[FFML] Repost Quantum Destinies: Ohtori Academy Blues

[Kevin Callahan]

DB... this has some problems, historically speaking... It might be
best just to leave historicity out of it completely. Utena is never a
good place to start dealing with objective facts, so I think giving it
a year and a connection to the Chrysanthemum Throne is probably not
wise...

> The wall, and the academy it surrounded, was erected in 1825 at the request
> of one of the then Emperor’s advisors, a shadowy figure known only as Dios.
> What role he actually served the Emperor was unclear, though none questioned
> him openly. No drawings or pictures of the man existed, save a single
> silhouette drawn by one of the Emperor’s concubines. No one knew for what
> purpose Dios had the academy built, but it was rumored that he personally
> designed the entire school, from the highest tower to the smallest carved
> rose.

Fair warning, you have every right to just completely ignore me, but
I'm a Japanese government/history scholar (I'm writing my MA thesis on
a conceptualisation of kokutai during the Taisho era right now, I
finish in June). While Taisho, the years 1912-1926, is my main area of
scholarship, my studies generally go from the early modern period
(circa 1700s) into present day. 1825 is a particularly bad year to
choose for building Ohtori for a couple of reasons.

For us, we consider 1825 to be rather recent. The United States was
already fifty years old, Great Britain and France were vying for
empire, the sun had already set on the Spanish Empire, and it would
never recover. Japan? It was still in its high middle ages. Feudal
forces remained intact. The only real connection with foreigners that
Japan had were through whalers, fisherman, and Dutch merchants. Japan
would not be opened to the West until Commodore Perry in 1852, and the
Emperor would not regain power until the Meiji Restoration of 1869.
The Emperor has very little power in 1825, certainly not enough to
agree to build a giant school somewhere on the advice of one of his
advisors, Dios or no.

It would make more sense in this case to have Dios be an advisor to
the bakufu, specifically to the Tokugawa Shogunate. They held real
power. That being said... anti-foreignism is at its height during
1825. The bakufu elite promulgated what is known as the Expulsion
Edict in 1825. The Japanese people were ordered and expected to expel
any Westerner they come across, and helping any Western came with
strong penalties, especially for the common classes who might have
lost a limb or have been executed. This is not the time in which a
grandiose Western styled school would be built. There were certainly
pockets of Western Learning during this time period, but mostly they
existed to "study the dangerous designs of the barbarians" and writers
like Aizawa Yasushi used Western concepts to argue against Westerners
in their own terms.

If you want to go by all of the great universities and secondary
schools in Japan today, I would suggest you instead choose the Early
Meiji period, so 1875~1890. This is when such schools would have been
built and would have had imperial support.

-- 
Very Respectfully,
Kevin M. Callahan