is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka about a friendship between a samurai and a doctor in the final decade of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Hidamari no Ki received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1984 for general manga.
The story is partly based on Tezuka's great-grandfather who was one of the Japanese physicians pushing for acceptance of Western medical practice at the time. The title is a metaphor for the Tokugawa shogunate which is compared to an old camphor tree which has enjoyed the sunshine and shelter from the winds for 300 years, but is slowly dying because it is being eaten away from the inside by termites and gribbles.
It has been adapted into an anime series, by Madhouse and premiered in Japan on NTV on April 4, 2000. It also was adapted into a television drama, and also a 2021 stage play starring Sugeta Rinne of the boyband 7 MEN Samurai.
Plot
The story follows two young men whose lives intersect during the political turbulence and social upheaval in Japan in the time before the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Dr. Ryoan Tezuka is a medical student attracted to the radical new of Western medicine under Kōan Ogata, while Manjiro Ibuya is a samurai who is a staunch supporter of honor and tradition. They both encounter and fall in love with the same woman, O-Seki, the daughter of a respected Temple priest. Ryoan's idealism is gradually eroded, and he marries, settles down and takes over his father's medical practice. Meanwhile, Manjiro rises through the ranks of samurai society and the shogun initially gives him the delicate task of managing a United States emissary and later to turn farmers into an armed infantry.
Characters
Voiced by Koichi Yamadera
Ryoan is a medical student with a gentle and inquiring nature, but also a well-known womanizer. He is the son of the doctor Ryosen Tezuka in Azabu, Edo during the Ansei era who is a proponent of integrating Western medicine into Japan. Ryoan is also attracted to the radical new Western medicine and travels to Osaka to study with Kōan Ogata.
Mitsuru Miyamoto
Manjiro is a traditionalist and essentially a self-taught samurai who is inclined to be hot-headed. He initially joins the Gembukan dōjō to develop his skills, but is forced to leave after killing two of its members while defending Ryoan Tezuka. He is eventually recognized by the shogunate for evacuating displaced people of the Great Ansei earthquake and was selected as the guard of the US mission in Japan.
O-Seki is the beautiful daughter of a priest at the local Zenshouji Temple in Azabu and courted by both Ryoan Tezuka and Manjiro Ibuya.
Production
Hidamari no Ki is considered part of Osamu Tezuka's last artistic period, which focused on more realistic historical works (e.g. Message to Adolf). Rather than being set in an imaginary world, as are many of Tezuka's earlier works, historical context plays an important role for the action of the characters and for dramatic effect, many of these works depict turbulent or revolutionary historical periods like here the Meiji Restoration.
Tezuka was inspired for the manga by his interest in his own genealogy. This was sparked by researcher Yasuaki Fukase, who wrote a thesis about his great-grandfather Ryosen Tezuka and sent it to the manga artist with a personal letter. Tezuka then found episodes about Ryoan Tezuka in a biography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, who was a classmate of Ryoan Tezuka's at Koan Ogata's private school for Western medicine in Osaka.
A characteristic of Tezuka's last artistic period is having at least two interrelated main characters, here Manjiro and Ryan, who react very differently to the historical events they witness and who because of this end up on opposing ends of societal and political conflict. This leads to them questioning their own values and worldview, when they end up meeting their old friends again. Like many other manga series by Tezuka such as Black Jack, Hidamari no Ki has a physician as a main character.
Hidamari no Ki, ending in 1986, is one of Tezuka's last longer serializations before his death in 1989. Already ill at the time of writing, he foreshadowed his death by showing his own father - looking like Tezuka himself - dying in volume 9.