As a sequel (prequel?) of sorts to
The Genderbending of Haruhi Suzumiya, I'd like to propose a new thread based on a personal project I've wanted to start on for a while now:
The Old-Timening of Haruhi Suzumiya. (Yes, I know "old-timening" is not a word. If you can come up with something better, feel free to change it.)
Basically, I was inspired by some seriously
old copies of the magazine
Shinseinen that I was looking at in order to research contemporary portrayals of the Great Kanto Earthquake, and noticed that Taisho- and early Showa-period magazines contained quite a bit of serialized fiction, both translated from western sources and produced by homegrown talent. (In particular, one issue had a "new" detective story by Edogawa Ranpo, which I found amusing to no end.) With this in mind, I thought, why not take one of the most famous faces in modern youth-oriented (non-manga) fiction, and transplant her into the vibrant literary environment of 1920s Japan? Thus, the idea of
The Melancholy of Haruko Mikami was born.
My basic premise for the story in its 1920s-incarnation is as follows:
Spoiler for lengthy premise:
The narrator (known only as "John" due to his love of a foreign author or poet whom I've yet to pick for certain), is a school student who decided at an early age that there was no such thing as God (seeing the Mass, for example, as a cannibalistic sham and the statue of Jesus on the cross as a kind of sadistic joke), and as the years went on, gradually lost all faith in the notion that underground civilizations, evil masterminds, aliens, time-travellers, or the Wells-, Verne-, or Conan Doyle-esque characters who loomed larger than life really existed. After all, despite noise from the military, nothing had really changed with the ushering in of the Showa period; 60 years had already passed since the Meiji Revolution, and in spite of newspaper reports to the contrary, it looked like the "Great Japanese Empire" was pretty far from doing anything truly "great" on the world stage at any point in his lifetime. In short, he had lost his faith in the miracles of the world, resigning himself to a mundane existence. All of this changed, of course, when he met Haruko Mikami, who boldly declared her intention to discover the very things he had lost all faith in. From the mysterious individuals John becomes acquainted with through Haruko's activities, he learns that a mysterious event happened three years before, coinciding with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and centered around the existence of Haruko herself. In fact, it may be that Haruko is an emissary of God, and a catalyst for Japan's perfection -- or its ruin. In other words, the 1920s version of Haruhi Suzumiya is not just way ahead of its time, but creepily prescient in its notions about Japan and where it's headed.
Granted, such a story has to have "historical evidence" to back it up, which is why I also have a quote from a fake social criticism journal of the 1960s which puts it into further "perspective":
Spoiler for quote from fake leftist journal:
In this series, the voice of "John," the Narrator, is clearly seen as the voice of the author himself, and his commentary on the antics of Haruko and the other members of her brigade are a metaphor for Mr. Tanigawa's own observations of Japanese society at the time, as the Taisho Democracy rapidly collapsed under the sway of the ultranationalist militants who were to assert their influence over the government and social zeitgeist until the end of World War II. Moreover, Haruko herself can be interpreted as an avatar of Amaterasu O-mikami and a metaphor for Japan itself, with her fiery attitude, self-aggrandizing spur-of-the-moment adventurism, and possibly (though ultimately cataclysmically) divine nature. Unfortunately, the work's thinly veiled political satire and Taisho modernist sensibilities were also its Achilles' heel, as nationalist authorities seized and destroyed nearly all copies of the special Shinseinen issue in which the work first appeared. Mr. Tanigawa did manage to publish the first novel in its entirety, following it up with eight (of a planned nine) sequel volumes in a limited, underground fashion over the next few years, but the government eventually got wind and shut down his operations permanently in the early 1930s. From this time forward, his whereabouts are unknown, but it is assumed that he was murdered as both political and public sentiment turned against leftists of all stripes.
Now, I'm not a native Japanese speaker, and my ability to write literary-sounding Japanese is somewhat... shaky at best. In fact, I might be better off trying to write a version in English... but because I find writing with classical Kanji and old-style orthography so fascinating, I went ahead and tried my hand at the opening sentence in Japanese.
To do the entire thing in a manner that looks and sounds convincingly like 1920s Japanese popular fiction is probably an entirely too-monumental task for anyone, let alone myself, to take on, but because this idea is driving me up the wall, I thought I might go ahead and post it up here so maybe some other people can have a say in it. So, uhm... thoughts?