Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit [ハードカバー]

No one can look you in the eye and tell you that kids today don't read Japanese literature. A simple stroll by the manga section of any well-stocked bookstore will put your mind to rest on that particular matter. But what the kids aren't reading these days is Japanese prose. How many novels for kids, translated from Japanese, can you come up with off the top of your head? Living as we do at a time when children's literature is profitable and all encompassing, you would think that publishers would be scrambling to fill the sudden need kids have for all things Japanese. I get ten-year-olds at my Reference Desk asking for information about Japan all the time and manga made it cool. Now it's time to expand their little craniums with some quality literature. Quality literature that involves egg-eating monsters, glorious fight sequences, strong female characters, and a clear-headed view of how politicians warp history to serve their own ends. Looking for a new kind of fantasy for the kiddies? Talk up something with a little more oomph. Talk up "Moribito".

I'm sure you've heard of soldiers for hire, but bodyguards for hire? That's the job Balsa has had for years, and anyone who has ever met her will tell you that she's good at what she does. In fact, saving people is so ingrained in her that when she sees a prince thrown off a high bridge into the raging waters below she immediately saves his life. No good deed goes unpunished, however, and soon enough Balsa is roped into guarding the prince full time. It seems that the boy is carrying some kind of spirit within himself, and his father the Mikado is determined to kill his boy for the sake of the empire. To save him, Balsa will need to find out the truth behind long-forgotten ancient legends and fight off the Mikado's secret fighting force in order to save not just a prince, but an entire country as well.

I'm an adult reviewer of children's books. As such I'm supposed to carry around with me this lofty air, deigning me to be the guardian of great children's literature, and so on, and so on, and so forth. There's always that feeling that while I can judge a book from a critical standpoint, I'm not actually supposed to enjoy the book, per say. But I really loved reading "Moribito". I did! From start to finish I found it fun, intelligent, and really well put together. Some authors never really establish a firm grasp on the world in which their characters inhabit. Others, like Ms. Uehashi, flesh it out so well that you're half convinced that you could buy a plane ticket there, should the fancy strike you. Uehashi also tackles several aspects of this book particularly well. She writes remarkable fight scenes, knows how to create three-dimensional characters (so that you're trying to determine if a villain is bad or just misinformed), and manages to tell kids a little something about powerful people and their weaknesses that in a lesser writer's hands might have turned didactic, or worse, dull. Instead, the reader is sucked into the book right from the start and you'll find your sleeping and eating cast aside in lieu of getting just one more chapter down.

Getting back to that comment I made about the villains in this piece, Uehashi has the uncanny ability to slip easily from one character's mind to another without forcing her narrative to become herky jerky. She recognizes that few people in this world would describe themselves as villains. As such, almost everyone in this book is under the distinct impression that what they are working towards is the greater good. Except, ironically enough, Balsa.

Why is it that whenever I run across a woman who becomes a hero in a physical sense, be it in film, television, or literature, the temptation is to always compare her to Buffy the Vampire Slayer right off the bat? Because that's the feeling Balsa creates in a reader. She exudes confidence. When you first see her she acts without hesitation in rescuing the prince. Too often when an author writes a tough female heroine, you end up in a head full of doubts and quibbles. What I liked about Balsa was the she was basically a jock. She's good at the physical stuff, at making decisions, and at protecting people. The subtleties of personal relationships and the like are not for her. Still, when you run across a heroine this singular your brain sometimes tries to think of similar characters so that you'll have some point of reference. At one point I even thought about comparing her to Kiki Strike . . . until I realized that for all her tough-woman attitudes, we feel much closer to Balsa than most females in other books. Uehashi really makes her likeable and strong in ways that stick with you.

Extra crispy and delicious kudos to the translation done by Cathy Hirano, by the way. Every once in a while I would have to punch my own leg to remind myself that I wasn't reading the original text. But how often do you find a translator willing to come up with sentences like, "Fire was anathema to a creature accustomed to living in the cold, dark mud,"? Not often enough.

People will tell you that boys won't read novels with girls on the cover. Not even one with a full repertoire of kicks, punches, dodges, and feints at her disposal. This is not always true but it is often the case (I've seen it first-hand). "Moribito", in spite of its thirty-year-old female protagonist, may have an advantage over other books though, in part because it has a lot of points in its favor. First of all, the Moribito series (ten books in total) is very popular in Japan. The first book was even adapted into an animated series, and that's something you can talk up. Should this novel do well in sales, I could even see an adapted manga version being written/transferred to America as a companion piece. If a librarian/bookseller/teacher/parent wanted a kid to read this book, all they'd have to do would be to stress the action sequences (and the slam bang beginning will help in this matter), the Japanese heritage, and the cool anime series. Sell it to them well and those kids that already love Jeff Stone's The Five Ancestors series will come crawling back for more. This is a book that deserves to be discovered.

Balsa is a bodyguard who hires out her services to protect those who can pay her, but when she is asked to take care of the thirteen-year-old Second Prince of New Yogo, Chagum, she becomes swept up in events beyond her control. His mother, the Second Queen, tells Balsa that Chagum has become involved in mystical happenings connected to the founding of New Yogo, and may be possessed by a water demon that the founding king purportedly slew over 200 years ago. Chagum's possession by this demon calls into question everything that the rulers of New Yogo have always said about their divine right to lead this kingdom, and as a result, Chagum's father, the king, wants him dead. Balsa must agree to guard Chagum, or lose her life for knowing too much.

Balsa and Chagum must attempt to escape the warriors sent after them by the king and find out more about the exact details of the water spirit that has possessed Chagum. They discover contradictory legends surrounding the original water spirit, one told by the Yogoese, another told by the Yakoo, who inhabited the land of New Yogo before the Yogoese came to settle there. Either legend could be right, and both of them agree only upon one detail: if the correct path is not followed, New Yogo will suffer a terrible drought that will cause poor harvests and mass starvation.

Set in a fantasy world analogous to medieval Japan, this story sprawls through the lives and perspectives of many different characters. Though it focuses mainly on Balsa and reveals details about her own past and her reasons for becoming a warrior, it also deals with Chagum's experiences in the world outside of the palace, the perspective of a healer named Tanda, a master mystic, Torogai, and many more. These well-drawn characters are sometimes daring, sometimes afraid, yet always sympathetic.

The world of New Yogo is given remarkable texture by the layers of legend and myth that overwhelm the characters in their search for the truth. Uehashi's world is deftly rendered through these legends and the different people who tell them, and it is obvious that she has spent a great deal of time thinking about her remarkable setting. GUARDIAN OF THE SPIRIT is only the first in a series of ten stories set in this world, and I look forward to reading the rest!

Reviewed by: Candace Cunard

I was first introduced to the "Moribito" series by watching the highly acclaimed anime adaptation of this story (Seirei no Moribito) back in the Fall. I enjoyed it greatly, and when I discovered Seirei no Moribito was actually an adaptation of the first book of an already existing series, I decided to give it a try, despite the target audience being children and young adults (although this story is also popular among adults in Japan, not to mention I wanted to know if Balsa succeeds in her personal quest, if Tanda finally bags her, etc.).

I'll have to admit that I'm a little biased, and preferred the anime adaptation over the original book, as the story and characters were a bit more fleshed out (i.e. Balsa is a bit stricter, yet still like a warm, surrogate mother/teacher, Chagum learns street smarts from Toya, Toya and Saya play more of a role, Sagum is present and kinder, the political conspiracy had a little more meat to it, Tanda and Balsa's romantic frustrations are more apparent, some extra fillers etc.), but this story is still a fine read for younger audiences as well as fans of the anime series (that aren't ashamed to read a kids' book). The story can easily be read in one or two days (have your lazy kids read it for a book report!), and even has an informative "Moribito Dictionary" for the multitude of unique foreign words, countries, and characters of the Moribito universe.

My only gripe about the book was the material used as the book jacket. Rather than the glossy jackets typically used on hardcover books, the texture was more of a hybrid between a paper bag and a comic book page.

A parting message to fans of the anime series: Yes, it's an easy read (it's virtually a kids' book, after all), but if you're wondering about what happens to Balsa, Tanda, Chagum, Yogo, etc., wait until the next few volumes are released stateside.