Yatagarasu Series
Volume 5:
Princess Tamayori
Author: Abe Chisato
Essay: On Princess Tamayori
(Posted online concurrent with the 2016 hardcover publication)
“‘Yamauchi,’ huh. I think I’ll be spending a long time with ‘Yamauchi.’”
Eight years ago, I said something very like that. I started writing stories when I was very young. I’ve always worried about writing stories that are enjoyable for other people to read. I like worrying about that, because it gives me an excuse to write stories that I find interesting.
When I was in elementary school, I admired the Harry Potter series and tried to write a Western fantasy. I couldn’t write it convincingly without getting a better understanding of English literature, so I gave up halfway through.
When I was in middle school, I tried to write an Eastern fantasy. But the worldview I ended up with was nothing more than an imitation of existing works, and I realized that the East, too, was far too vast for me to comprehend easily.
As a high school student, I decided to write a distinctly Japanese fantasy. For better or worse, Japan is what I know. My attempt at writing such a tale was the first draft of this novel, Princess Tamayori.
“What would happen if a girl offered as a sacrifice was told to raise a baby god who might one day kill her?” That was the beginning of it: the interesting question that I wanted to answer. The novel is a fantasy that is grounded in Japanese mythology and history.
While writing, I needed a word to express the mysterious world where the gods reside, and I chose ‘Yamauchi.’ For very simple reasons, really. The story is set in the mountains. The moment I typed it, I felt as if I’d struck diamonds in a mine. That’s what I think of as the very beginning of the Yatagarasu series. Everything took shape from there.
For me, the act of writing is like excavating fossils. I dig up ideas buried amid distracting thoughts, sort what has meaning from what is just a stone, and, through repeated trial and error, assemble the bones I find into a cohesive dinosaur shape.
The word “Yamauchi” was like an opalized Tyrannosaurus tooth. It was peeking out a little from the ground, and I still didn’t know what was buried beneath it, but I felt like I had found something amazing. And I was right. I took the Yatagarasu from Princess Tamayori and made them my protagonists. I wrote Ravens Shouldn’t Wear Kimono next as a kind of spin-off to Princess Tamayori, and it became my debut novel. The Yatagarasu series continued from there.
As I reached the end of The Raven of the Empty Coffin, I saw an opportunity to bring Princess Tamayori in as a series continuation. Rewriting a clumsy work from eight years ago was extremely painful. The high school version of Princess Tamayori has a youthful vitality that I fear is lacking from the rewrite, but the original was also hopelessly silly in places. The protagonist is a high school girl without any life experience or perspective. I wrote it in high school, so there was no way for me to know just how much of life was left for me to learn about.
The version of Princess Tamayori in your hands can be accurately described as a collaboration between two people: Abe Chisato the established author, and Abe Chisato the inexperienced high school student. Crossing time and space in two senses—story and author—Princess Tamayori is Episode 0 of the Yatagarasu series. I sincerely hope that readers will enjoy it.
Abe Chisato
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