00:01
If you are invited to someone's house for dinner or a meal, you're supposed to take a shower at the house?
Yeah, it was considered good manners to bathe before joining the meal, to make yourself clean before dinner, essentially.
What happens if you don't do it?
Welcome back to 2AM OTTACK! I'm your host Mayu, a born and raised Japanese non-otaku, and...
I'm Cisco, an American otaku.
In this podcast, we share our reviews of anime and manga through our distinct perspectives with commentary on Japanese culture, history, and language.
Cisco, we are back with the Apothecary Diaries today.
Yeah.
American Netflix started the Season 1 of the Apothecary Diaries.
That's about time.
And now we are into the second core of the second season of the anime, with the new opening and ending.
I don't think we have time to talk about opening and ending today, but we are thinking to talk about like a whole ending and opening for the Apothecary Diaries in the future.
Let's do it.
So stay tuned.
Today, we will focus on the episode 35 to 37 of the Apothecary Diaries.
We are going to talk about the history of firearms in China.
The intimate yet funny moment between Jinshi and Maomao.
History of bathhouse and today's word of the day.
Also, we have talked about the Apothecary Diaries in the past.
We have two episodes.
So before or after listening to this episode, listen to the past episodes as well.
Please subscribe and follow 2AMOTOCK on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and YouTube.
We would highly appreciate it if you could give us a good review about our podcast so that we can keep making more fun episodes.
All right, let's go from episode 35.
アポセカリー・ダイアリーズのエピソード概要
The title is The Hunt.
In this episode, Maomao accompanies Jinshi and his companions to the land governed by Shishou's family at a party there.
Jinshi wears a mask and it goes by a false name.
Right.
He got attacked by like an unknown enemy.
And then there was like a scene of using gun, the tiny gun.
It doesn't look like tiny, but like it's smaller than the guns.
I think you mean it's a pistol?
Pistol.
Yes.
Like a handheld gun?
Yeah.
Right.
Can you help me with that?
Like I was wondering if there's like any gun use in China in that era that Apothecary Diaries is modeling?
Yeah.
So it's like I said, it's we've talked about this in the other episodes a lot.
But it's hard to really know when the Apothecary Diaries is meant to be set.
It's obviously like a kind of fictional alternate history where a lot of the elements of the Tang Dynasty are commingled with elements of the Ming Dynasty.
And those to me are the two that are strongest.
There basically weren't guns.
Like they suggest that the gun that's being used in the episode is a gun that can fire more than once in rapid succession, potentially without needing to be reloaded.
And so if it's an honest-to-god revolver, that would make this story set, I don't know, I think at minimum after the 1500s or 1600s.
So for sure closer to the Ming.
And at that time, there were people in Europe for sure and possibly in other places in the world experimenting with trying to make guns that could shoot more than once without needing a full reload.
But it was not really possible to mass produce them yet.
They were expensive.
They were kind of like prototypes.
They weren't, they didn't become like a series of revolver rifles.
The first person to really pull that off isn't until the 1830s and that Samuel Colt in the United States.
It doesn't seem like the show is meant to be set that late in like the 1800s.
I don't know, from what I remember of the animation of the gun that they've got, it looks more like a flintlock pistol that would have been available in the, you know, 1600s maybe.
火薬の起源と武器の発展
But in the same way that they've made up a lot of the other stuff in the show, it seems like they're also suggesting that a more than one shot flintlock pistol has somehow been imported to China.
I'm going to stick by my original sort of suggestion that this is meant to be like the 1600s or 1700s or something.
And that would make it unlikely, but not totally impossible for somebody to import like a custom-made flintlock gun that could fire twice.
When the gun was shot to like a ground or like a rock, almost it smells like sulfur.
Right.
And then that suggests that was a gunpowder or gunpowder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then China is the origin place of gunpowder.
Yes.
China started using gunpowder in fireworks going back a really, really long time.
Possibly, I think, as far back as the Tang Dynasty.
And both Chinese and Mongol weapons incorporated gunpowder thereafter.
But the earliest weapons were called fire spears, and they didn't shoot bullets.
They shot spears, like the name suggests, and they were not very accurate or used very often because it was so hard to reload them.
And the Mongols then used things called hand cannons that are exactly what they sound like, firing like cannons but in your hand.
And those weapons take a long, long time to fire and then are extremely dangerous because they can explode and kill the wielder.
So those existed, but they weren't used very often in battle.
Expensive to make, expensive to use, you know, not that accurate and dangerous.
And it's not until the development of the musket that guns become more useful.
And I think most of that innovation happened in Europe and then came back to Asia via European traders sailing around Africa and bringing those muskets back.
So that would have happened in the 1400s and 1500s with the arquebus and stuff like the Portuguese guns.
But I don't know that those were widely used in China for a while after that.
So there were, you know, there were gunpowder weapons from the Mongol era on, maybe even a little, you know, at the same time used by the Southern Song and stuff.
But guns as we think of them today didn't become really popular in China for another couple hundred years.
信長の銃の戦術
Speaking of Portugal, what I learned from school was Nobunaga Oda was the first person to introduce guns for fighting in Japan.
Yeah, he's one of the first daimyo to really use them successfully.
Like he created the strategy using guns.
Nobunaga's big innovation was that he armed three rows of guys with guns.
And then, you know, because it took so long to reload a musket, said the first line is going to take a shot, then they're going to kneel down and start reloading.
The second line is going to take a shot, then they'll start kneel down and start reloading.
And the third line will take a shot and they'll kneel down and start reloading.
And so what that did was it enabled a company of soldiers armed with guns to, instead of just firing one shot and then needing to wait a really long time before the second volley came, fire in semi-continuous volleys.
He used this really effectively against the Takeda cavalry.
And so it was a way that guns hadn't been used before.
And I guess in some ways it anticipated the idea of a repeating rifle, even though that wouldn't be invented for another 300 years.
OK, that was a lot of information.
Very informative.
Oh, thank you.
You know, I'm never like 100% sure I know everything that I think I know.
So maybe double check this if you're going to like teach it to someone else or whatever.
エピソード36の紹介
All right, let's move on to the episode of 36.
The title is Kazuigetsu.
What does it mean?
Not going to tell.
Oh, cool. Thank you very much.
I don't know.
I checked the reason, the meaning and the reason why.
And it might be a spoiler.
Now we're worried about spoilers?
Really?
For later.
For the later anime.
I see, I see.
Yeah.
OK.
Mao Maoの計画
In this episode, in the cave, Mao Mao discovered Jinshi's long-held secret.
What a way to put that.
She discovered it.
Later, she hatches a cunning plan to lure the men who shot at her and Jinshi out of hiding.
This was a very interesting episode.
Of all the episodes we've watched from season one, that was the most intense moment of all the time.
Yeah, it was pretty awkward.
Jinshi was awkward the whole time.
I mean, Mao Mao was too, but she was chill, sort of.
She didn't show, you know, she's like panicked.
Or she has a particular way of expressing that emotion, right?
By, like, being sort of full of bluster.
I remember she was saying, like, when she was little, you know, stayed in the brothel.
Everybody was busy with their job and nobody took care of her, even though she was crying the whole day.
And she kind of learned and stopped, like, expressing herself.
Yeah.
God, this sounds familiar.
Yeah.
Maybe that's why she's like, she can be cool.
But, yeah, I was surprised, like, considering how old she is.
And she was, like, noticing what was going on.
And then she was smarter than, like, I don't want to know, like, I don't want to know the truth.
I shouldn't know the truth.
Right.
Even though she was trying to say.
She's done a lot of that in the show, actually.
There's a lot of times where she's, like, curious about something and then decides not to be as curious as she really is.
Because she's afraid that more knowledge might actually be dangerous.
That was smart of her.
緊迫した状況
And it was, like, a funny interaction between them.
Like, I think it was just a frog.
It was, like, mucusy and, you know.
My main thing is she says it's not even that big a frog.
And then she was like, oh, frogs are small.
Yeah.
And then Momo was like, well, they're, like, a very big size frogs as well.
Or, like, they were, like, an interaction with, like, referring, you know, what.
Yeah.
I feel like you're really trying to talk around this.
Why?
Oh, that's my question to you.
Anyway.
And then, basically, Momo made Jinshi upset that she didn't want to listen.
She didn't want to admit about it.
Like, he flipped her over and be on top of her.
Right.
And then, like, very, like, aggressive.
Yeah.
Do you want to find out?
Right.
I was like, I was awake at the moment.
Yeah.
It kind of seemed like he was, like, not that far away from a sexual assault.
Right.
It was really close because he was trying to kiss her.
Right.
I mean, they kissed already because, like, he was giving her PCR.
CPR.
I'm tired.
Yeah, I know.
It's okay.
Don't worry about it.
CPR?
Yep.
So, I was like, whatever.
But, like, yeah, he was, like, kind of into it.
The CPR?
Yeah, CPR.
Of course, he was trying to save her life.
But the second time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which was, like, I felt like, please don't do this to her.
There needs to be conversation between you guys.
You've got to get consent first.
Right.
Right.
Even though I don't know how Momo really feels about Jinshi.
Right.
But even so, like, don't let this happen.
Yeah, it did seem, it was kind of, like, it was kind of scary there.
That the show might be a little too real.
Because, like, she couldn't move.
She couldn't say anything.
And I know exactly what the feeling is like.
Yeah.
When you're in that kind of situation.
I once had a, what do you call it?
I'm trying to think of the right words to express that in English.
電車内の出来事
Train pervert?
I guess.
It doesn't have to be in the train.
Oh, really?
But it mostly happens in the train.
Like a molester?
A molester?
When I lived in Yokohama.
And after work, I came home late.
And I was on the late train.
And it wasn't that crowded.
But I was standing near the door.
And a guy who was holding a big envelope in front of him.
With both hands.
He was right behind me.
I could see his face, you know, reflecting the door.
Because it was nighttime.
And he was really close to me.
And his hands, like, not the other side of the palms.
But touching my butt.
The back of his hands?
Back of his hands.
But touching my butt.
I was like, oh, this is awkward.
It's not even crowded.
If it's crowded, I was like, yeah, sure.
Right.
So, like, I felt weird.
So, I moved inside more.
The train?
The train.
To get away from him.
And I was like, that'll be okay.
And he came back to me again.
Like, he was right behind me again.
And I got scared.
Yeah.
And he was touching my butt again.
Gross.
So, I just couldn't say anything.
I was young.
Right.
I didn't know what to say.
Sure.
I didn't want to make a big scene.
Now I can do it.
Yeah, I think you probably could.
I'm older, and I have less chance of having to risk it.
I don't know.
But back then, I couldn't say anything.
And then the person who was sitting in front of me left.
I was like, okay, I can finally sit and I can see his face.
Right.
Direct.
And then as soon as I sat down, he left and got out from the train car.
Yeah.
Gross.
It wasn't as bad as it could be, but I didn't like it.
It happened at nighttime.
And then, like, he just kind of, you know, followed me.
Yeah.
Yuck.
Yeah.
I've definitely had my butt squeezed on a Japanese train, too.
By who?
I don't know.
It was so crowded, I couldn't tell.
I just thought it was, I mean, like, more than anything, I found it kind of, like, amusing
because I was like, did you, like, miss?
Were you, like, aiming for someone else's butt and you, like, grabbed mine instead by accident?
Like, I couldn't figure that out.
I feel like getting, like, my butt grabbed on the train, like, didn't actually freak
me out that much for some reason.
緊張感のある対話
Anyway, the interaction between Jinshi and Manwa were really intense.
Yeah, I kept, like, hoping for Jinshi asking questions to Manwa.
Like, do you want to go through with this?
Right.
He said, do you want to find out?
And Manwa was terrified.
Yeah, she didn't say no, though, did she?
She didn't say no.
She was just like, uh-oh, I shouldn't have teased him so much, right?
Yeah, but if, like, a big guy is on top of you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you think she was going to kick him?
She said, like, should I kick him in her mind?
Right, right, right.
Which, yeah, she should have.
Would she be in trouble?
Hard to know, really.
Hard to tell.
Probably not that much.
Depends on, like, how angry he got about it, you know?
I feel like she just, like, lucked out with the dog.
Right.
Let's move on to episode 37.
The title is The Bath.
The Bath?
I think it's just The Baths.
The Baths.
Yeah.
I can't pronounce that.
Baths?
Baths.
I can't do that.
I will never be able to do this THS sound.
THS.
THS.
THS.
There's no R in the middle.
THS.
Yeah.
Baths.
No.
I don't even try.
Okay, all right, it's fine.
This is something I can't.
I can't do it.
We'll work on it later.
In this episode, after hearing Xiao Xiao, Xiaodan...
入浴文化の考察
This is why I asked if you really wanted to do this right now.
Okay.
After hearing Xiaolan ask Maomao for advice on finding work,
Shisui invites them to a bathhouse so Xiaolan can build connections with the women there.
We see the big bath.
Yeah.
Inside the courtyard.
And it's huge.
It was really big, yeah.
It looks fun if it's clean.
Yeah, why not?
I think it gets...
Do they change water, I guess?
It probably depends on the bath.
I'm not totally sure how realistic all of those giant outdoor baths were.
I don't know.
Maybe, but I think if they're going to be changing the water,
they got to have some kind of system for that, right?
To empty and fill things or to pump water in and out.
Yeah, how do they do that?
It feels kind of complicated.
It's like buckets and stuff?
No, definitely not with buckets.
How do they do that?
I think if you're really going to use a pool that big,
you got to have a system that diverts water from somewhere and then stores it.
Like a reservoir somewhere and then feeds it into a heating spot and heats it up
and then opens a valve and then it goes into the next spot.
That's smart.
Yes, it is.
Taking it in buckets would take a really long time to fill a swimming pool.
That wasn't my image.
Because in this episode, Xiaolan was mentioning,
oh, look at those Unix, 30 Unix.
And those people, aren't they supposed to be in charge of bath water?
So I was imagining using buckets.
I think if you're going to fill a tub, you might use buckets.
But you think about old Japanese baths,
you literally build a fire underneath the bath.
But not that big.
What do you mean that big?
Yeah, the baths aren't that large.
Yeah, that's true.
But any bath that large in Japan is probably a natural hot spring.
When I was watching the episode,
it reminded me of one story from Bryce's story.
Yeah, where women in Persia in a steamy bathhouse.
And then they were naked, fully naked.
And then having conversations, making friends.
It was an interesting scene.
Is that a similar time period, do you think?
Bride's story?
I think bride's story is probably set...
I mean, again, I want to stress that
Apothecary Diaries is not a real time or place.
But I think if we were to compare the two,
bride's story, which is much more historical,
is probably set later than Apothecary Diaries.
But those type of bathhouses in Persia
would have been around a long time ago,
for sure earlier than the Tang Dynasty in China.
So even if Apothecary Diaries is supposed to be set during the Tang Dynasty,
Persia had bathhouses from like the 6-800s on
that were modeled often on Greek bathhouses
that, you know, also modeled on Roman bathhouses.
The Romans were building baths, you know, 0 CE.
So bathhouses have like a very, very long history.
And China has its own bathing culture
that dates back to pre the year zero.
So I don't know about how large those baths
would have been in the Shang or the Zhou dynasties.
But certainly by the Tang Dynasty,
there were both private baths and large public baths.
And so I think China is less reliant on natural hot springs than, say, Japan.
But like ancient Rome and ancient Persia,
a lot of the baths are heated by coal.
And so China has like abundant coal.
And so burning coal to heat the water for the baths
would have been how they made it hot in most places.
I don't know about young Japanese people.
Maybe they take just shower because people are really busy.
Right.
But when I lived with my parents,
like I was told to take bath every single day.
Yeah.
It's hygienic.
入浴習慣とマナー
I guess.
And then we have like a system machine to refit the water.
So we don't have to waste water every time.
Right.
I mean, your hometown is very rich in water as a resource.
But when you're heating up that much water at once,
I guess it makes sense just for the sewer bill not to waste it,
but rather to get clean first and then use the same bath water over and over again.
I think in reading about bathing in ancient China,
the standard was once every five days for the poor
and more often for the wealthy who could afford it.
And you said if you are invited to someone's house for dinner or meal,
you're supposed to take shower at the house.
Yeah.
It was considered good manners to bathe before joining the meal
to make yourself clean before dinner, essentially.
What happens if you don't do?
I don't know.
It's like reject.
No, I don't think there was like, I mean, who knows?
Actually, I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough on the subject to be able to say.
But I did see the idea was that if you were invited over for dinner
and it was a wealthy enough person,
they might provide you with a means to wash up before dinner.
I mean, you know, we Americans wash their hands before eating.
So do Japanese people.
I think so does like everybody because like that's a hygienic thing to do.
I think if a bath is available, right,
especially if you're in a culture that doesn't bathe every day,
then like at least before like a big dinner party.
Like, yeah, that's that's a nice thing to do, right?
石鹸と洗浄方法
Yeah.
And I noticed while, you know, everybody, Shaolan, Momo,
before taking bath, they were, you know,
washing their body and hair was like something bubbly.
And it made me wonder at that point, like, what do they use for soap?
And that reminded me this scene from the cat Momo was discovered.
I don't know where the cat now.
Puma Momo washed cat was soaping and it was kind of bubbly.
So probably they, you know, she used the same soap.
Probably.
I mean, I don't know how bubbly it really was.
The bubbliness strikes me as a convention of anime to show that it is soap
because modern people expect soap to have bubbles.
Soap beans are a real thing.
They're not natural.
You make them from soybeans and medicinal herbs and stuff,
but they really existed.
And people actually did use them to clean themselves.
Going back as far as the Tang Dynasty.
When I saw it, like as a zero waster myself,
I was like, oh, it could be like soap nuts because I've used it before
to clean the clothes for the laundry and for my hair, too.
And it really works.
It doesn't get bubbly, but it removes oil.
A lot of like modern soaps and shampoos contain what are called foaming agents
on purpose.
Sulfate.
Yeah, often sulfates.
I don't know if the sulfates are the foaming agents,
but they contain things to make bubbles on purpose because our association
of bubbles with soap and cleanliness is so strong.
The bubbles don't actually do anything.
It's the soap that's important.
Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
I've also researched about how people in the old days used to wash their hair.
In Japan, people used to use rice water for their hair.
The grain water works really well on the hair, which didn't work for me.
I tried for myself.
I think partially because Los Angeles has hard water,
it doesn't have much minerals in the water.
I've also tried shikakai.
Is it like a plant?
Have you heard?
No.
Okay.
It's a thing.
I've tried it.
It worked well, but the preparation was too much work, so I stopped doing it.
I also tried baking soda, which works, but it was not good for my hair.
You've tried a lot of things.
I mean, I had to experiment and then see what's good for me.
Those things work differently on different people.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
I ended up using just a shampoo bar, which is easy and plastic-free.
True.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
Let's do word of the day.
日本の入浴文化の探求
Otaku, word of the day.
What is today's word of the day?
Ofuro.
Ofuro.
What is ofuro?
It means the bath.
It's got an honorific, O, attached to the front of it because Japanese people really
like the bath.
Or respect.
Yes, respect the bath.
There are some other types of baths, though.
We've mentioned, I think a little bit, onsen, hot springs, which are naturally occurring
sources of hot water that may or may not be channeled into a sort of bathing area.
There's also the sento, which means the public bath.
These still exist in some places in Japan.
Do sento always have onsen pools in them?
I think it depends.
Really?
It depends.
There's some that just showers, essentially?
You mean a lot of water?
Yeah, not like a naturally occurring hot spring, but is there always a big open bath to get
into, for example?
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
I think so, too.
You can clean yourself and then get into it.
In my image, for some reason, most sento have tiles and no windows.
Correct.
Only really, really high up windows or something.
And almost always have at least one wall, like the wall behind the bath has a big drawing
or painting or mural or something on it.
Yeah, Mount Fuji.
Yeah, off in Mount Fuji.
Yes.
Okay, that's all from watching anime because I've maybe only been to one actual sento ever
in my life.
I don't think I've ever been to, like only one time in my life as well.
Because nowadays, every house has a shower or bath.
So they were more important when people didn't have baths in their own homes?
Yeah, it's cheap to go to a sento.
But onsen are not that much more expensive, honestly, right?
What's the difference between an onsen and a sento?
I think in my image, onsen should have natural, like those minerals.
But sento's literally just water.
It doesn't have to be, I think.
No minerals.
And not fed from like a natural source.
Are there onsens that aren't from natural sources?
You can call it, I think, but it's not appeal.
Also, do you have to have, I guess, I don't think you do, but you don't have to have a
rotemburo in order to be an onsen, right?
No.
Okay.
Yeah, what's a rotemburo?
Rotemburo means an outdoor bath.
So it is a feature of many onsens that there will be an indoor bath, often multiple indoor
baths, and then also an outdoor bath.
It's usually got rocks.
It's usually like natural rocks as the both border of the bath and the bottom.
And then you're sitting outside with like a bamboo screen around and looking up at the
night sky.
I think we should give a tip if people who have never been to Japan and want to go onsen
in the future.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Don't have a tattoo.
Oh, okay.
Sure.
Because you won't be allowed in because they'll think you're a yakuza.
Yeah.
That's the one thing.
What's the second thing?
Go in the winter.
It's the most fun time to be in a rotemburo.
Okay.
I was thinking about kanji in the front.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
If you're planning to go to an onsen, it is imperative that you learn the difference between
the Japanese character for man and the Japanese character for woman.
Because although there will usually be color coded, what are those called?
Noren.
Noren.
Yeah.
It's really, really important that you be able to read those characters because they
can change from day to day.
So just because you went in it yesterday on the left side, it doesn't mean it's still
on the left side the next day.
Yeah.
That's something you should know.
I think by today, a lot of places which have a lot of like tourists from other countries
might have like men, women sign in English.
Yeah.
They're not from the countryside.
They're not catering to English speakers.
No, they don't do that.
You got to know those kanji.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So be careful.
Yes.
Be very careful.
All right.
Anything else you'd like to add about the Apothecary Diaries?
It's really good.
I'm looking forward to the rest of the second quarter.
入浴シーンの変化
I think one of the things that struck me about the whole bathing episode was all of
the baths up until now, especially the ones taking place in the brothel, have been with
like full on nudity.
And these ones weren't like everybody was wearing clothes.
And I wonder whether that's like a reaction on the part of the show to like, I don't know,
opinion or like responses they've gotten so far, or whether there's like a reason why
the palace would have clothes, but the pleasure district doesn't.
I think brothel, house, bath scenes, like they are just like soaking.
They are not getting out and doing something.
And doing like the massage and stuff.
Yeah.
Maybe that's why.
Maybe that's why.
Who knows?
エピソードのまとめ
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
If you liked this week's episode, please give us good reviews on Spotify and our podcast
or leak and leave a comment, leak?
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Make sure to subscribe and follow 2AMOTAK and 3AMOTAK.
It'll keep us making more fun episodes.
See you next time for more 2AMOTAK.
Peace.
