the old head twist-like you’d really mind dyin’ that way? All that AND Tiger Tanaka? Then there’s Samurai Resurrection. You got undead historical characters brought back to life only to get whacked by Yagyu Jubei. Monsters and samurai-it’s a tried and true winnin’ combo, the Reese’s Cup of filmdom. Not to mention Jubei ain’t the only one-eyed actor in this little drama, if you know what I mean. American Ninja-Mike Dudkoff and Steve James are some smooth pimps in the movie bringin’ it to the man as only they can. This movie proved there’s no reason a Westerner couldn’t become the master of Japanese genre films. Kunoichi-Lady Ninja had the single greatest effect in film history-electric nipple magic. I’d like to see ILM try to pull that off. And it also featured a different chick whose sekrit dreaded ninja power could only be activated by havin’ sex. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve used the ‘ninja test’ on some sloshed Brickster groupie in a bar to maximum effect. Then there’d be Sukiyaki Western-D’jango. If the Brickster can play Japanese samurai and Chinese actresses can play geisha, then why can’t the Japanese be cowboys? And the critics loved it. You didn’t see bitchin’ about ‘why don’t they cast Americans as cowboys’, and no one complained about the gaijin in the cast (Tarantino) like they did with Tom Cruise or Christopher Lambert.

OK: Why is it that the original print of Samurai Sexecutioner is missing? Do you know what happened to it?

Brick: After its initial release, the Studio didn't know what a hot property they had and used the master print as part of a giveaway at the theme park. To quote the brochure, with your ticket, you got a strip of 'original collectible 35mm film from the master print of one of our many smash hits'. Of course, bein' the Studio's token gaijin most of the films were mine, so's after that the only master copy of the film belonged to Koyori-she had videotaped it with a handheld off the big screen and was sellin' bootleg copies on Japan Yahoo auctions. So’s when the demand to release it on DVD overwhelmed the studio, her dad had to come hat in hand with his wallet out to get her copy. She ain’t only gorgeous, but brilliant too.

OK: Is this the reason that it was never released outside of Japan?

Brick: Nah. It was kinda the same thing that kept Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah from bein' released in the US for years and years-political correctness. The Studio thought it would be politically incorrect to export a film to America that showed an American behavin' like yers truly. They'd obviously never seen an epsiode of Springer. For that matter, none of my films have ever been officially released outside of Japan. I think the Studio views ‘em like Paramount does the Friday The 13th series-they love the money it brings in to produce the A films no one goes to see, but they’re embarrassed to admit that they did ‘em. It’s kinda like havin’ sex with an ugly broad.


OK: In Samurai Sexecutioner II, the prosthesis you wore to enhance the size of your manhood, was it functional? Because it sure seems like you were actually doing it with some of your female co-stars. And if so, how does Ko react to it? Can she brush it off as just acting because you, as Brick, are emotionally devoid of the people you are interacting with while your character maybe isn't?

Brick: Huh? What the hell are you talkin’ about? Well, the prosthesis was of course our tribute to Teh Man, Hanzo The Razor. No regular mortal can measure up to the legacy he set, so we had to go for artificial enhancement. And no, it wasn't functional-unless you count the effect it has on gals when you wear it to a party. Chicks are flat out mesmerized by it, like it was a spittin’ cobra or somethin’, and it’s way better than usin' a rolled up sock. Since I have no clue what the rest of your question means, why don't we ask Ko?

Koyori: Obenjo-san, all of the sexual relations in our films are simulated. It is to the credit of our special effects master, Kondo-san, that they look so real to our viewers. I will pass on your compliment to him. There is also the matter of Brick realizing that were he ever to engage in an unfortunate improper relationship on the set or away from it, my daddy knows many fine men with tattoos who would be pleased to help him find his way back to the righteous path. Yes, it is indeed fortunate that many eyes are constantly on my darling Brick to aid him in behaving correctly.

Brick: Uhhhhh…yeah, what she said. And it ain’t like I’m smart enough to employ a Brickster Kagemusha to throw private detectives off the trail or anythin’ like that, freein’ me up for a night on the town.

OK: We all saw some of the stills from Samurai Sexecutioner III. Wasn’t this supposed to have been released already? I don’t remember seeing any ads for it at the theatres.

Brick: No, yer thinkin’ of SS II. III is still filmin. If you’d been readin’ McBurly Monogatari on www.brickmcburly.com (the Official Website of the Brickster, complete with a filmography, reviews of other samurai films, and purchase links for official Brickster merchandise) you’d know that we had to suspend filmin’ in December to get my New Year’s specials done. Now, as you know, B-movies in Japan usually go straight to video but the Studio wanted to establish SS II as a theatrical release. After the gala premiere, it showed fer a weekend at the Lucky Star Theater so they could market it as a ‘big screen blockbuster’.

OK: Oh, so SS II went to DVD after a one-weekend run at a theater in Kabuki-cho. Well, I haven’t even seen the disc on sale in shops. Who is distributing the DVD? As a matter of fact, I haven’t been able to find any of your SS series of films on DVD. The copy of the first film that I have was burnt on a disc for me by a friend.

Brick: Well, like I said, most of the stuff I film is direct to video or fodder for the Studio’s Samurai Action Channel on cable. And like a lot of B films, big chain stores don’t carry it and many times the specialty stores stick it in the ‘adults only’ section, which I’m sure you never venture into, Benji. Things are complicated further by the fact that unlike in the US, Japanese film companies only print up the amount of DVD’s they think they can sell. And they ALWAYS lowball my films-I think they still find it hard to believe that someone would rather watch Samurai Sexecutioner than a wuss film like Hana, or Ballad Of Narayama which spotlights a guy bonin’ a dog. I know you can get SS II at the Studio Store in the theme park, YesAsia, and other fine online retailers. The SS I boxed DVD set was produced in very limited quantities and was an instant sellout. It sometimes shows up for a King’s ransom on eBay and Yahoo Auctions. The old VHS copies that have a butchered cut show up sometimes, too. Yer lucky you knew someone with a copy of the DVD, even though ya really shouldn’t be acceptin’ stuff from video pirates. Bastards.

OK: You once said that you try to inject a little historical realism into all the jidai geki you make. Assuming you weren’t talking about injecting something into your female co-stars, how so? Would you care to elaborate on this?"

Brick: Well, for example, recently on “Abarenbo Gaijin” I was put in the situation of havin’ to disguise myself as a woman to blend in with Hideyoshi’s version of the Ooku. Now, one of the Taiko’s servin’ girls was shown bringin’ a tray of raincoats to him, but I balked at that when I saw what the prop department had done. They were your typical garden variety Trojan brand-and I refused to film the scene until they substituted Taiko-enz, which history has recorded were the only brand that Hideyoshi would use. Another example took place in Samurai Sexecutioner II, where Orugasuma Eito seduces the wife of the 47 Ronin’s leader, Oishi Kuranosuke. The script called for a straight up session, but since historically Oishi’s wife preferred it magatama style on the kitchen floor, I insisted we do it that way.
That’s not to say I’m an anal-retentive history geek like you guys on the SA. If it’s somethin’ minor that the viewers will like, such as givin’ Wakizaka Yasuharu an early version of a nuclear sub with a ninja strike force led by Stephen Seagull shot out of the torpedo tubes to deal with Korean Admiral Yi, that’s OK. Never let a small detail get in the way of a good story, except when it turns out Seagull is too fat to fit in the torpedo tube.

OK: After you are dead and long gone, what do you think your acting legacy will be? How do you want to be remembered?

Brick: Like most actors, I just want to BE remembered. Hopefully, people in future generations will still be entertained when they boot up the 3-D virtual reality interactive version of Samurai Sexecutioner. If I can provide a few laughs, a few thrills, a few shivers of delight for the ladies-I’ve done my job. If nothin’ else, I hope to still be able to do mall openin’s and memorabilia shows after I’m too old to act. Celebrity in Japan truly is fleetin’-today’s Idol is tomorrow’s Soapland employee. But as long as I’m married to the Producer’s daughter, I have confidence that my career’ll be long and productive.
More important is my legacy as a human being. That’s why I take such pains to use my celebrity to perform good works within the community-like the ‘Brick McBurly Valentine’s Day Hot Tub Party’, or the traffic safety promos I do with Hikonyan. It’s important to be a role model for the kids. I love how their little faces light up when I’m makin’ an appearance at their school and tell them that lyin’ is always wrong, unless it’s necessary to get you out of a tight spot. And that the Brickster was just helpin’ their mommy out when she wasn’t feelin’ well, and nothin’ was really goin’ on there, really. When the little ones hear that violence never solved anythin’ but that a six-iron to the groin provides a nice temporary fix from the neighborhood bully, it really means somethin’ to them comin’ from the Brickster.

OK: You once told me, as you were getting up to use the toilet after draining a six pack of warm Shibata Premium Draft, that in your films, you aim to please. I remember replying, “I hope you aim, too, please.” ‘Aiming’ just doesn’t seem to be one of your strong spots, does it? As a matter of fact, I seem to recall you were recently apprehended by the police for showering Sean Penn from a balcony at Roppongi Hills as he was stepping onto the red carpet for the Japanese premier of his film, Milk. Was this just really a publicity stunt, as you later claimed in the press? After all, is the Japanese designer, Nigo, who was scheduled to unveil a new line of clothing called “A Bathing Brick” And what was it that you poured on Sean Penn?

Brick: That is one damn long question. Well, it was a joke between me and Sean Penn. I poured the contents of a milk carton down on him, while yellin', “Love milk?” Me and Sean Penn became friends while filmin' was rollin' for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. My cousin Stone played one of the guys in the van with Sean’s character, Jeff Spiccoli. I was allowed to visit durin' filmin' and met him on the set one day and accidentally spilled a glass of milk on him. In typical Sean Penn fashion, he slugged me. Since then, it’s become a bit of a tradition between me and him. As I was up on the balcony, I figured he’d have a hard time sluggin' me this time, but I didn’t figure on the cops comin’ up. Actually, no charges were pressed and the cops all had a good laugh about it after they realized what a photo op they stumbled on.


OK: Controversy seems to follow you as much as shrine maidens! Speaking of controversy, tell us a little bit about the trouble you got in at the end of 2008 with the Church, the Hosokawa Historical Memorial Society and the Kumamoto Chamber of Commerce? This had something to do with your Christmas film Cum All Ye Faithful, which ran only one time on the Rainbow Channel, right?

Brick: Well, yeah, I was ex-communicated for a few days because I played a bad monk, if you know what I mean, who was gettin' it on with Hosokawa Gracia, who was supposed to be all saintly and stuff. Actually, my character was gettin' it on with just about every hottie on the island of Kyushu, and one of them hotties in the film was the real life daughter of the President of the Kumamoto Chamber of Commerce. I’m still persona no grata there. But regardin' the Church, to make a long story short, I was re-communicated and forgiven, even though I’m a Buddhist and not Catholic, when I agreed to attend an autograph sin’n session at the Vatican for a bunch of my nun fans on the Pope’s behalf. Hey, Benji, you know a lot about the trouble nuns can cause for men, don'cha?

OK: Sounds like a lot of ‘nunsense’ to me. I got to ask you this, though. Was it really a coincidence that you happened to be at that McDonald’s in Japan while an AV movie was being filmed there-at least until the police shut it down?

Brick: Well, I was ‘lovin’ it’, at least while it lasted. And I never woulda had Ko's mom (former Olympic judo bronze medalist), 'Right Cross' Chiba, along fer the ride if I knew in advance what was goin' on.

OK: One review, in the Japanese monthly magazine “Bigu Sukureen Stahs” described you as the new king of ‘Poruno Jidai-Geki’. How do you feel about that title?

Brick: I’m proud as hell. After I read that article, I tried gettin’ the guys in costumin’ to make me a crown emblazoned with that on it along with a regal cloak so’s I could wander around Gion like the Burger King, surprisin’ unsuspectin’ ladies with a free helpin’ of my wares. And who among the current crop of Japanese movie stars deserves the title more’n me? It’s like Bruce Campbell says at the end of Army of Darkness’-“Hail to the King, baby”. You’d think they was makin’ every film and TV show for gay men, seein’ as how metro sexual and feminine most of the male leads are.

OK: Do you think that the poruno jidai-geki genre is in the midst of a revival or renaissance of sorts? After all, you’ve been linked to a remake of Ishii Teruo’s classic, Bohachi Bushido that starred Tamba Tetsuro as an inscrutable ronin who sure knew how to swing his katana within the Yoshiwara.

Brick: You bet. Historically, whenever times get tough or society is in a state of flux, that’s when people turn to escapist films like horror or jidai-geki for entertainment. And it don’t get much more escapist than watchin’ a Westerner in a Japanese role rackin’ up the score in an historical settin’. Unless ya throw in a few monsters or aliens, all of which we’re also more’n happy to do. And let’s face it, there’s ALWAYS a market for porn. Heck, Al Gore invented the internet just so there’d be a place to host it all.

OK: When are you going to start filming Bohachi Bushido?

Brick: It can't be soon enough for my tastes-prob'ly after I’m done filmin' my new historical epic, Yasuke.

OK: Oh, I see. Tell us about this project, it sounds interesting.

Brick: As you know, Yasuke was an African brought along by the Portuguese while visitin’ Nobunaga. Oda took an interest in him and requested that the Portuguese hand over Yasuke, which they were only too happy to do since they really didn’t groove on rap. It’s really quite the upliftin’ story. Yasuke-kidnapped and forced into slavery-torn away from his posse and beeyotches-forced to wear the ridiculous lookin’ clothes of the Portuguese. Strugglin’ to keep his head high and uphold his dignity while assaulted by the taunts and abuse of Nobunaga’s redneck country samurai, who even tried to wash off his skin color. Becomin’ the REAL Afro Samurai and followin’ the way of the warrior. Carvin’ out a friendship with the Demon King, even bein’ afforded the privilege of callin’ him ‘dawg’. Standin’ by Nobunaga until the very end, not even givin’ in to the temptin’ words of the Great Emancipator, Akechi Mitsuhide. Now, there are some who said Yasuke ran like a scared rabbit when Mitsuhide attacked at Honno-ji, but he really was just battlin’ through overwhelmin’ odds to reach Nijo Castle and defend Nobunaga’s son. Course, the son got wasted too, but that wasn’t Yasuke’s fault. Heck, some tales have him swingin’ a terrible swift sword as big as a pine tree, showin’ the strength of fifty men, and scatterin’ the Akechi army like so much dust before the wind-even though they somehow managed to kill off everybody else in the Oda army. And he did it all faster than that newfangled steam hammer could, too. Since history doesn’t record what became of Yasuke after that, the script ends on a happy note with him becomin’ the founder of the Yoshiwara district in Edo years later, with his instant catchphrase, “Where my money?” The Studio loves the idea, and since all Westerners look the same and just like Elvis to them, they didn’t have the problems with me playin’ the title role like an American studio would.

OK: So, you are really playing the part of Yasuke? I guess this is conceivable since Robert Downey, Jr., who is white, played the role of an Afro-American in the recent comedy Tropical Thunder and Eddie Murphy and the Wayan brothers have played Caucasians before. Besides the makeup, are there any special challenges to playing Yasuke?

Brick: Not really. We have a lot in common. Me bein' a feared and respected foreigner just like Yasuke-me bein' somewhat of a curiosity for the Japanese to stare at just like Yasuke-me bein' a muscular stud just like Yasuke-me dancin' every bit as good as Yasuke-the list goes on and on. If it wasn't for the skin color difference and the fact that he's been dead for hundreds of years, we could be brothers. I also wear the prosthesis from Samurai Sexecutioner to give the role a little more historical authenticity, jus' like we talked about before. I’ve re-watched the Dolemite series to put me in the proper frame of mind to accurately portray this forgotten hero of Japanese history, and I've also re-watched a buncha “Good Times” episodes with Jimmie Walker. The only real problem is the dread locks--I cringe every time I look in the mirror and don’t see my trademark impeccably groomed ‘do but do see Manny Ramirez/Bobby Marley starin’ back at me.

OK: Why do you suppose that widely acclaimed Japanese samurai film connoisseurs, such as Patrick Galloway, refuse to acknowledge your work?

Brick: Patrick who? Ya mean that fashion plate in black socks and sandals that lurks around the back lot sometimes and has to be chased off by the Studio's Mall Cop? Well, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that movie reviewers dislike anythin’ that supposedly disturbs the ‘purity’ of the films they love. The disdain for the Brickster is no different than that shown for Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. Add to that the fact that most of these guys can’t speak Japanese and can’t get subtitled copies of my films, and I don’t stand a chance. But who cares? The Japanese love ‘em, and they’re the ones buyin’ tickets and DVD’s. When Japanese women are lookin’ for a spicy film to heat up their day while their husbands are at work, it’s a good bet from schoolgirl to obaa that they’re usin’ their tremblin’ hands to insert the Brickster into their DVD player.

Now, as to Pat personally, while he’s got a serious case of HUA when it comes to my films, I think he’s a great guy. His books have tipped me off to a lot of classics I might have otherwise missed, and unlike some critics he gives B movies the same respect he shows A movies. And he sends me photos of Reiko-chan, so he’s O-tay by me. Benji, don’t he have a new book comin’ out in a coupla weeks? I’d buy it, but I’m sure I’ll be gettin’ a complimentary copy in the mail any day now.

OK: You’ll have to wait for that book from Pat. Publication’s been delayed and I don’t think he’ll be sending you anything after what you just said about his fashion sense. What would your 'dream project' be, if you had an unlimited budget and complete creative control?

Brick: Well, that would be a full length (yuk, yuk) production of the unabridged Tale of Genji with me in the title role. I mean, when smooth-talkin' cultured and educated womanizin' horn dogs are brought up, my name is always first out of the gate with the ladies of Japan. It's a natural!

Even though it wouldn't be an historical epic, I'd also like to get the starrin' role in the film adaptation of Lian Hearn's Tales Of The Otori. I'm talkin' of course, about the role of the naughty warlord Iida Sadamu. Now, of course, there'd have to be a few minor adjustments made to the script to accommodate the Brickster. Fer example, Kaede would have to turn on Takeo and put his head on a spike outside Iida's castle. Nobody would ever believe a hot babe like Kaede would prefer a wuss like Takeo over the roguish charm of Iida as performed by me. One'a those SMAP guys would be perfect for the role of Takeo, and nobody'd miss him when he got offed. We could then end the film with a rousin' pillow fight between Iida and Kaede. I think it'd be the perfect vehicle to introduce the Brickster to Western filmgoers.

Hey Benji, I gots a question for you if you feel up to it. Whatever happened to that Lt. Boomer guy and Mr. Dorka? They were two of my fav’rites on the SA.

OK: You mean Msr. Iaidoka, and Domer, right? Domer supposedly got in trouble with his wife when she walked in on him stripped down to his boxers and wearing 3D glasses while watching some of your movies with a big bowl of popcorn. As for Iaidoka, I don’t know. Well, anyway, Brick, it’s been a real pleasure. Good luck with the films and we’ll see you on the small screen.

Brick: You bet. Thanks. By the way, can you spot me 1,000 yen? I’m feelin' thirsty and need another cold one after talkin' with you.

OK: You’ve got to be kidding, right?

Brick: About bein' thirsty? Never, big guy. Come on, Benji, you ‘kin add it to my tab of bar bills that you’ve been coverin' for me.

Due to the rumors that started to swirl earlier this week about noted historian and author Anthony J. Bryant having a cameo role in the upcoming bio-epic Yasuke, I felt it was necessary to call up Brick and ask a follow-on question about this, as Mr. Bryant is being a little coy.

OK: We've heard recently that historian and SA member Anthony Bryant has been offered a walk-on role in Yasuke. There seems to be some confusion in fandom over what part he's actually going to be playing. Can you shed any light on this matter?

Brick: Well, A.J. was originally slated to play the role of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki-but he was cast sight unseen. When he showed up on the set, the gal who's our castin' director got one look at his legs and decided he'd be perfect for the role of Shiz-he-ka, the evil shirabyōshi dancer. Imagine my surprise! Looks like it was a good career mood for Lord Effin'ham, since the Brickster hears he's slated to be part of the next round of "Dancing With The Stars" on American TV.

Mitsuo....err, Sharpe's? "Samurai Battles"

Usually I don’t like to post negative reviews-I’d much rather feature a good book that others might enjoy and find useful than waste time dwelling on a failed effort. However, sometimes circumstances dictate that a sub par release be drug into the spotlight. That’s why I’m writing about the recent highly anticipated ‘Samurai Battles’ by Mitsuo Kure. Because, you see, ‘Samurai Battles’ isn’t written by Mitsuo Kure at all (despite what the Amazon listing and the publisher Chartwell’s catalog say). Kure’s name never turns up once-as a picture credit, a footnote source, or an acknowledgement. Instead, it turns out that one Michael Sharpe was substituted for Kure at the last minute as author of the title. Who’s Michael Sharpe, you might ask? He’s described as an English teacher living in Japan (which in and of itself is a red flag) and a writer of several books on World War II (which, of course, makes him an expert on pre-modern Japanese history…uh-huh). Sharpe is also the author of ‘Samurai Leaders’, a book so far under the radar that it only came to the Samurai Archives’ attention when one of the board members found it for a couple of bucks on the closeout table at a bookstore. Interestingly enough, that book is also listed as being written by Mitsuo Kure and he had nothing to do with it either. Samurai Leaders was a poor effort, and as we shall see many of its problems were transferred directly to ‘Samurai Battles’. It’s unknown why publishers Chartwell and Compendium are listing Sharpe’s books under Kure’s name. Perhaps Kure pulled out and Sharpe was brought in at the last minute to do a quick fix, but that’s nothing more than idle speculation. At any rate, allowing this book to continue to be listed under Kure’s name is fraudulent and misleading. It could be forgiven if the work in question ended up being well done-but sadly, that’s not the case here. ‘Samurai Battles’ is a pretty straightforward account of 700 years of samurai warfare-roughly 1180 to 1877, although several earlier conflicts are mentioned. There isn’t much in the way of critical thought or analysis-so little that the accounts reminded me of Wikipedia entries. In fact, a comparison of the chapter on the Genpei war with Wikipedia shows that the two tally point by point-they’re not word for word, but I suspect that the similarities are more than coincidental. The information in the book is several years behind the current state of scholarship. For example, Tedorigawa is described as being a major battle between the Uesugi and Oda involving well over 50,000 men-an account that hatched out of a fanciful desire of the Japanese General Staff’s desire to produce an impressive looking ‘official military history’ in the 1890’s. It’s now largely accepted that the battle was a minor rearguard action involving less than 2000 troops. Likewise, Edo period legends are accepted as fact (such as the story of Akechi Mitsuhide’s mother being put to death as retaliation for Oda Nobunaga’s execution of two envoys). Many accounts leave the reader with mistaken impressions-after reading the description of Mikata-ga-hara, one would be left thinking that the Takeda army was decimated and in tatters after the battle rather than having just steamrolled the Tokugawa. And in many places, ‘Samurai Battles’ is just plain wrong-such as stating that cannon were in widespread use in Japan by 1582, and Kawanakajima is described as a naval battle. The layout of the book is puzzling-although it seemingly is trying to follow a timeline, it places the chapter on Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea (1592-98) after the chapter on Sekigahara (1600). Glaring omissions abound-despite the claims of covering warfare from 1180 to 1877, the Osaka campaigns (1614-15) and the Shimabara Rebellion (1638) are absent. That’s like writing a book on the history of battles in the United States and leaving out World War II.

As far as sources, there is no bibliography, but each chapter has endnotes with sources. Some of the sources are from well regarded scholars such as Thomas Conlan or Karl Friday, but one has to wonder if the author has actually read these works or just ‘borrowed’ their citation from footnotes on Wikipedia (which seems to be the case). Otherwise, only articles available for free on the net or the most general surveys (such as Turnbull’s ‘War in Japan’) are used. Many times, one single work seems to be the basis for an entire chapter. Thus, we are subjected to the poorly formulated and highly biased articles of Kenneth Swope as the foundation for the chapter on the Korean invasions. Not mentioned are easily available popular sources on the invasions such as Turnbull’s two books on the war, Admiral Yi’s memoirs or diaries, ‘The Book of Corrections’, or Samuel Hawley’s excellent ‘Imjin War’, all of which leave Swope’s efforts looking like the work of an embittered teenager not invited to the dance.

Usually, most coffee table books of this type can garner at least a token recommendation on the basis of a plethora of pictures, maps, photos, and woodcut reproductions. But ‘Samurai Battles’ botches this, too. Many of the shots are poor reproductions and badly blurred. Even worse, many of the images have incorrect captions that clearly have nothing to do with what is being depicted. A famous print of (Taira) Noto no Kami Noritsune and Minamota Yoshitsune at the battle of Dan-no-Ura is captioned as being ‘Tajima the Arrow Cutter’ at the battle of Uji. A detail of the Anegawa battle screen is said to be Tokugawa Ieyasu at the battle of Sekigahara. A print of the famous ‘race across the river’ by two horsemen at the second battle of Uji is captioned as Minamoto Yorimasa from the first battle years earlier. And a print of Nasu no Yoichi shooting the Taira fan at the battle of Yashima is said to be Taira Masakado! Even some of the ‘correct’ captions are lagging behind on scholarship, since they go with the old identifications of works that have been reattributed (such as the scroll painting of Ashikaga Takauji on the back cover, which is now thought to be one of his vassals). Some captions just leave one wondering-a print of the 4th battle of Kawanakajima is identified as such, but also contains totally unrelated text about the effect of Korean and Chinese culture on Japan over a thousand years before the battle was fought. What makes all this even more unforgivable is that these are the SAME EXACT BLURRY AND MISCAPTIONED SHOTS USED IN ‘SAMURAI LEADERS’. The strategic and battle maps in the book are well done, but upon closer examination proved to have been copied from Turnbull’s ‘Samurai Sourcebook’, Sansom’s ‘History Of Japan’, and Solum’s ‘Saga Of The Samurai’. They’re more colorful, but there’s no doubt where they were ‘borrowed’ (and I use the word loosely) from. And yes, they have errors too-the most obvious being the forces of the Western and Eastern armies being reversed in the Sekigahara campaign map.

In summary, there’s little here for either neophytes or scholars. Don’t be fooled by the eye-catching cover. Perhaps someday Kure will indeed write a ‘Samurai Battles’ book, and I’ll be looking forward to it-but my advice to all would be to avoid the Sharpe version at all costs.

On Board With Dan Free, Author Of 'Early Japanese Railways'

Author Dan Free of "Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914: Engineering Triumphs That Transformed Meiji-era Japan" (released by Tuttle Publishing and available through the SA-Amazon Store) received a graduate degree in law from George Washington University in Washington, DC as well as an undergraduate degree in French (with a dual minor in German and Italian) from Ohio State University. He's also studied Japanese and Korean. Dan has traveled extensively in Japan, China, Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Nepal, Myanmar, and Thailand. Early Japanese Railways represents the culmination of 25 years of research on Dan's part and is a comprehensive work tailored to both scholars and casual readers (see the SA review below this interview). In the following interview, SA is the Samurai-Archives and DF is Dan Free.

SA: Mr. Free, thanks for taking time to speak with the Samurai Archives. What factors led you to develop an interest in railroads, and Asian railroads in particular? Did your curiosity predate your discovery of the documents submitted in 1904 to 'The Locomotive Magazine' by Kashima Shosuke?

DF: I grew up in a time when the prospect of air travel was beyond the means of most people I knew, and a train or ocean liner journey provided the early image of what travel was meant to be - trains that offered staterooms that converted from seats into your bed at night, after you'd returned from the dining car and a full day watching mountains roll by under a glass dome set in the top of a passenger car - or at least that was how it was presented, and the concept seemed good enough to me as a child. So I was intrigued by railways out of wanderlust, I suppose.
My interest in Asian railways came considerably later as an adult. I had been an admirer of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, one of the great engineering geniuses of the first half of the 19th Century, and was in touch with several antiquarian book dealers in the UK specializing in railways and engineering to obtain materials on his Great Western Railway. By off-chance I ran across a packet of materials on turn-of-the-century Japanese railways among the stock of one of them. I'd been interested in East Asian culture generally since my teens and had by that time started a miserably small collection of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, so that packet was a curiosity that combined two of my interests. The lot turned out to be the Kashima Shosuke submissions, and of course those materials arrived a whole set of questions in tow and started a chain-reaction that two decades later led to the book.

SA: The book features a nice blend of power politics, tech, and cultural impact. Was this a conscious decision on your part to make it more accessible to a general audience?

DF: Yes. I realized that this was a classic example of a "niche market" book and that I had three constituents who might be interested: general readers with an interest in Asian history or culture, railfans, and scholars, and the trick would be to find the appropriate balance to please all three in order to appeal to as broad a market as possible. It was a bit like trying to find where the proper place to hit would be in a bull's-eye target that looked like a circle surrounding a three-point star. I never had any intent to produce something along the lines of the "Romance of the Orient Express" style coffee table books you find in a big-box bookstore, so I had planned to weight the book more heavily on a technical/scholarly bias, but as I got involved in the actual process of writing, realized that while an East Asian studies major would be conversant with the "railway colonialism" of the 19th Century, he or she wouldn't necessarily appreciate railway economics or engineering points and that a railway aficionado might have little if any grounding in Japanese history, and so on. So I found that I had to be sensitive to making sure issues and facts that I sometimes take for granted were put in proper context, at the risk of losing some readers' interest.

SA: The Tokugawa Shogunate granted the United States the first railway concession in Japan in early 1868-a short line from Yokohoma to Edo. However, after the Shogunate was ousted from power, the Meiji government refused to recognize the grant although they had agreed to assume all international agreements made by the Bakufu. Why was this done and how did the Japanese go about nullifying it?

DF: I think the ultimate reason that doomed the American efforts was the Japanese Government's fear of foreign control and the potential exposure to the dangers of colonization that was inherent in the Bakufu's concession, which envisioned that the projected line would be foreign-owned and operated. The new government hinted at this in its insistence that the line be built as an undertaking of the Japanese people - I forget the exact words. What was presented on its face as a matter of national pride and honor actually was masking the fear of colonization that was the chronic bête noire for the new Meiji government's policy makers. They couched matters this way for positive spin, as it was naturally not a subject openly discussed with their Western counterparts. The Japanese at the time had to play a very careful and delicate game of playing one power off against the other, all the while not becoming too dependent on any one of the powers at their doorstep. At bottom line, the Japanese government saw it as too big a step down the slippery slope of endangering the survival of an independent Japan. What I find intriguing and unanswered is why the American Resident Minister Van Valkenburg, his successor DeLong, and the Deputy Secretary of Legation Portman didn't actively push the concept of a compromise where the American government would agree to Japan financing (through American banks or markets or by its own means) and owning the railway, but build it using American equipment and technical advisors, which is, after all, how the project ultimately was structured with the British. We know that in the course of the negotiations the Japanese foreign minister offered to trade the railway concession for some other thing of value to the Americans, but no one at the American Legation seemed to have taken this as an opening to explore restructuring the terms of the grant to calm Japanese fears, while still salvaging a potential for American involvement as the source of equipment and technical advise.

SA: The early decision made by the Meiji government to adopt a smaller rail gauge (3' 6") for their system than was generally used worldwide (4' 8 1/2") was to have far reaching consequences. How might the Japanese rail industry have developed differently had they used the Western standard?

DF: The ramifications of that decision - and who actually made it is still not a settled point of history - are still rippling today, and the "what-if" scenario for the Japanese rail industry is timely. The three factors of the opening of access to the Trans-Siberian Railway to external shippers with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the increased cost of petro-fuels, and the hazards of piracy off the Horn of Africa on the main Asia-Europe sea route have all combined to make the prospect of shipping Japanese goods to the markets of Europe by rail not only within the realm of feasibility, but increasingly attractive. China and Korea's railways are fortuitously both built to the standard gauge of 4' 8 ½“ used in almost all of Europe, and the US for that matter. And the simplest route would be across the narrow strait dividing Japan from Korea, then to China for transit through Manchuria, and on to Europe via the Trans-Siberian. There would be a notable time savings over the ocean route, and there would be a dramatic savings in fuel cost compared to a land route using conventional trucking. The problem of North Korea is an obvious stumbling block in such a scheme, but North Korea could be by-passed by rail-car laden ferries calling at Chinese ports, and Dalian or Lushun come to mind immediately. The Russian gauge of 5' is close enough to Europe's, China's, and Korea's that adjustable wheelsets could be devised for the railcars to handle the 3 ½ inch difference. This has been done for trains changing gauge at the Franco-Spanish border where there’s a break in gauge. But the gauge of Japan’s freight railway system is an obstacle. While the Shinkansen “Bullet Train” system has been built to the worldwide standard of 4’ 8 ½", freight traffic is still confined to the old 3' 6" gauge network, and for safety reasons, it isn't smart to have slow-moving freight trains moving in and out of passing sidings on a high-speed passenger network that is already congested enough. If you add one more "what-if", the equation becomes even more intriguing. What if Japan's colonial administration of Korea had been much more benign and focused on assisting Korea in attaining early independence rather than absorption into the Japanese state such that the two nations were now friendlier and on more trusting terms today? At some 33 miles, Japan's Seikan tunnel linking Hokkaido with the mainland is the world's longest undersea tunnel, beating the Channel Tunnel by a couple of miles, yet few people in the West are even aware of the fact that it exists. The Strait of Tsushima that divides Korea and Japan is only about 100 miles wide, conveniently interrupted roughly mid-way by the island of Tsushima. If Japan and Korea had had a less acrimonious history that now haunts them, and Japan had adopted "Standard Gauge", would we be reading press releases today about construction of an undersea tunnel linking the two nations, the prospect of shipping Japanese goods to Europe via the Trans-Siberian, and the possibility of stepping onto a Bullet Train in Tokyo bound for Seoul?
The other side of the coin is the fact that it was the congestion and inadequacies of the Japanese narrow gauge lines that gave rise to the decision to build an entirely new network fresh from the ground up in the 1950s that came to be the Shinkansen or "Bullet Train" network. It was a very bold step when taken and hand-in-glove with it came the decision to be bold when planning for high speeds. If Japan had an existing Standard Gauge network in place, it is possible that a much more timid and budget-conscious approach might have been taken to traffic congestion problems in the 50s, and rather than a solution resulting in the so-called Bullet Trains, it might have been much easier and less risky to have simply quadruple-tracked the existing lines and use conventional trains.

SA: As you point out in the book, the Japanese armed forces were generally opposed to the early rounds of rail construction (citing foreign influences, clashes over budget allocations, and conflicts over the use of land controlled by the military). What in your opinion was the turning point that brought them 'on board', so to speak, becoming enthusiastic backers of the railroads and increasingly involved with the planning behind them?

DF: I think the point was driven home in a two stage process, and as often seems to be the case, not because the concept carried the day in principle, but because railways were put to the two separate "acid tests", didn't fail, and actually made the job of logistics easier for the military. This latter point seems absurdly obvious today, but there were deeply reactionary skeptics among the military in Japan in the early Meiji era who doubted that privately owned railways would be capable of coordinating transport and supply movements of such magnitude and could be - or ought to be - relied upon in times of national emergency. It was a concern of the era that wasn't unique just to Japan. The mid- to late 19th Century was a time when a spirited polemic was swirling in Europe and the US on just that point, when the state-owned systems of Russia, France, and Prussia/Germany were often cited as examples giving those nations a military edge in time of war over the UK and US with their publicly owned and operated systems. There were only about 65 miles of railway lines in Japan at the time of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, in two segments no less that were not even inter-connected. What support they provided was undoubtedly a welcome "nicety", but this probably served enough of a purpose to make more forward-thinking minds take note and enough to end the days of real, active opposition. But there was still a lingering concern among military thinkers that Japanese railways could be captured by invading powers and used against the Japanese. To the extent there was an actual "Eureka Moment" then it would have to be the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Here was Japan, "little Japan" to paraphrase some of the commentators of the day, taking on China, the most powerful nation in Asia for century upon century. The Japanese railway network at that point stretched from Hokkaido in the north, down the entire length of the main island Honshu, with transversal lines accessing both coasts along the way, to Hiroshima, and had also reached into Kyushu. Out of necessity, the military discovered that the Government and publicly owned railways that formed the system could indeed coordinate their movements and sustain heavy transportation of critical resources and troops from almost every corner of the nation to ports of embarkation in southern and western Japan at levels never before attainable in Japan. China on the other hand had only one rail line, from Beijing to just beyond Shanhaigun, where the Great Wall met the sea in Manchuria, and precious few of its resources and troops from its vast interiors could be brought to the theatre of war as quickly and easily as Japan was able to, thanks in large part domestically to Japan's rail system. By the war's conclusion, the military thinkers had been converted almost en masse and they could barely contain their eagerness to be involved more closely in state policy and regulatory matters concerning railways.

SA: One of the more interesting side stories in the book deals with 'Jinsha Tetsudo', or human powered railroads. These non-mining railways literally used manpower to push small railcars to local destinations, although the distances on some lines featured impressive levels of mileage. Were these unique to Japan, or did the Jinsha Tetsudo have parallels in other industrialized countries?

DF: The key to this were two facts: Japan was horse-poor and Japan was capital-poor. There are any number of examples in both Europe and America, when a nation was in the infancy of its industrial development, of railways initially being horse-drawn - in fact in the early 1830s almost every nation that started building railways had tried it. Horses used to draw trains up what is now Park Avenue in New York City before the tracks were built under it, for fear passing steam locomotives would scare the horses in other traffic. But horses were a scarce and expensive commodity in mid-19th century Japan. On the other hand, human labor was cheap and plentiful. Japan simply borrowed a page from the industrial revolution playbook that had gone out of vogue in the West by, say 1839 or so, and with the usual Japanese ingenuity, adapted it to its own purposes. If the horses for hansom cabs or hacks like there were in London, Paris, Berlin or New York are too scarce and expensive, then we'll create the rickshaw. If we can't afford an expensive steam locomotive imported from England, or even horses imported by way of British India or California, then we'll make do with a railway powered by human runners - and that was the solution hit upon by small, rural railways serving villages where the traffic potential would never have justified the outlay for a stable of steam locomotives. So, while the concept was uniquely Japanese in inspiration, it was based on horse-drawn antecedents from the earlier days of the industrial revolution. As far as other Western industrialized countries go, I know of no man-powered railways that ever existed - it was cheaper in the long run in the US and Europe to buy and feed a horse than to pay a crew of men. But by the time Japan had become a colonizing power and raised its standard of living to the point where the Jinsha Tetsudo's days were numbered domestically, it built other examples of the Jinsha Tetsudo in both Korea and Taiwan - again, two countries where horses were scarce and expensive and where there was cheap and plentiful labor.

SA: While the railways were best known for their role in economic development and military matters, they also had a major impact on the common people as the rail net slowly tied together every province of Japan. How was the life of an average Japanese citizen enhanced by this new technology?

DF: In ways no less that it did in America or Europe. This is where certain universal principles of what railways have done globally for the world's standard of living start to become clear, but the most profound change in Japan was in large part unfelt, in the "social safety net" it provided. Many country folk in Japan at the dawn of the Meiji era were living at close to a subsistence level. Imagine trying to feed a population with emergency food supplies in times of famine or natural disaster using porters and the occasional pack horse or ox as transport, and imagine that many of the backcountry roads were so narrow that traffic had to go single file along some stretches. That was the situation before railways. As railway stations opened, medicines not readily attainable in small towns came to be distributed more easily, and canned food as well. Specialized tools or other items not yet manufactured in Japan became more easily available. Ideas spread as the people who brought them were able to travel. Journalism grew as newspaper circulation increased due to railways handling of mail, newspaper, and parcel services, and with that, the seeds of a modern public opinion started to sprout. The possibility of shipment of fresh food in from outlying agricultural areas meant cities were able to sustain larger populations, who arrived from smaller towns by rail to take the jobs being offered by the new industrialization starting to take root. The list goes on...

SA: What type of adaptations did the Japanese make in the locomotives and rolling stock built for them by the British, Americans, and Germans? Were there any unique contributions made to railroad technology by Japanese designers? In your opinion, what was the most successful Japanese-built locomotive design of the pre-WWI era?

DF: There were few notable ones in the Meiji era, other than small modifications. Much rolling stock tended to be ordered from Western manufacturers "straight from the catalogue" and not special-ordered, to keep cost low. The first Meiji adaptation that comes to mind is that seats on domestic-built passenger cars in those times were often made deeper, so that a person could sit cross-legged in traditional Japanese style. Freight train cabooses or brake vans were seen as additional expense items for many railways during the Meiji era, so costs were saved by building a small cabin in box cars for the brakeman to ride in. You'll also notice in many of the photographs in the book that the cylinders that drove the connecting rods and cranks on locomotives were often inclined on an angle, which is much less prevalent in British, German or American steam locomotives of the day. This was done in part to give the front wheels added lateral clearance on the tight curves used on some of the narrow gauge lines and due to the tight loading gauge originally used in Japan. Of course, one of the most lasting adaptations, not to locomotives or rolling stock but to railway passenger operations, was the creation of the ekiben - the pre-packaged box lunch still sold in stations today. The truly revolutionary contributions Japanese designers were to make to railway technology would have to wait for the 1960s when they showed the world what the future of railway passenger transportation could be with the Shinkansen network. As far as the most successful pre-WWI era design, this was undoubtedly the 9600 class locomotive, which was introduced just before your cut-off point. They were initially intended as slow speed heavy freight locomotives or mountain helper units, but proved to be very serviceable Jack-of-All-Trades and lasted to the very end of steam in Japan.

SA: As they are wont to do, the Japanese rapidly conquered the basics of railroad construction, phased out the foreign experts they had employed to help get them started, and began to set themselves up as exporters of rail technology to other locations in Asia. Did the Japanese model of exported rail construction differ significantly from, say, Britain's? Was it perhaps more suited to the tighter budgets and economic conditions found in China and Korea?

DF: On lines like the former "Swatow - Chaochowfu Railway" in southern China, where Chinese administrators and investors hired the Japanese to serve as engineers, supply the equipment and rolling stock, and staff operations, they could be very cost-conscious, yes. On lines like the South Manchurian Railway, where national prestige was an issue because the line was one of the prizes of the Russo-Japanese War, and where there was a hidden political agenda in play, the Japanese built boldly, solidly, and to top quality, but seldom squandered resources on unnecessary extravagances.

SA: Early Japanese Railways features an impressive display of period woodblock prints, photographs, postcards, advertising materials, timetables, and other visual aids-all of which are owned by you. Please tell us about the various sources you've procured these items from. Many of the captions are quite detailed, far exceeding the level of detail seen in other books. Was it difficult to ‘place’ many of the photos both as to location and on a timeline?

DF: Any flea market, second hand bookstore, antique dealer, print gallery, post card collectors' convention, or antique fair became fair game. If I saw an old photo album at yard sale, I'd glance through it. It was something I came to be always on the look-out for. And yes there were quite a number of photos that presented challenges. One example is the photo of the first line of railway to be abandoned, which gave rise to a good bit of research to determine its route, in order to confirm that it ran alongside a river, as seen in the photo. A large number of the station photographs had to be checked to see whether the image was that of the first station building to be built, or a later replacement. The names of towns or stations could have changed, so I started to collect and buy any good Meiji or Taisho era atlas I could find to check route and right-of-way questions. The photo of the troops and horses at Muroran station gave me concern, as I suspected the uniforms might have been later in the WW I era. I had launched into researching Japanese military uniforms of the Russo-Japanese War and WW I before one of my correspondents in Japan was able to write that he had found an old newspaper article pin-pointing the troop movement in question to the Russo-Japanese War. Two of the photos ultimately not included in the book showed the aftermath of a railway yard and station after severe flooding, and while I felt fairly certain of the identity of the railway line, and could roughly guess an approximate date, there were no clues as to the name of the station. Again, several of my correspondents in Japan joined in the fun, and I can remember at one point we were attempting to guess the location based on which towns had a known pickle-producing industry in Meiji times, as there were numerous pickle barrels to be seen on the loading platforms or scattered about as débris in the photos. We never did succeed in pinpointing the station. Other times, information fell into my lap like ripe fruit. While I was researching a totally different issue, I unexpectedly ran across a reference to the date Otaru harbor improvements were made, which permitted me to give an approximate date to the photo of the hoisting gantry and construction locomotive on the breakwater being built in the harbor there.

SA: During your extensive research done for the book, did you run across any information that surprised you or challenged any pre-conceptions you might have had?

DF: I was surprised when I found the official US diplomatic correspondence that surrounded the original Tokugawa railway grant. Most of the other histories I had read rarely mentioned Anton Portman, and most failed to mention that he was the deputy chief of the US legation. I suspected that if there were anything of worth to be found in the official diplomatic records, some historian before me had already been there, and the fact that there was nothing of note mentioned in the histories I had read was an indicator that there would be nothing to be found in the diplomatic dispatches. So I was amazed when I found the materials emanating from the US Legation in Tokyo. I had started the book with the notion, obtained from British commentators and Japanese writers in English of the late 19th / early 20th Century period, that the breakdown of the Horatio Nelson Lay financial arrangements was something of an "unfortunate but innocent amicable misunderstanding." After I had obtained the US diplomatic materials, saw who was involved on the Japanese side, worked them into the existing timeline, and realized their import, I started to look more closely at the career of Mr. Lay, and came away convinced that there was a darker side to things - and that perhaps the British and Japanese writers of that era were being more circumspect in what they wrote out of a desire to gloss over past difficulties and put recent unpleasant dealings behind them. I was well along in later chapters of the book when I found those materials and I knew immediately that the first chapters would have to be substantially re-written. I think mine is the first book in English to bring this information to light.

SA: You submitted your manuscript to Japanese rail historian Dr. Aoki Eiichi for review. Did any major changes arise from this or it was it more of a 'fine tuning' process?

DF: Dr. Aoki's review didn't result in major changes, no. What it did result in was the usual number of "fine tuning" corrections, as you said, but more importantly the addition of a very generous amount of additional details and encouraging suggestions as to where I might add more exposition that would be worthwhile. Dr. Aoki was unbelievably kind in adding some notes that fleshed out additional names and dates and added elements of interest.

SA: What other books might you recommend to readers looking for more on the subject of the Japanese railroad industry? Are you currently working on any other projects?

DF: For English-language books, two come immediately to mind. The first is "A History of Japanese Railways 1872 - 1999", a collaborative effort in English by Prof. Aoki, Mitsuhide Imashiro, Shinichi Kato, and Yasuo Wakuda, East Japan Railway Cultural Foundation, 2000, ISBN 4-87513-089-9 and well worth having. The second is the Harvard monograph of Prof. Steven Ericson, "The Sound of the Whistle", Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1996, ISBN 0-674-82167-X which details the history of finance and state policy decision making concerning railways in the Meiji era far better that I could ever have done. For those who read Japanese, the ultimate is Japan National Railways' ten-volume official history which was produced in 1972 on the hundredth anniversary of railways in Japan, now unfortunately out of print and increasingly hard to come by even in Japan. For modern railways, Prof. Christopher Hood has produced a timely volume titled "Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan", Routledge, 2007, ISBN 0415444098. To answer your second question, yes, I've turned my attention to China and have started work on a companion volume on railways there before 1914.

SA: Thanks, Mr. Free-it's been a real pleasure speaking with you.

Early Japanese Railways 1853-1914: Engineering Triumphs That Transformed Meiji-era Japan

When we received Early Japanese Railways by Dan Free, we weren't quite sure what to expect. Would this oversized 288 page book be a tech-heavy examination of the nuts, bolts, and hardware involved in railroad building, heavy on the industrial jargon and light on history? Perhaps an examination of the cultural, economic, and political implications that the railways had on Japan? A collection of anecdotes and travel diaries? A coffee table book backloaded with photos and prints? Well, after an in-depth examination, it seems that Free has managed to pull off something special-a book that combines all of the above features and manages to do them justice. It's an impressively well written and even more meticulously researched work that Free has spent 25 years working towards, and a welcome new addition from Tuttle Publishing.

The book begins by dividing the timeline up into themed chapters: The Introduction Of Railway Technology (including the initial rail concession by the Tokugawa Shogunate to the United States), Intrigue, Influence, and Incompetence (the early days of British dominance of the Japanese rail industry and the planning phase of the Meiji rails), Building the First Railway (Yokohama to Shimbashi in Tokyo), Kobe To Kyoto (the first rails in central Japan), Otsu, Tsuruga, Nagahama and East to the Nobi Plain (as the network becomes more connected), Expanding and Integrating the System (more of the same), The Second Railway Mania and the Russo-Japanese War, Nationalization and Self-sufficiency, and Tokyo Station (the final link in a rail system stretching from the north of Hokkaido to the south of Kyushu). Particularly interesting to Samurai-Archives readers will be the early chapters where the political double-dealings and diplomatic blunders committed by both the Japanese and Western powers are laid out in impressive detail.

For instance, the Shogunate's rail concession to the United States (although legally binding to the Meiji government) was seen as something to be negated by the former enemies of the Tokugawa who now found themselves in power. Using the time honored Japanese techniques of stalling, failing to reply to diplomatic requests, and not addressing any of the real issues when a reply was given, the Japanese diplomat Sawa Nobuyoshi ran rings around American diplomat Charles DeLong, taking full advantage of his inexperience in the world of international relations. Instead, seasoned politico Harry Parkes of Great Britain managed to maneuver his country into overseeing and supplying (at great benefit to the coffers of English businessmen) the embryonic Japanese rail industry. Closely tied to this are the examinations of the effect of railways on the Japanese economy, and how it in turn aided the rapid development of other industries. Initially relying on foreign suppliers and engineers (not to mention cash strapped by the extravagance of British construction methods), the development of Japanese engineering and the eventual replacement of foreign experts and suppliers by 'home-grown' ones shows that the long term goal of 'sonno-joi' activists years before actually did see the light of day. In fact, Japan turned the tables, being a major exporter of rail expertise and supplies to its Asian neighbors. It's also shown how the former samurai class managed to stay among the ranks of the elite by using their government buyouts to become one of the biggest investors in railroads. The hand in hand relationship of Japanese industry with the government is shown in the switch from a national railway system to private industry and back again. The increasing dominance of the military in the political sphere can be seen by the growing influence of the army in rail planning decisions.

The effects on the culture of Japan are well documented as well. A national network of rail lines that connected every province had wide reaching repercussions, encouraging travel, trade, and nationalism. Electric lines, tram cars, and the fascinating Jinsha Tetsudo (commercially viable railways operated by manpower) are also examined in detail. Many of Japan's hot springs became famous during this era as these low cost options made them accessible to everyone. With railways and industrialization came more disposable income and a higher standard of living for the Japanese people. The special 'Imperial Trains' of the Meiji Emperor are also given a detailed examination. When the text threatens to become bogged down with facts and details, Free is always ready with an amusing story to break things up. Whether it's a fussy English traveler's complaints about trainboard amenities, early field surveys being thrown off by the refusal of samurai to remove their swords (the metal threw off the calibrations of the instruments being used), or former American President U. S. Grant being chased down a corridor of Shimbashi station in 1878 by a crowd of girls (seems Grant was the Brick McBurly of his day), Free never forgets the human side of railway development.

That's not to say there isn't plenty of technical information. Free has done his homework and if you want to know what company built what line, where it ran to, what the rail gauge was, what their company shamon looked like (along with the visual puns on kanji they incorporated), the arrangement of the running lights, the technical specifications for the locomotives and rolling stock, numbering schemes, and virtually anything else, it's a good bet you'll find it within these pages. Free has taken care not to let the hard information dominate the book, as much of this is related in picture captions and in the amazing compendium of information in the book's appendix (which also includes a helpful list of 'Dramatis Personae' with short biographies of the major players, a Japanese railway/geography lexicon with kanji, and notable documents pertaining to the rails in the political arena). That being said, one area that the book falls short in was not including a simple line drawing of a representative locomotive with rolling stock labelling the different parts of the machinery with an explanation of each part's function. As the book is aimed at a general as well as a scholarly audience, many readers will be in the dark about what many of the things being talked about mean. While most readers will eventually come to know what a '4-4-0' locomotive is, they'll be left scratching their head the first time they see it. Overall, though, Free does a good job of explaining the evolution of locomotive design and also the differences in the British, American, German, and (later) Japanese designs that were used.

The book would be perfectly capable of standing on its own as a picture book. It is loaded with quality photos and prints, both in color and sepia. Free gives these the same care he shows the rest of the book, with detailed captions pointing out things going on in the photographs that are easily missed. Any train enthusiast would be thrilled to have this book on the basis of the images and the appendix alone.

Finally, the quality of the writing and the research behind it is superb. The bibliography, although containing only a handful of Japanese works, is extensive. Free submitted his manuscript to Aoki Eiichi (famous Japanese rail historian) for review and comments, and solicited help in securing information from many museums and individuals within Japan. Unlike many books aimed at a general readership, you'll find few, if any, factual errors within its pages. How meticulous is Free? So meticulous that his book listing on Tuttle's website includes an errata page detailing the few grammatical errors made within (not that there are that many-you'll probably find more just within this review). If every author took the care that Free shows, there would be a lot less eye rolling on the Samurai Archives.

Whether one has a scholarly interest in the impact of railways on development of the Meiji era or enjoys being a dedicated 'train spotter', they'll find a lot within these covers to keep them busy. As we read through the book, it struck us that the history of the rail industry in the Meiji era was a metaphor for the country as a whole-a sentiment Free shares in his concluding remarks. "Few would be able to find a better-suited microcosm more emblematic of the development of the Japanese nation as a whole during the Meiji reign". Early Japanese Railways is a rare example of a work that combines technical excellence and a plethora of information with a lively writing style that always gives the human element its due. Combined with an excellent graphical presentation of hundreds of rare photographs, advertising material, timetables, maps, woodblock prints, and postcards, the book provides a fascinating glimpse of Japan as it moved from self-imposed seclusion to being the 'most Western of Eastern nations'.

Early Japanese Railways: 1853-1914 is available through Amazon at the Samurai Archives store HERE. We'll also be running an interview with the book's author, Dan Free, within the next month or so.