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The Snow Fox by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
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By Robo at 2007-05-12 20:29
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The period The Snow Fox’s setting is around the 12th century (also known as the Heian period) where brides from the family are provided to the imperial house. It's main focus through the story talks about the life of these ladies in the imperial house and mainly focusing on Lady Utsu, one of the ladies, and a samurai named Matsuhito's, daily life. The reader of this story have to have had a long attention span to read this book as it did not have much elements that moved to much further which means the reader must be patient. The characters within the book were complex and were developed very slowly throughout the chapters. The story is overall very complex and sophisticated in his main stucture. Due to this complexity, this is definetely a bed time story or a book where the reader skip pages throuogh, meaning it's for high level reading people who are interested in the subject of Japanese Imperial (Women) Life around the 11th to 12th century.
The setting of the story in the 12th century matches almost exactly as how history in Japan actually is. As in Snow Fox, part of the story takes place where one of the fuedal lord's in power's imperial house. This is also a great time to set such a romance story as the early 11th to 12th century women presented their views of life and romance at the Heian courts, so therefore such a story happening during this time wouldn't be questionable.
The story starts after a time of a unstoppable chaotic war, a highly placed lord who was waging war against an enemy and was afraid that his own childen and family would be in danger. In order to protect them he left them with a foster family, after the great war was over, they were unable to recognize the lord's children from the foster family children, so they took them all back to the imperial palace. This could bring evidence that this was related to real history's Fujiwara wars and the Fujiwara decline, as later in the story samarai started appearing. And the decline of the Fujiwara meant unobtainable public order that lead to samarais.
The main character of Snow Fox is a lady named Itsu, she stays within the imerial palace most of her life until it's collapse. She has power within her court as she is favored heavily by the Lord Norimasa. Women within the palace were treated with great priority and protection. Not to mention the fact that they were educated to write poetry, paint, and embroider. Like said within the Heian period that women had more rights and roles than the rest of the world at time. During her time within the palace Lady Utsu created a vast amount of peoms and paintings. This is accurate to history as well, women of the Japanese court in the Heian period played a large role in the development of the literature of the time. This high role still can't be compared to today life, as women still could not disobey their Lords. In the story Lady Utsu was order to kill the man she ever loved as the Lord believe he was a spy which caused her great mental suffering.
Lord Matsuhito within the story, is a peasant boy who arrives at the palace. He earns Lord Norimasa's trust by serving him truthfully and eventually achieves samurai status. This is non-different from history. As in Japan history, a Samurai does not have to be blood related. And in order to become a samarai, the samarai must have absolute loyalty and discipline to the fuedal lord.
Matched undifferent to history when the fuedal lord is under attack by a rival lord, the samarai would be the ones who defend it. When war breaks out. Lord Matsuhito goes with Lord Norimasa fight with the rival lord with no questions asked. It could be said that Lord Matsuhito's family could be matched to real history's family named "Taira Kiyomori". As the Taira and Minamoto clans fought a deciding war for supremacy which was during the 12th century. And ultimetely Minamoto were able to put an end to Taira supremacy, and Minamoto Yoritomo succeeded as the leader of Japan. This is compared due to the fact in the story Lord Norimasa lost to his rival family meaning he lost all power and eventually died. Also according to history these battles on land and sea the Minamoto defeat the Taira in great battles on land and sea become famous set pieces in Japanese heroic tales which could be pieces of stories elements in "The Snow Fox".
However when Lord Matshito loses his samarai status due to the death of his fuedal lord, he has no large impact of his death which is very different from history. Instead he just goes after Lady Utsu in his search for her (maybe seeing her as his new master). It is often said that samarai kill themselves when they have no other master to serve. Or would a life as a robber to rob merchants and other high level ranks. Instead Lord Matshito does not do any of these and even gets robbed by bandits himself. But one part matches history, it is that ronin were often disreputable, a target of humiliation. It was undesirable to be a ronin. After becoming a ronin, Lord Matshito does change his name and identity to not let others know he is a ronin, and goes as a status of a wondering traveler.
Finally, after a long and dangerous journey, near the end of the story, Lord Matshito finds Lady Utsu. This period could also match Lord Norimasa to one of the Fujiwara leaders in actual history. As when the Fujiwara leaders began to decline, and public order could not be maintained. Therefore making communication difficult and a period of chaos which is why the journey to find Lady Utsu took such a long period of time.
Overall, this story wasn't too focused on major historical events or any specific events on Japanese history, instead more focused on the life on imperial women in the palace. And also the difference of their lives away from the palace. Therefore predictions can only be made from the small evidence of history that Susan Schaeffer left.
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