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「先帝」 (Sentei)
“The Late Emperor”
Coincidences and my belief in them are thinner than a carton of skim milk with this show. Mao Mao stays the night in Suiren’s quarters. In search of good reading material, she happens upon Jinshi’s favorite toys. Wow, that’s pretty harsh, taking Jinshi’s favorite toys away to teach him not to focus single-mindedly on one thing. Abusive even, and could lead to anxious attachment if they learn young that something they like and enjoy can be taken away. I can understand the sentiment- get too wrapped up in something and you lose sight of all else. But, becoming fixated on something is normal for a child, and it also teaches the reward of focus. Play is how children learn, not to mention you shouldn’t cause a child distress like that. In discovering Jinshi’s childhood, Mao Mao just so happens to find a “pebble” that actually turns out to be poison, and not just any poison at that- poison related to the case of the well-preserved emperor’s corpse.
The poison in question turns out to be orpiment- a pigment used for painting, and which contained arsenic, which apparently can have preservative properities. It was a nice changeup from the usual food or beauty related poisoning. However, after handling the poisonous substance as often as he did, you’d think he’d start having various health problems show up prior to his death and would’ve died earlier, especially if his contact with the substance was such that his body would have been preserved. Also- why does the servant appear reasonably healthy for his age? You’d think he would be having health problems after inhaling the pigment, maybe even handling it, if he was tasked with procuring or mixing the pigment. Anyway, that’s just a minor quibble, and was the garnish, not the centerpiece of today.
The true centerpiece was Anshi’s history. What an asshole, lowest of the low father Anshi had, using his older daughter to bring his (too) young daughter to the attention of the pedophile emperor to gain political power. Using his daughter’s bodies as currency in the market for might and mammon. As the scar on Anshi’s body testifies- like paper bills, human bodies are just as easily torn.
Anshi took what she knew was an inevitability- the emperor’s touch, and grasped, twisted it in her own hands. That takes courage and cunning to command unfortunate circumstances like that. It is a nice change to see what would normally turn into painting a tragic victim (don’t get me wrong, she still is a victim), into a woman who tapped into her personal agency and rose above the situation.
An intriguing thought bomb was dropped when Anshi referenced a woman who gave birth to a girl, a child denied royal parentage and blamed on the doctor. The doctor who was then exiled. We don’t know what happened to the child in question, but I see some parallels with Mao Mao. Was that foreshadowing on the writer’s a few eps ago when the emperor joked about Mao Mao becoming a concubine, a position reserved for ladies of high birth. Has Jinshi picked up on similarities, and could that be part of the reason he keeps her close (well, other than the obvious fact that he’s head over heels for her)?
This episode also reflects on the theme of aging. Oftentimes, women have difficulty with aging, especially in a society obsessed with youth and cuteness in girls- one where celebrities do all they can to hide ageing and products are marketed to the women to preserve youth. No doubt, the pressure was just as hard in Anshi’s time with an emperor who only devoted attention to girls of a certain age. A cruel blow to women who can’t help the change in appearance over time but are condemned to lifelong imprisonment in the palace anyway. Plucked like flowers from a field, then crushed and tossed by the roadside when the petals begin to wilt.
Anshi didn’t, couldn’t stop there- she exacted revenge upon the emperor, visiting the same coercion upon him that he visited upon so many children. He may have had the title of emperor and the powerful backing of his mother to give him the freedom to do what he did, but Anshi wrests control and has the final word, the seed from those actions giving birth to another child. Now, do I advocate assault? Obviously, no. But do I feel sorry for the late emperor? No- not after all the shitty things he did. And I don’t think we’re supposed to feel sorry for him either. The flashbacks we get of him explains why he was the way he was, but it never defends him. It also lends depth to Anshi’s character- she is not just a benevolent, intelligent woman treated cruelly by circumstances- she also experiences anger, hurt, frustration, even vengeance. Was the late emperor a terrible creep? Yes, but he also carried traumas and a deep artistic sensibility. What defined each of them was not one trait or the other, but rather, what they made from the mixture shades on their palette, their treatment of others, that defined the strokes for which they were known.
In a way, the empress was an antidote of sorts to the emperor’s behavior, creating wellbeing in establishing the clinic and passing rules on eunuchs and slaves in contrast to the emperor’s harmful behavior. This paints the picture of the palace landscape in a suitably complex light. I find it elegant that the colors Anshi wore necessitated the use of a poison for the emperor to paint her. There is a poetry to it, that the emperor so obsessed with young girls was himself preserved after death by the poison he used to depict their beauty.
Preview
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There was probably enough in that episode to base a psychology lecture on. My (totally non-professional) diagnosis of the emperor was that he suffered from gynophobia, and his prediliction for young girls followed on from that as a secondary condition.
As for the orpiment, which Wikipedia ironically tells me is called “female yellow” in China, acquiring some degree of tolerance to arsenic by being exposed to very small amounts over a period of years is apparently possible. The idea of slowly-ingested poisons preserving the body was also known in China and practiced by ascetic monks. This was later followed by some Japanese monks and was called sokushinbutsu.
The reason why the arsenic poison was so severe on the previous emperor body was due to how he used it. His bedroom was basically his studio where he mixed colors and painted. It was also a closed room with minimal ventilation so the poison slowly build-up in the room. People also stop caring about his health as his mind already deteriorated, he also already produced an heir at that point and not like he was ruling the country. People would just assume any health issue he had was due to his mental conditions rather than him being slowly poisoned.
Maomao is Lakans daughter and therefore nobility as well, only that she doesn’t want to acknowledge him as her father. He would acknowledge her in a hot second.
The Emperor of a feudal nation had been a naughty boy, hadn’t he? I think so, no? I want to say the late Emperor will rot in Hell, but China doesn’t have a Hell similar to Western religion. And even in Dougao (Taoism), Hell is pretty much just purgatory.
This “pebble” or small stone (The subs I relied on translated as stone.) It’s unsurprising to me that it’s used for a yellow pigment and is poisonous. Think about it: we’re talking about paint… to be expected that paint can harm the human body. An example of this is the episode of House MD. A patient was admitted to the infectious disease department and was treated by House’s team. I can’t recall if House or Wilson found out the patient was an artist and had mixed feces in his paint for better viscosity. Talk about biohazard.
The real question I have is, based on the time period this Anime illustrates, what was the socially acceptable age limit for a potential concubine to be courted by an official of the palace? Too young is too young, no matter how you justify it
Whilst I of course agree that there’s such a thing as being too young, from a historical perspective the idea of exactly how young is “too young” has changed a lot in the past 100 years. You only have to go back as far as the late 19th century to find girls being legally married before their teens in many places in the world, including most states of the USA.
No doubt about what you just said about the nonstandardized age limit for a girl to be considered a concubine or consort (Since we are talking about Kusuriya no Hitorigoto here.) I wonder if prospective consorts’ parents tell the Emporer “Sorry my lord, could you take my daughter when she is old enough to think about things other than candy.”
I suppose they would depend on how much power they had and whether they thought it was wise to use it. Challenging the emperor would be a dangerous business.