Funfacts for Chapters 25-27
Chapter 25
Funfact: Emperors during this time served tenures of a decade or so, becoming emperor in their mid-teens and then retiring in their late twenties, early thirties, and then just kinda hung out for the rest of their lives. There was a great deal of power-play to get daughters and second sons married into the imperial family, especially in the 17th century with the Tokugawa. Wikipedia is down so I can’t double-check my facts super-fast, but I think Ieyasu was the grandfather, uncle, and great-grandfather to an emperor.
Funfact: While you can’t make me put a beard on Kakashi, you cannot stop me from putting one on Iruka. There. And I’m only being consistent, if you’ll remember Sarutobi’s nearly-first-words to Kakashi waaaay back in like chapter 7. Yes. And no, you still can’t make me put a beard on Kakashi, you just can’t!
Funfact: The shogun’s castle was actually heavily defended during the fire, but it was at the cost of basically everyone else’s homes. And the darn thing STILL caught fire! Just not burned-down-to-ashes caught fire. It was, however, enough of a reason for the shogun at the time to decide he wanted a different castle, a new castle. A black castle. Because black castles are awesome. Ask anyone.
SubFunfact: Castles seem to have been built in usually white or black, and for this story I am choosing that the original castle was a white one. What kind of pansy wants to live in a white castle? Not Ietsuna!
Funfact: People coming to visit you or had messages for you would stand outside your door loudly announcing their presence until you answered the door. They only pounded on it/knocked when they thought you weren’t coming or had died or something.
Funfact: Litter-bearers did this too, as well as doing it during sankin kotai (the ritual, super expensive trip daimyo had to make to Edo every other year). The former was so that no one got run down in the street too badly, and so that they all knew where they were going, if they were turning, etc. The latter was so that everyone in the street could find somewhere else to be rather than throw themselves bodily to the ground.
Funfact: You were supposed to dress up when you met with higher-ranking people, especially if they were a lord. Exceptions were probably made sometimes.
Chapter 26
Funfact: Horses go about 8mph at a trot, which seems—to my cursory research—the ideal “let’s go somewhere,” speed for traveling by horse. With rest breaks, they can cover 20-30 miles in a day. So I mashed that together here with having fresh horses + lunch + breaks and got 40 miles in one day. If that bothers you, please remember that this story isn’t meant to be a handbook about traveling by horse. I actually hate horses, so be grateful I am enough of a perfectionist to sit through a dozen websites about the darn creatures.
Funfact: If you know about Anjin-sama (or you can check the blog) and his life, then I hope you aren’t too worried for Naruto.
Funfact: (that is not actually very fun at all :( ) Before modern antibiotics, hospitalized patients with pneumonia had a 30% mortality rate. I shudder to think of what it might have been in the 17th century. I tried to look it up but haven’t really found much. I’ll put a link up on the blog to a study I found relating to it.
Funotherstuff: Remember me harping on earlier in the story about letters and how long they took to get places? It mattered! I promise!
Funotherstuff: My headcanon for Jiraiya is that he is serious more often than fun and laughing. There was a lot of his life in the series which wasn’t spotlighted. The man was basically the spymaster-afield for Konoha, and the man practiced a fair bit of realpolitik in his training. Yes, a healthy dose of Good Ol’ Good Guy in there, but he throws his student off a cliff to force him to learn summoning. Let me repeat that, he threw his student off a cliff to teach him a technique faster than the boy was already learning it. He also stole Naruto as a student because he felt 1) he could teach him better and 2) Kakashi would perhaps be soft on the kid because of Minato. He told Kakashi to teach Sasuke instead.
Notsofunrant: So really Sakura getting “shut out” before the last round of the Chuunin exams is really Jiraiya’s fault rather than Kakashi’s. Also something so many people leave out of that equation: Sakura didn’t make it to the last round, Sasuke did. Sasuke also sort of stalked Kakashi to what seemed to be a private training ground so there’s that too. Creepy little Uchiha jerk.
Chapter 27
