I once warned a teacher in my class to never ask a question you don’t want to hear the answer to—even if you think you want to know. firefly wedding Full of questions: What is the true history of Xinping? Why doesn’t Asagiri want to be acquired? Who sent Satoko to the island? While we don’t get all the answers in these three books, we get enough to make you question whether ignorance might be more comfortable.
You’ll notice I didn’t say “better.” At least two of the answers feel as if they inform the third answer, or rather, as if they should Notify it. The most shocking thing is the truth about Asagiri. Once the island’s top courtesan, she now no longer receives clients and instead lolls around her room, rejecting all offers to buy her out – and telling anyone, even the man she once loved, Mitsuae, her reasons. This forces Mitsue to do whatever it takes to force her, so he seeks Satoko’s help: if she can get Asagiri to agree, he’ll give her a document proving that her stepmother sold her into sex slavery. Possessing the paper allows her and Kotaro to leave – and in Shinpei’s case, so can he. (Honestly, Kotaro is the only one not keen on this.)
But Asagiri prefers to play with Satoko’s desires, like a particularly sadistic cat playing with a mouse, or at least that’s how it seems to Shinpei and Kotaro. From Asagiri’s point of view, the room in the brothel is the only safe place for her. She gained enough power and fame to set her own terms, giving her an autonomy unlikely to be found elsewhere. This was something she desperately needed to protect herself.
As a character, Asagiri represents all the problems a woman sold into a brothel might encounter. As a young sex worker, she is one of the most beautiful women and therefore in high demand – but the people she services are not necessarily of her choice. One of her “top” clients is a powerful politician who, as we learn in these books, has very specific tastes… tastes that cause Asagiri, and potentially other women, permanent physical problems. After experiencing his pain, she was unwilling to put herself in a position where she could be used and abused by other men, all of whom, regardless of their social status, were above her in the Meiji-era hierarchy. In the brothel room, she was in charge. Being acquired does not provide such a guarantee.
That’s why she’s at least partially invested in Satoko. Asagiri’s life is full of sex but lacking in romance, and she thinks Satoko and Shinpei have a romance that she rejects. It seemed to Asagiri that Satoko and Shinpei staying on the island might be the safest thing for them: Shinpei had some power there, and Satoko’s skeletal figure was less likely to get her into prostitution. On top of this, Satoko’s family sold her to sex workers, meaning that even if she returned, she was unlikely to be safe at home. Since the nobility is also unlikely to welcome Shinpei, the island may actually be the safest place for her despite her health issues.
This idea makes sense. Kotaro may eventually come to terms with Satoko’s relationship with Shinpei, which is cemented in these books, and take steps to ensure that her family doesn’t despise him upon sight, but it’s unlikely that things will be much easier for them off the island. The final page of volume seven makes this clear, revealing the person responsible for her kidnapping in an utterly horrific scene. Although firefly wedding Not being billed as a series about the perils of being a woman in the past, it’s impossible to read it, especially these three volumes, without considering what it reveals. The only reason Satoko is safe is because she is protected by Shinpei… and as we’ve seen before, “protection” can turn into something else with the flick of a knife.
Tachibana’s artwork reaches its zenith in these books. The revelation of how dangerously thin Satoko has become is enough to make you gasp, and what happens to Asagiri is equally horrific. The fight scenes are energetic and Shinpei’s brief foray into cross-dressing is very well done. firefly wedding Still not a series I would recommend to anyone because it is a lot ofbut the more I read, the more I felt compelled to finish it.