Nansō Satomi Hakkenden is a Japaneseepic novel in 106 volumes by Kyokutei Bakin. The volumes were written and published over a period of nearly thirty years. Bakin had goneblind before finishing the tale, and he dictated the final parts to his daughter-in-law Michi. The title has been translated as The Eight Dog Chronicles, Tale of Eight Dogs, or Biographies of Eight Dogs.
Plot and influences
Set in the tumultuous Sengoku period, Hakkenden is the story of eight samurai half-brothers — all of them descended from a dog and bearing the word "dog" in their surnames — and their adventures, with themes of loyalty and family honor, as well as Confucianism, bushido and Buddhist philosophy. One of the direct inspiration sources of the novel is the fourteenth to seventeenth-century Chinese epic novelWater Margin by Shi Nai'an. Japanese translations date back to at least 1757, when the first volume of an early Suikoden was printed. An earlier serial novel by Bakin, Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki had been illustrated by the famous ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai, but the two did not work well together. For Hakkenden, Hokusai's son-in-law, Yanagawa Shigenobu was employed as illustrator instead. A complete reprinting in ten volumes is available in the original Japanese, as well as various modern Japanese translations, most of them abridged. Previously, only a few chapters had been translated into English, Chapter 25 by Donald Keene and Chapters 12, 13, and 19 by Chris Drake. A full translation is currently in progress and is available on the Internet.
History of reception
Hugely popular at the time of publication and into the early twentieth century, Bakin's work lost favor after the Meiji Restoration, but came back into fashion later in the twentieth century. In live-action film and TV there have been numerous adaptions: the first in 1938, then a series in the 1950s, and since the influential TV series Shin Hakkenden from the early 1970s, every decade has had either a live-action adaptation or a show significantly influenced by the novel, right up through the 2010s. The novel has also been adapted into kabuki theatre several times. In August 2006, the Kabuki-zaput onthe play. In 1959, the TOEI motion picture company made Satomi hakken-den. In 1983, the novel was loosely adapted into the film Legend of the Eight Samurai. Hakkenden has had a strong influence on modern manga and anime works, particularly those based on adventure quests. For example, it influenced Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball and Rumiko Takahashi's Inuyasha, which both have plots about the collection of magical crystals or crystal balls.
Citations
Works cited
Kyokutei Bakin "Shino and Hamaji". In Keene, DonaldAnthology of Japanese Literature: from the earliest era to the mid-nineteenth century, pp. 423–428. New York, NY: Grove Press.
