Preliminary Review: NHK series "Yae no Sakura"

(at left, a picture of Neesima (Yamamoto) Yae, who stands at right) Hello everyone! I wanted to take this opportunity to pop in and offer a brief, preliminary review of the series Yae no Sakura. This is this year's (2013's) history-themed series on the NHK network. The subject is Yamamoto Yae, a warrior woman of the 19th century who later became an educator and a co-founder of Doshisha University.

First, the makers of this series get huge props from me for situating Yae's story in a global context. She's known among some for her use of the American-made Spencer carbine, and the series opens not with fighting in Japan, but instead, Pickett's Charge, at the Battle of Gettysburg. The idea here is that the weapons used in the American Civil War were some of the weapons that were used in the Boshin War, just a few years later.

Another thing I have to applaud is that not everyone speaks the same way. Yae was born in the northeast, and both the child and adult actresses who play her at different ages seem to have been coached in what sounds, to my ears, like at least a reasonable approximation of the Aizu dialect. Characters from Kyushu sound like they're from Kyushu, characters from Edo sound like they're from Edo, and so on.

Further, the detail research, for the "stuff" in this series, is also solid! Here I mean details like crests, gear, and so on, are all solid, at least to my eyes. It's a lot to keep track of, but they're doing great so far.

My only complaint? Their Commodore Perry didn't have an American accent, and the American naval officers in the Perry scene seemed to be wearing Imperial Japanese Navy caps. Ultimately that's "small potatoes" compared to an overall well-executed series. I recommend it heartily.

For those of you who can read Japanese, here is the series' homepage.