In most cases I’ve found the location takes as much of the center stage as what’s happening. Although I had the rough outline of My World And You mostly done I still didn’t have a location. I knew it would be in Japan, I just didn’t know where. I thought briefly about setting it in the same town I’d set the end of Kunoichi in, the problem being I didn’t actually have a town where the ending took place. It was a vague “somewhere north of Tokyo” which didn’t help out a whole lot. So, badly in need of an out of the way location I fired up my handy Chrome browser and began the search.
After considering and discarding areas in Hokkaido and northern Honshu (I have a story which may become a novel at some point set in Aomori City, the snowiest city in the world) and Kyushu and then Shikoku I was left with really only one choice. Tottori. Kasumi is very dismissive of her hometown due to its remote location and small population, often calling it the end of the world. With a total population in the prefecture of less than 600,000 it fit the criteria I needed.
While it fit the bill, I found Tottori is actually very interesting. Nestled along the northern edge of Honshu Tottori sits along the edge of the Sea of Japan 220 km northwest of Kyoto and 125 km almost due north of Okayama. The area boasts Japan’s only sand dunes as well as Mt. Daisen, a sacred mountain amongst the Shugendo religion. There is also the Sand Museum which, despite my initial fear is not actually a place where they’ve put a bunch of sand but rather the museum is dedicated to sand sculptures.
Tottori Castle which was completed in 1555 and later served as the seat of the Ikeda Clan. It became rather famous for a 200-day long siege by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a high ranking general in the service of Oda Nobunaga. The castle was eventually starved into submission with reports of some defenders resorting to cannibalism. Though it stood for over 450 years it was allowed to fall into ruin during the Meiji Restoration and was eventually demolished in 1879 with nothing remaining but parts of the wall and one gate, still reinforced with iron spikes to repel shadow invaders.
Following the castle’s fall a European style building called Jinpukaku was built at the base of the ruins, becoming the first building in Tottori to have electric lights. Jinpukaku is now a museum and point of interest in most trips to Tottori.
Tottori was also one of the few cities not bombed by the Allied forces during World War 2 as they didn’t consider the city strategically important enough to bother with designating it as a military target and with a population too low to cause any amount of fear amongst the populace to pressure the government into surrender. However, though the city survived War World 2 mostly intact, a fire in 1952 destroyed the majority of homes in the city. Many people were wounded or killed or missing and over a third of the population of the city (some 60,000 at that time) was displaced by the blaze. There are very few buildings left, by some estimates a mere 10%, which were built before 1952.
As far as representation in other media there really isn’t a whole lot. Tottori remains much as it has through its history, isolated, quiet, and unassuming. There was a brief view of the Tottori sand Dunes in Episode 11 of Super Cub, but not much else. It is, in short, the perfect setting for the series. If you ever do get a chance to visit Japan and want a relaxing and out of the way retreat for a few days, I highly recommend visiting Tottori. I don’t think you’d be disappointed.
So now that I had my location set, I just needed to flesh out the rest of my characters, which I will expand upon next week! Thank you so very much for your time and, although it was short, I hope I was able to impart a few of the things which made Tottori a great place to set a novel in. I’ll see you next week with our overview of characters including the new character I’m introducing in this book. If you have any questions or comments please let me know! Otherwise I’ll see you Saturday for the next chapter in Reaver’s Song and then Monday for the next short adventure of Sayuri. Be safe and I’ll talk to you soon!
Menchi Katsu
( ^..^)ﾉ
