I wanted to follow up with the RKRC stuff
and
Murasaki Umeboshi's "Bird in Hand" was nominated for an award
but upon visiting the RKRC site it just says voting will start soon.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3236980/11/Bird_in_Hand
I think Murasaki (from skimming her fanfic profile) read Wright's
article on Female Combatants in Japan...and the notion of foreigners
entering Aizu is very interesting.
Murasaki Umeboshi "rape by foreigners"
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1159727/Murasaki_Umeboshi
what Prof. Wright had in her article is "Aizu's inhabitants
deliberately chose death for themselves and their kin to prevent
capture by foreigners, that is primarily wetern Japan-derived army of
the new imperial government." (Wright 405)
Wright footnoted "domainal ethnicity" this is connected with the true
state of matters that many domains were unique enough (culturally and
to some degree linguistically) and let's say if Aizu invaded
Satsuma---Satsuma would also consider Aizu to be foreigners as well.
In any case, I hope to have time to read this fic in the near future
but now I have many many things to do and I'm not done with another
story I'm reading.