Monday, May 29, 2017

Aoyama Gosho Special Interview Part 2 (The Crimson Love Letter)

This is a continuation of the interview I posted in the previous entry. You can find part 1 at the link below.

(I will be posting more from this special illustration book in the future. This is the end of the interview with Aoyama however.)

http://meitanteikonanplot.blogspot.jp/2017/05/aoyama-gosho-special-intervie-part-1.html


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--Notes--
*1 :  In a previous manga Aoyama drew called "Yaiba" there is a character named Souji Okita. In real life Okita Souji was the captain of the special police force in the Edo period known as the Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi was created by the Tokugawa Shogunate at a time when there was a threat that the government was going to be overthrown and the political system would change (the Meiji Restoration). The Shinsengumi were a group of skilled swordsman who where charged with cutting down radical "reformists", or in other words, people they saw as a threat to the Shogunate. They mainly operated in Kyoto. 
Shinsengumi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinsengumi
Souji Okita: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okita_S%C5%8Dji
Souji Okita first appeared in Detective Conan, being mentioned in Vol. 31 File 8, "The Swordsman of Naniwa," Naniwa being an old name for the Osaka region. (Episode 263 of the anime). He also made his first physical appeared recently in Files 990 to 993 (Weekly Shonen Sunday 2017, Vol. 17, 18, 20 and 21).

*2 : Vol. 28. Anime episode 222 to 224.

*3: Vol. 83. Anime episode 763 to 764.

*4: In the original Japanese version his assistant is speaking in an Osaka accent like Heiji.






Thursday, May 25, 2017

Aoyama Gosho Special Interview Part 1 (The Crimson Love Letter)

This is an interview with Gosho Aoyama about the new movie "The Crimson Love Letter," from the special illustration book "Hattori Heiji & Toyama Kazuha: Secret Archives." published May 13, 2017 by the Shogakukan. Part 2, and interviews with other cast member to come in the future.
**footnotes regarding the translation are added in text after the images at the bottom of this post. **

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*1:  Competitive Karuta, is a Japanese card game. "Karuta" is a Japanization of the Portuguese word "carta" which means "card". The Portuguese introduced playing cards to Japan in the 1500's. Competitive Karuta is called "Kyougi Karuta" in Japanese and is played with cards called "uta-garuta" ("uta" meaning "song" and "garuta" coming from "karuta"). The "uta-garuta" have poems written on them. So they are cards with "lyrical" poems written on them. There are 100 poems in total and they are known as "hyakunin isshu". They are waka poems by 100 different poets. The basic rules are that someone reads one of the poems and the two competing players try to be the first one to find the card with that poem written on it from the cards layed out in front of them. There are many videos on YouTube you can watch to see the game being played. Here is an example.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhLb7AklHWQ

 **Kinshiro Toyama was the alias of Toyama Kagemoto, a government official in the Edo period. Kinshiro Toyama ended up taking a position that used to belong to Ooka Tadasuke, who, because he was the governor of Echizen, was known as Ooka Echizen. These two characters, especially Toyama, have made many appearances in popular culture, and also famously in Kabuki Theater.

***The namesake of Ooka Momiji is actually from a drama called "Ooka Echizen". The characters in that drama are based on the real historical figures. In that drama there is also a character called Iori Sakakibara played by actor Muga Takewaki, hence the butler's name Muga Iori.