Ooku: The Inner Chambers (Volume I) by Fumi Noshinaga, published in 2009.
Genre: manga, graphic novel
Source: personal copy
Description: In Edo period Japan, a strange new disease called the Red Pox has begun to prey on the country's men. Within eighty years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by seventy-five percent. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the Shogun. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the Shogun's Inner Chamber...
Comments:
My first manga... The 203 pages of graphic and sometimes dramatic drawings in this manga pulled me into the fictional world of female shoguns and an Inner Chamber populated mainly by handsome young men.
The series is a twist on the historical facts, where the shoguns were male and the Inner Chamber populated by females. The book focuses on the new shogun, a young female determined to change the old traditions, reduce the number of men in the Inner Chamber, simplify their lives, and make an impact on society.
I am very curious about the others in the series, to see where the story leads. There are about 11 or more of the books so far.
