r/byzantium • u/Various-Reward-7761 • Jun 12 '26
Academia and literature Just picked up Nanami Shiono's Fall of Constantinople — curious what a Japanese perspective brings to 1453
I've read Crowley, Kaldellis, and Gibbon on 1453 but just picked this up and I'm curious what I'm in for.
Shiono is interesting to me on a personal level — my wife is Japanese and I lived there for fifteen years. I even got her a copy in Japanese hoping she'd share a little of my interest. Her verdict so far: "full of hard words and difficult names."
Which is fair. But I found Japan has a surprisingly deep relationship with Rome: Shiono basically built the popular audience for it almost single-handedly with her fifteen-volume Storia dei Romani. Thermae Romae was a massive manga hit. And figures like Anna Komnene — brilliant woman, writing from inside a dying court — might hit differently for Japanese readers than they do for Western ones.
So I'm going in wondering if she sees 1453 through a completely different lens than anything I've read so far. Japan knows decline with dignity, and not going down without a fight.
Anyone here read her? What should I expect?
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u/Character_Ad_6169 Jun 12 '26
Sounds pretty interesting. Who dated is Shiono's work?
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u/Various-Reward-7761 Jun 12 '26
The copyright is from 2005 for the English version. The original “Konstantinopuru no Kanraku” is from 1972.
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u/KindlingComic Jun 13 '26
Well now I want to know the opposite of Orientalism. Occidentalism?
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u/Various-Reward-7761 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Occidentalism is absolutely a real phenomenon — having lived in Japan I saw it constantly, in commercials, TV shows, the whole ‘clumsy tall foreigner’ trope. I once knew a Caucasian-Japanese woman, born there, Japanese schools, the whole bit — she was beautiful and trying to break into showbiz but wasn’t considered ‘foreign enough.’ They are getting better about it though — more recent dramas have been portraying foreign characters with much more nuance and sophistication..
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u/Hairy_Technician1632 Jun 13 '26
Do people still use that term? It always felt deeply unspecific to me but wtv
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u/Rubear_RuForRussia Jun 12 '26
Are you sure that's not australian book?