Ōoku: The Inner Chambers(Viz Sig­na­ture 2009) is writ­ten & illus­trated by Fumi Yoshi­naga, 205 pages, paper­back, rated M for mature audi­ences (18+ for explicit con­tent). Fact: the author has been nom­i­nated for the Eis­ner award in 2008 for best writer and artist. This review cov­ers vol­ume 1 in a planned 10 vol­ume series.

I first read about this graphic novel from Jia (Dear Author). Her review made me order this graphic novel straight­away. With buzz words like “his­tor­i­cal drama” about an “epi­demic” that after 80 years wipes out 75% of the men? You bet, I’m read­ing it and I’m happy to say that this story didn’t disappoint.

Ōoku: The Inner Cham­bers is a his­tor­i­cal drama set dur­ing the Edo period of Japan. Mil­i­tary rule over the nation has been held by a woman since the third shogun, Iemitsu, died of a mys­te­ri­ous plague. Eighty years ago, a strange dis­ease wiped out almost the entire pop­u­la­tion of men. Sur­vival rate of younger men was lower than that of the older men. Labor that was mostly dom­i­nated by men has been taken over by women. Even though women are now heads of the fam­ily, they still have mas­cu­line sound­ing names.

Of course, with young men in so short of sup­ply, they are pro­tected. The gen­der roles are flipped and the tra­di­tional roles of men and women are switched over quite smoothly. The insti­tu­tion of mar­riage as it was known before has now col­lapsed. Mar­riage is now only reserved for the wealthy. In this class con­scious soci­ety, low born women must visit broth­els if they are to pro­cure a child of their own.

Even with the higher classes who find them­selves impov­er­ished they often rent out their sons to the daugh­ters of rich mer­chants and other poor samu­rai fam­i­lies like their own who don’t have the means to pro­cure a son-in-law. Poor women often have to resort to beg­ging men to lay with them so that they can have chil­dren of their own (prefer­ably a son). Since men are the providers of life and there are so few of them left nowa­days, the shogun has her own harem of men, at her dis­posal, at Edo Castle:

As the sole ruler of all the land, the supreme leader of the entire coun­try, the shogun alone had the privilege–the height of lux­ury in this time of male scarcity…to enter an inte­rior palace pop­u­lated wholly by beau­ti­ful men–said to num­ber three thou­sand in all–from which all other women were banned.

Mizuno Yunoshin is the son of an poor Hata­moto (belong­ing to the samu­rai class). The story is mostly seen through his eyes. Refus­ing to marry at 19, he decides to enter the Ōoku of Edo Cas­tle. Thus he becomes our eyes and ears at the goings on in such a secre­tive place. It is through his uncle that Mizuno gains entrance as a lowly ranked page of the Inner Cham­bers. Inside there is a lot of under­hand­ed­ness, class dis­crim­i­na­tion and of course politics.

Going only by his sur­name of Mizuno, he quickly learns that not every­thing he heard about the Inner Cham­bers is true. First of all, instead of 3,000 hand­some and sturdy men sta­bled together for her high­ness, it is only around 800. It needs to be said that entry into the Ōoku requires a blood oath of silence. Also, the biggest sur­prise is that the cur­rent shogun is only 7 years old. With so many gor­geous men liv­ing together, what do you think they’ve been doing?

Mizuno sets out to serve in the Inner Cham­bers for life with plans to send money back for his fam­ily and to see his sis­ter mar­ried off. He has a rocky start but he soon adjusts to life at Edo Cas­tle. When seven year old shogun of the Toku­gawa dynasty, Iet­sugu, passes away and another one takes her place. That’s when the story really begins to takes off.

I really enjoyed read­ing this. Mizuno indeed had some eye-opening sur­prises in store for him as things weren’t quite as he had expected. How­ever, this is where the romance part comes in– Mizuno’s heart is tied up else­where, with the daugh­ter who’s an heiress of a pros­per­ous trader promised to some­one else. The two are child­hood friends. Mov­ing on. The story is very engross­ing espe­cially when the Eighth Toku­gawa shogun comes into power –Lord Yoshimune (head of one of three Toku­gawa branch houses).

Yoshimune was the first to arrive ahead of her rival at Edo Cas­tle when the young shogun dies. As the new ruler, she is unmar­ried and “robust of body” and the men of the inner cham­bers can now rejoice. Yoshimune is shrewd and impul­sive. Most of all fru­gal. She prefers her cot­ton kimono’s over silk any day of the week.

She dis­misses her privy coun­cilor which jump starts a lot of strife within the cham­bers. And she con­tin­ues to upset the cus­toms and rit­u­als of the Inner Cham­bers due in part to the Shogunate’s cof­fers being nearly empty. The agenda of the new shogun is clear: she is rebuild­ing the finan­cial insti­tu­tion of the coun­try with an iron fist and a tight purse.

The sus­pense part comes in when Yoshimune picks her first con­cu­bine. This invokes an old and deplorable cus­tom called the “secret swain.” The term is used when an unmar­ried shogun takes a man to her bed­cham­ber. I will not say any­thing fur­ther only to say: wow, what a sacrifice.

Then of course, the way the story ends kind of leaves you curi­ous. Yoshimune is deter­mined to go through the archives of the Inner Cham­bers to deter­mine the ori­gin of how women came to out­num­ber the men which will lead her back to the Red­face pox which started it all. Should be inter­est­ing. Must men­tion the lan­guage in here because at times it was awk­ward as well as authentic.

Over­all, this is a good start for a new series. I already have the sec­ond vol­ume in my hands. If you enjoy such com­plex sto­ries and espe­cially sto­ries set in his­tor­i­cal Japan then by all means pick up this graphic novel. The art­work is really nice and the story moves at a good pace. There’s not very many action scenes in it. The graphic novel reads right to left and has 3 pages of end notes pro­vided by trans­la­tor, Akemi Weg­müller to pro­vide fur­ther insight into the story. B+ over­all. This is a good one.