Ovy wrote:I made it through the thread, it was definitely entertaining and worth it, learned a lot there!
While my knowledge of Japanese history is very limited, in the last years I came to realize many Samurai were mostly crazy glorified psychos and bullies with way too much power, haha. Similar to European knights. Well it was a completely different mentality then, all that seppuku stuff going on in a real large cultish scale, scary and sad. While I read all of it, I didn't completely understand why a side 'chose' to be on the side they are on, as often it is just regional. But that war seemed really sad and pointless. Do you think these statues are more of a regional patriotism or does all of Japan celebrate them in general, even if they fought other Japanese, regardless of the site they were on?
Intresting insight about that Fukushima incident being a catalyst to making her known again, first thought that was just a coincidence, to be honest I might have never heard of Fukushima prior to the tsunami.
These annual event shows sound intresting, also never heard of those (no wonder if they want to keep them for themselves).
In Germany it is mostly crime, crime in another big city, crime in yet another less intresting city, crime with less saturated colors and more depressed police. And of course the occasional depressing World War 2 stuff. (I might exaggerate a bit, but not too much)
Btw, what happened to her first husband?
Regarding the figure building part, you made so many right decisions, pat yourself on the shoulder for that. Really love the kind of leather you used for arm and bag, it seems so thin. That leather arm sleeve gave me backflashes to something similar I built, with the finger loop etc.
The flower belt is also a great accent. Overall, all the lovely little details make this figure so complete.
The white background on the first photos makes it look like she is standing on a hill on a foggy autumn day. Actually experienced a similar look today while walking.
And I second blackpool about the tbleagues, they are far more than just figures to show seamless skin, their superior posability is revolutionary next generation stuff. Even if ALL skin on the joints might crack and rip some day, I think even a heavily damaged seamless one can still be more useful than a brand new plastic one. First thought you used the s16/17, which is also a great, less stylized body.
On the video, really love the 'freeze Frames' you had to do because of the restrictions, but restrictions make creative. That Band of Brothers intro somehow gave the whole show and the people in there a kind of dignity and respect whitout turning it into patriotic kitsch, if that makes sense, so it worked out absolutely great in your version.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful and comprehensive comments! I'm grateful for your appreciation and for noticing the details, because that's what ends up creating the whole.
Yes, for the leather I always try to find the thinnest leather available, and with ebay, it's relatively easy these days. When I did my Eowyn, I bought my piece from our local Michael's store, and while it was very thin, it was not nearly as thin as this leather I found, and it was in the right color too, a bonus! RE: the TBleagues, I tried a whole bunch, but ended up with the s23 which I had originally not wanted to use but it just turned out to fit the clothes the best.
About the history, I know a lot of people who share your view that the Samurai were glorified butchers, including many Japanese. But the culture as a whole now seems to venerate that past, now that over 150 years have passed since that era ended (when Yae's compatriots fought their last battle the following year in Hokkaido). Certainly at that time, their power and status greatly outstripped their usefulness, and they were ripe for being overthrown once the western world intruded and upended their society. I'm very ambivalent about the feudal era and about the Edo period in particular. The Confucian concepts that structured their social fabric coupled with their very own notions of honor, sincerity and loyalty do hold some appeal to me, especially since I grew up in a very similar culture. But the dark side is very dark and of course runs counter to our modern western notions of egalitarianism and opportunity.
The story and that war
was very sad, and rather pointless. They didn't "choose" to be on any side. They were completely duty bound to side with the Shogunate because their clan's lord was a descendant of the Tokugawa bloodline, and because any notion of violating that oath of loyalty and duty was anathema to this clan's very nature. Thousands had to die for this stubborn adherence to these concepts. The idea of being a rebel or traitor was worse than death itself, but the problem was that those terms kept changing until they were meaningless. Yesterday's heroes became tomorrow's traitors. That's the position Aizu found itself in.
The statues always start out as regional hero worship, but most Japanese appreciate them because they are almost always of martyrs who died for a cause they believed in, even if they took their own lives.
Finally, about her first husband: Kawasaki Shonosuke was much older than Yae (about her brother's age, so over 15 years older) and met her when she was something like 12 or 13. He was a good friend of her brother's from their "Dutch school" training days in Edo, and when her brother was promoted to artillery instructor he asked him to move to Aizu to become an instructor, but the elders were resistant to hiring him as an outsider. So he lived in a little room above their gunsmith shop at their house. Their marriage was mainly for convenience, so that he would have some status to be hired, and Yae would finally be married (she was virtually untouchable because of her total flouting of social norms as a woman who lived and breathed guns and ran around like a tomboy). But the show depicted them as an affectionate couple, so who knows?
What happened after the war was totally tragic. Most of the clan was banished to the far north of Japan, just south of Hokkaido, where they formed a new homeland (Tonami). Used to the lush farmland of Aizu, they were barely able to scratch out a living in the frozen north, and many died from starvation. Kawasaki was caught up in a rice deal scam, but because he did not want the clan to be stuck with a huge amount of debt, he accepted the blame for the deal and was sued for the money. The clan had to disown him to survive, and he died penniless of lung disease in Tokyo a few years later. Yae was not with him during any of this. When the men surrendered into captivity she had planned on joining them and suffering their fate (she assumed execution), but according to the show he exposed her as a woman at the last minute (presumably to save her life) and she was barred from joining them. She wandered the surrounding towns with her mother, sister-in-law and niece for about a year before joining her brother in Kyoto. When Kawasaki had his legal troubles, he unilaterally divorced her to spare her any involvement, and she had no idea what was going on. In the show, when she finally finds out she goes to see him and it is one of the most heartbreaking scenes I've ever watched. Who knows if it really happened, it was great TV! But he really did die in his forties of lung disease (TB or emphesema?) and when he died, it was discovered he was writing a "true" history of the Boshin war from Aizu's point of view. He was almost finished, and later, Yamakawa Okura (Yae's peer and an important Aizu leader) finished the history before his own death.
Sorry for all the rambling. The history and the show was extremely complicated and so much happened it's almost impossible to summarize succinctly. But I'm glad you asked!
. I did mean it in the sense of "byzantine plot or politics" and hope it caused no offense! You're not ethnically from the Balkans region, are you? It's such a common phrase to describe complicated stuff and often like using it, but I can change it if it bothers you. 
