X. Jie YANG \u694a\u6681\u6377 has uploaded a YouTube playlist<\/a> of himself (I assume?) reading selected parts of the story \u201cKaraito\u201d (named after its heroine) over images of the illustrated manuscript that contains it. Purists may be disappointed to learn that the text is pronounced as if it were contemporary Japanese\u2014e.g. no attempt to reconstruct an Edo-period palatalized \/e\/\u2014but you can\u2019t always get what you want.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Matt, I\u2019ve never heard of \u2018Karaito\u2019 before!\u201d I hear you say. \u201cI can\u2019t watch a YouTube video without a solid grounding in the scholarly background it assumes.\u201d Fortunately, Lora Slobodian\u2019s Karaito s\u014dshi<\/i>: A Tale of Optimism and Good Fortune<\/cite><\/a> is available online, and includes a serviceable translation of the complete story.<\/p>\n Karaito, one of the female servants of the palace, was also present before the commander of Kamakura, Yoritomo, at the decisive moment [when the plan to kill Lord Kiso was revealed]. This woman was of Shinano province, and a subordinate of Lord Kiso. She was excessively skilled at playing the biwa<\/i> and the koto<\/i>, and so, in her eighteenth year, was summoned to Kamakura and placed in charge of the gagaku<\/i>, but felt great pity as she was performing for the ones who would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of both Lord Kiso and her father. She felt that she must, by all means, inform Lord Kiso of this plot, and so secretly sent a highly detailed letter to the capital […]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the letter she not only informs Lord Kiso of the plot, she also offers to assassinate the conspirators, and requests the use of a specific, named dagger<\/em> to do so. <\/p>\n (Via Kasama Shoin<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" X. Jie YANG \u694a\u6681\u6377 has uploaded a YouTube playlist of himself (I assume?) reading selected parts of the story \u201cKaraito\u201d (named after its heroine) over images of the illustrated manuscript that contains it. Purists may be disappointed to learn that the text is pronounced as if it were contemporary Japanese\u2014e.g. no attempt to reconstruct an … Continue reading “\u201c… Perform gagaku<\/i> and kick ass. And gagaku<\/i> has a very limited repertoire by this point in history.\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bLCp-1o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/no-sword.jp\/zoku\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}