Yorihisa's Ancestry...
It may or may not have become apparent, but I'm a bit of a history geek as well as a Japanese geek and a HaruToki fangirl. The whole world of mediaeval Japan totally fascinates me (*pokes the copy of Heike Monogatari currently beside bed*) and I've always been trying to work out exactly where the first HaruToki lot fit in in a historic sense.
Obviously they're Heian, and logically, if HT2 is a century later and HT3 you assume is a century after that, we're looking at some time around the 10th Century. That would also fit with the height of the Heian period if my random Japanese history reading is correct (though I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, just picking things up as I go along).
The original characters bear the names of real people (family names I mean) but not the given names (unlike in HT3 where real people are referenced in with the fictional).
It's fairly safe because of those real people (Benkei, Kurou, Atsumori, etc) that HT3 is set in the Genpei War in the 1180s.
If there is 100 years between Miko, and we know that Karin appeared 100 years after Akane, that would make Karin's appearance in the 1080s (though I haven't yet discovered if there was any kind of imperial schism going on then - appaku , do you know more about this than me???
That would put the first group in about the 980s or thereabouts. But does that theory actually hold any water?
Thanks to the Haruka Tsuushin, I think that question can actually be answered. Yorihisa's family tree connects to the real Minamoto ancestry, as opposed to him just being randomly created with that family name. The family tree I've typed up into romaji so that it's easily legible:
The Tsuushin doesn't give the dates of the individuals mentioned on this family tree, but I did some geek digging and found out a few of them that have been recorded because they were more significant individuals (I guess. Even Japanese wiki didn't have dates for some of the others).
The red coloured names in the family tree are the fictional additions by the HT universe. All the other people and their dates are real people.
We know that Yorihisa is 25 or so when Akane appears in Kyou. Sanehisa is a good deal older than him - I can't remember exactly the age gap though at the moment, though he was an adult/older teen when Yorihisa was still a child so perhaps a gap of at least 10 or so years. I keep thinking this detail is written somewhere, but so far haven't found it ><
If the fictional Hisayoshi was born between the real Yorimitsu and Yorinobu, that might place his date of birth at any point between 945 and 967.
I don't know what the youngest age a mediaeval Japanese nobleman might marry and have kids at. I believe Atsumori, living 200 years later, was married with an unborn child when he was killed at the age of approximately 16 or 17. I'm guessing that the Japanese at this point counted age like the Chinese still (I believe...appaku ?...do - being 1 year old from birth, since Atsumori's dates suggest he was 15 in our terms.
So if we assume that Hisayoshi COULD have been married/have had his first son at about sixteen or thereabouts, that might mean Sanehisa was born sometime in 960. Ten years on would make Yorihisa born in 970 or thereabouts.
Even taking into account the idea of making them a year old at birth, that would still put Akane and company into the 990s though in terms of their plot. Probably about 995ish. That being said, though, we know that officially HT is a parallel world, not this world, and so being slightly off with dates is probably not that big a crime. Fifteen years or so is not that huge a gap when compared with hundreds of years of Japanese history.
For the record, too, it's worth mentioning that if we consider HT1 to take place in the 990s, the Emperor at that time was this guy, Ichijou I am 100% sure that the manga gives us a name for Eisen's brother, and I don't remember right now what it is. However I am quite sure it isn't Ichijou, because that's a name I'm familiar with from Sei Shounagon's Pillow Book randomness. It's worth mentioning however that the Emperors changed frequently during the 990s and it was common for Emperors to reign until they were old enough to make decisions and then retire to let their son take over (since the throne was controlled in this period by the Fujiwara. Yes, that's Takamichi's lot! Ichijou is meant to be an only child, though. It would be convenient to use him as a basis and add Eisen's role as Yorihisa and Sanehisa were added...? I don't know whether any family tree information for Eisen has been documented and there's nothing specific about Takamichi or Tomomasa in the Tsuushin I have - but the Fujiwara were very influential at this time and the Tachibana were another of four great families of this era...
....Phew. That was very geekish indeed. But the historian in me had to do it anyway...
Obviously they're Heian, and logically, if HT2 is a century later and HT3 you assume is a century after that, we're looking at some time around the 10th Century. That would also fit with the height of the Heian period if my random Japanese history reading is correct (though I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, just picking things up as I go along).
The original characters bear the names of real people (family names I mean) but not the given names (unlike in HT3 where real people are referenced in with the fictional).
It's fairly safe because of those real people (Benkei, Kurou, Atsumori, etc) that HT3 is set in the Genpei War in the 1180s.
If there is 100 years between Miko, and we know that Karin appeared 100 years after Akane, that would make Karin's appearance in the 1080s (though I haven't yet discovered if there was any kind of imperial schism going on then - appaku , do you know more about this than me???
That would put the first group in about the 980s or thereabouts. But does that theory actually hold any water?
Thanks to the Haruka Tsuushin, I think that question can actually be answered. Yorihisa's family tree connects to the real Minamoto ancestry, as opposed to him just being randomly created with that family name. The family tree I've typed up into romaji so that it's easily legible:
The Tsuushin doesn't give the dates of the individuals mentioned on this family tree, but I did some geek digging and found out a few of them that have been recorded because they were more significant individuals (I guess. Even Japanese wiki didn't have dates for some of the others).
The red coloured names in the family tree are the fictional additions by the HT universe. All the other people and their dates are real people.
We know that Yorihisa is 25 or so when Akane appears in Kyou. Sanehisa is a good deal older than him - I can't remember exactly the age gap though at the moment, though he was an adult/older teen when Yorihisa was still a child so perhaps a gap of at least 10 or so years. I keep thinking this detail is written somewhere, but so far haven't found it ><
If the fictional Hisayoshi was born between the real Yorimitsu and Yorinobu, that might place his date of birth at any point between 945 and 967.
I don't know what the youngest age a mediaeval Japanese nobleman might marry and have kids at. I believe Atsumori, living 200 years later, was married with an unborn child when he was killed at the age of approximately 16 or 17. I'm guessing that the Japanese at this point counted age like the Chinese still (I believe...appaku ?...do - being 1 year old from birth, since Atsumori's dates suggest he was 15 in our terms.
So if we assume that Hisayoshi COULD have been married/have had his first son at about sixteen or thereabouts, that might mean Sanehisa was born sometime in 960. Ten years on would make Yorihisa born in 970 or thereabouts.
Even taking into account the idea of making them a year old at birth, that would still put Akane and company into the 990s though in terms of their plot. Probably about 995ish. That being said, though, we know that officially HT is a parallel world, not this world, and so being slightly off with dates is probably not that big a crime. Fifteen years or so is not that huge a gap when compared with hundreds of years of Japanese history.
For the record, too, it's worth mentioning that if we consider HT1 to take place in the 990s, the Emperor at that time was this guy, Ichijou I am 100% sure that the manga gives us a name for Eisen's brother, and I don't remember right now what it is. However I am quite sure it isn't Ichijou, because that's a name I'm familiar with from Sei Shounagon's Pillow Book randomness. It's worth mentioning however that the Emperors changed frequently during the 990s and it was common for Emperors to reign until they were old enough to make decisions and then retire to let their son take over (since the throne was controlled in this period by the Fujiwara. Yes, that's Takamichi's lot! Ichijou is meant to be an only child, though. It would be convenient to use him as a basis and add Eisen's role as Yorihisa and Sanehisa were added...? I don't know whether any family tree information for Eisen has been documented and there's nothing specific about Takamichi or Tomomasa in the Tsuushin I have - but the Fujiwara were very influential at this time and the Tachibana were another of four great families of this era...
....Phew. That was very geekish indeed. But the historian in me had to do it anyway...