Review: Tarō

Blue Spruell, Tarō (Out of the Blue Productions 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57590409-taro?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=CrIcEVSzMv&rank=2

In Japanese families, Tarō is a sort of generic name for the eldest son, where Jirō is the second born and Saburō is the third, so one could think of a story about a boy named Tarō as a story about Everyboy.
Kintarō (Golden Boy) is the legend of an actual historical person, Sakata no Kintoki, a renowned samurai of the 10th century Heian Period, who became legendary as the chief of Minamoto no Yoritomo’s shitennō (four braves). Urashima Tarō is an 8th century fairy tale about a fisherman who is carried on the back of a giant sea turtle to the Dragon Palace under the sea where he is loved by the Princess Otohime. Momotarō (Peach Boy) is a fairy tale first written down in the 17th century about a boy born out of a giant peach.
Spruell borrows from these three traditional folk traditions, weaving the ‘three faces of Tarō’ (fictionally) into one archetypal boy, Takeda Shingen, who was a real person from the Sengoku (Warring States) period of the 16th century. This is an innovative literary device, and one I have not seen before.
The story opens on Tarō, on the occasion of his 7th birthday, being presented by his father Takeda Nobutora with a traditional wakizashi (short sword), before a pilgrimage to the shrine where they are ambushed and his father killed.
Competing daimyō (lords) vie for influence over the young emperor, and treachery is afoot. Along with Tanuki, his badger sidekick, Tarō enters into the service of Lord Tokugawa in Edo (now Tokyo) and enjoys his first bath, first kabuki play and an excursion to the ukiyo ‘floating world’ pleasure district. His eye is caught by Kamehime, the lovely daughter of the lord.
He enters into training as a samurai, surprised to find that his sparring partner is Kamehime. As well as wrestling, archery, sword and spear fighting Tarō learns the more spiritual lessons of bushidō. His tutor’s taunt, ‘You don’t know yourself, Tarō’, haunts him, and he learns that lesson (no spoilers) to his chagrin. His destiny now clear to him, he carries out one final mission, aided by his ability to talk to the animals. The final climax is exciting, a fictional retelling of the Battle of Sekigahara!
Exciting figures from Japanese history—Tokugawa Ieyasu, Oda Nobunaga, Hashiba Hideyoshi, Sen no Rikyū, Ikkō-Ikki warrior monks and castle wall-scaling ninja assassins—pop into a story peppered with magical creatures—a shape-shifting tanuki (badger), sumo-wrestling tengu (demons), a turtle-backed kappa, a rokurokubi monk with an elongated neck and a cave-dwelling yama uba (mountain witch) with an enchanted mirror. Spruell paints a colourful portrait of a fascinating period of Japan’s history, with just enough witches, goblins and shape-shifting talking animals to make the tale juicy. In the fight scenes, the author’s experience as a martial arts instructor is evident.
As a devout Japanophile, I devoured this book with relish. It’s gorgeously written and also beautifully illustrated. The borrowing from the Tarō folk traditions lend one to expect it to be for children or YA-targetted, but if so, it should have been shorter and the history/politics should have been simpler. It does feature a bit of gore and some adult topics, and some of the yōkai (ghosts/demons) of Japanese folk tradition are quite nightmarish. If intended to begin with for an adult readership, it could have featured the history/politics in more depth. Anyway, as an adult, I enjoyed it immensely, and I would read it to my children if they were older than about 10.
Tiny niggles were that the placing of Yama Uba’s magic mirror within the narrative is in places clumsy, and a late scene of Tanuki in the ukiyo seems superfluous.