following in the footsteps of FLESH & BLOOD's Kaito

my Francis Drake minibreak

愛国心は理屈ではない。それは魂に刻印されているものなのだろう。

When

manda

flagged up the existence of FLESH & BLOOD to me last year— an epic historical pirate isekai BL light novel series with over 20 drama CDs— I didn't need very much convincing at all to embark on the first novel. However, it was a surprising and delightful bonus that this series begins in my home of Devon in the south west of England. What started off as a ticklish novelty, as places I recognised got namedropped (in unfamiliar katakana forms), then blossomed into a real nagging urge to visit all those places: to map the journey of volume one, and to tread the ground that the schoolboy protagonist Kaito did, as he got sucked back into time to 1500s England— the era of legendary privateer Sir Francis Drake. The locations were so lovingly described that I felt certain that the author must have visited them herself as research for the novel, so potentially it would be her footsteps I would be following in too. After a bit of scheming and planning, that's exactly what I did, and I spent my birthday week at the beginning of October on what I've been affectionately calling my Francis Drake Minibreak.

This blog post will have spoilers for the main plot beats of the first volume of FLESH & BLOOD!

The novel actually opens with Kaito and his friend Kazuya— both Japanese schoolboys enrolled in a private London boarding school— in Land’s End, the very furthest south point of England. They’re on a holiday Kaito planned with the theme of 『女王陛下の海賊を追って』(In Pursuit of Her Majesty’s Pirates— I suppose my trip could be called 『女王陛下の海賊を追う海斗を追って』) to visit locations that had piqued his interest from history classes. I decided not to trace the journey all the way down to Cornwall, where the book starts, because as Kaito rightly points out, there is 「なーんもねぇ」there. Instead, I jumped in when Kaito and Kazuya travel up to Plymouth to start their next leg of their journey.

冒険の原: ドレイクの太鼓

On the train up to Devon, Kaito and Kazuya talk about Sir Francis Drake, the most famous of Queen Elizabeth’s pirates, and his legendary drum: about the intriguing myth that the drum sounds by itself when England is faced with great danger. Being that the man himself carried it with him until his death, Kaito feels that even if it doesn't have supernatural powers, it could somehow be imbued with the thoughts and feelings of Francis Drake. Kazuya shoots him down, saying that these kind of ideas are just delusions. Still, Kaito is excited to see the drum in person at the Maritime Museum, and even cheekily hints that if it wasn't inside a showcase, he might be tempted to bang it himself.

ドレイクス・ドラム――――それはキャプテン・ドレイクが世界周航のときに携えていったと言われている太鼓で、船員に戦闘開始の合図を送るときに打ち鳴らされたものだ。

Here’s the drum, and where all the trouble of the entire FLESH & BLOOD series began! It’s currently in the Box Museum in Plymouth, along with a mildly threatening caption from the museum curator.

タイムスリップの現場: プリマス・ホー

The pair then traverse Plymouth Hoe, the coastland area of the city, and see the impressive Francis Drake statue and Smeaton Lighthouse. Blessed with similar good weather, I was able to sit by the lighthouse myself and read my kindle for an hour.

「浜風が涼しくて気持ちいい～」

However, in the world of FLESH & BLOOD, storm clouds begin to gather. It's then, standing here on Plymouth Hoe, that Kaito hears the sinister トントン of a drum beat... an odd but familiar sort of noise, and then before he knows it, he is gruesomely sucked into a time portal.

信じたくはないが、海斗は『トンネルの向こう』に行ってしまった。

Unconscious, Kaito is later discoveredー or should I say... earlier, discovered, because the year is now 1587— by dashing Spanish spy Vincent, and it's hard to tell from the illustration, but I think it's likely that it was somewhere in this area.

「今は何年……？　何年の何月？」

ドレイクの家:バックランド・アビィ

An awful lot of very exciting things happen in the middle part of this book, which I won’t detail in their entirety; but crucially, Kaito ends up meeting the handsome, swashbuckling ship captain Jeffrey, who takes him under his wing as a cabin boy. Soon afterwards, Jeffrey gets a message from an emissary of Sir Francis Drake himself, requesting his presence at his residence of Buckland Abbey. Jeffrey takes Kaito with him, on a gruelling horseback ride through the Devon moors…

フランシス・ドレイクは成功の証であるバックランド・アビィを磨みがき上げ、飾り立てていた。

This was my favourite part of the trip, and the location where I felt the closest sense of connection to the story. Buckland Abbey is really gorgeous. It's been through several incarnations in its 700 year history, including being owned by King Henry VIII, but it's Francis Drake's time there that has left the greatest stamp, and a lot of the house has been preserved just like it was back when he was living there.

While waiting nervously to meet Francis Drake, Kaito stares at a tapestry glimmering in golds and silvers, portraying Drake's beloved ship that accompanied him in his round the world voyage, the Golden Hind (黄金の雌鹿号). It wasn't a tapestry, but I spotted this painting, and thought about how it must feel to be in such a momentous and surreal situation, expecting a man from the history books to descend the stairs.

客間に飾られたタピストリーがまた素晴らしい。それは主人と共に世界中の海を駆け巡った、『黄金のゴールデン雌鹿号・ハインド』の威容を余すところなく描きだしたものだ。

Reluctant to confess his time-traveller status, Kaito invents a convincing cock-and-bull story about his origin to Drake and Jeffrey, about being ambushed on his travels from Japan with a missionary voyage. I think I even found the globe which could have been the one where Kaito traces his journey in this illustration.

「ご紹介しましょう。名はカイト・トーゴー。ユグノーの海賊に攫われ、危うくこのイングランドで売り払われようとしていた少年です。本人の言葉によれば、ジパングの出身とか」

There were several guest bedrooms we were allowed to explore in Buckland Abbey, and I speculated which one might have the one where Kaito stayed that uncomfortable night, forced to eschew his daily bath and to do his business in a chamber pot.

Downstairs, there was a replica of Drake’s drum which you were allowed to touch! I was too afraid to bang it though…

「人の目には映らないドラム――――あれはドレイクの太鼓だ。ホーの丘で鳴り響いているんだよ」

Kaito ends up endearing himself to Drake so much that he wants to take him in as an adopted son, but Jeffrey won’t give him up that easily, and takes him home to Plymouth to prepare to set sail in a voyage in Jeffrey’s ship, the Gloria.

黄金の雌鹿号

Back in Plymouth, Jeffrey gets Kaito suited and booted and ready to depart. The Gloria is a fictional ship, but what I could visit was the replica Golden Hind which is moored in Brixham, a Devon seaside village. I thought it might bear some resemblance to The Gloria, and it helped me imagine things a bit better, especially going into volume 2 where Kaito begins his seafaring adventure. I was struck by how narrow and cramped it looked, with its breadth being only 23 feet wide: how claustrophobic it would be with a full crew of 80. But for now, this is where volume 1, and my holiday, ended!

グローリア号はその翼で海斗を水平線の向こうまで連れていってくれるだろう。そして、水平線の向こうには何があるのだろうか。

ちょっと悲しい結末

While planning this trip, I was overwhelmed with a sense of emotional connection to the author Natsuki Matsuoka; someone I'd never met or even seen the face of, a woman born thousands of miles away. She wrote passionately and with great detail and imagination about my humble corner of the world, in Japanese for a Japanese audience, and her novels reached me, living within a stone's throw of the locations described.

I felt a burning need to somehow tell her about my plan for my trip— and to ask her if she did the same trip, many years ago, before the release of the first book in 2001. I wanted to thank her for her writing and share my excitement about continuing to read the adventures of Kaito and Jeffrey.

I typed Matsuoka-sensei's name into google, and my heart dropped as the search box auto-completed "松岡なつき 病気". I found a twitter post of hers from 2016 where she describes being diagnosed with breast cancer, feeling terribly tired, and her desire to continue the story of FLESH & BLOOD. Her last tweet is from June 2018. I tried to search for an obituary, for any other information, for any trace of her, but I came up empty.

The story of FLESH & BLOOD remains unfinished, at volume 24, released in June 2015. I can't help wishing I'd started learning Japanese ten years earlier.

I decided to write what I wanted to say to her in a letter anyway, just for myself.

:UPDATE December 2024: Today I saw the news that after ten years, Matsuoka-sensei is going to be continuing the series next year! I’ve never been more happy to be wrong in my life.