<i>The Apothecary Diaries</i>: An Incomparable Remedy for Tired Tropes

Had someone told me, maybe a decade ago, that a romance anime featuring royal concubines and courtesans, set a thousand-plus years ago in an alternate version of Tang and/or Ming dynasty China, would exemplify progressive, feminist, gender-inclusive storytelling, I may have cocked an eyebrow. Not because stories about sex work cannot be empowering—they certainly can and have been. However, despite some precious exceptions, anime is not known for handling topics related to sexuality with any modicum of grace. In addition, for myriad complicated reasons, Japan has not often been great at telling stories about China, a nation with whom they have a long-documented history of disagreements, to put it mildly.

And then there’s the setting, of course. Historically, China has not treated women well. To be fair, I can think of no culture that has not vilified sex workers, or fetishized stories of consorts, or romanticized the lives of “happy hookers.” Feelings about sex work, both in reality and in fiction, are inevitably fraught with contradictions and difficult ethical questions. 

Finally, there seems to be endless discourse about the contradictory nature of perceived Japanese attitudes toward sex work. Yes, these days, countless host bars exist, and you can hire escorts in Kabukicho, but at the same time, the government maintains a very conservative perspective on sexuality. However, ask the average Kyoto citizen for their thoughts on Memoirs of a Geisha—which was written by a white dude from America, and then made into a movie starring very few Japanese people, which then resulted in a lot of tourists coming to Gion and harassing maiko and geiko on the street—and the mask of Japanese politeness may crack. Firmly, you will be told that geiko are not prostitutes. Yet if anyone dares bring up Japan’s appalling history regarding the government-sanctioned trafficking of “comfort women,” a lot of folks feign ignorance. 

I could go on and on, and on, about almost any country, so to the point: to this day, sex workers are rarely treated like fully-fledged people. Serial killers and other violent offenders target them because they know the cops will shrug off investigating women who live “high-risk” lifestyles. There are plenty of people in the Bible Belt happy to jam out to Reba McEntire’s “Fancy” who will also condemn Jezebels and harlots at church or the bar. Women and female-presenting sex workers are so often depicted as the butt of the joke, or doomed creatures to be pitied, or a convenient cautionary tale.

But now and always, sex work has been a more three-dimensional, nuanced fact of life. Yes, it has often been forced upon women, but it has also been a means of survival. Sex work is work that is always in demand, and at times in history has been profitable, regardless of whatever emotional or physical costs it may incur. In a world that finds endless ways to devalue women, sex work has also been a path toward agency for some, a road less traveled that can potentially lead to a decent life. Simultaneously, it is a gambit that can end in disaster. Is it any wonder that storytellers struggle to convey this dichotomy with grace? Hell, I’m struggling just to cover my bases across the intro of an anime essay.

And so, it is with not just admiration that I wonder about Natsu Hyūga, author of The Apothecary Diaries novels, but also amazement. How has this creator, who, like many Japanese mangaka and authors, never shows her face in public, managed to write a story that so gracefully navigates all these conundrums and contradictions and pitfalls and peaks, and is also hilarious and charming and evocative to boot? What magic is this?

No, it is not magic. The Apothecary Diaries is a concoction composed of insightful, well-researched storytelling and impeccable characterization, funneled through an empathetic mindset, and balanced with a clinical eye. 

Maomao and Jinshi

Xiao Mao, nicknamed Maomao, the apothecary at the heart of this story, does not actually have freckles. Instead, she paints them on daily, and when the rear palace overseer, a beautiful eunuch named Jinshi, remarks on this like it’s another of her quirks, she calmly tells him that a woman who does not want to be raped or kidnapped should try hard to be unremarkable. On the day she was plucked from a field and brought to the rear palace, she had forgotten to paint her freckles on.

The tone shifts immediately, though Maomao speaks frankly, as ever. Jinshi’s face shifts as well, because he can empathize more than he can say with the reasons why someone might want to hide in plain sight. After all, he is not really a eunuch, and believes himself to be the emperor’s brother (it’s more complicated than that). Jinshi is accustomed to feigning smiles when outsiders assume he is another of the emperor’s romantic companions.

Jinshi is understandably captivated by Maomao, and his loved ones remark that he was always the kind of kid who could never let go of a favorite toy. They don’t say this as a slight to Maomao; to the contrary, they are all a bit enamored with her dry intelligence and stoicism. Rather, they see Jinshi’s emotional attachment as one of his weaknesses, a soft spot an enemy could exploit. Of course, so long as no one knows who Jinshi is, it is hoped his enemies will be few, but his caretakers can tell that he is smitten.

What is it about Maomao? Well, everything, basically. An apothecary raised in a brothel, Maomao is incisive and compassionate at once, an odd duck with a sharp, likely atypical mind and a knack for solving mysteries. You’d be hard-pressed to think of a more three-dimensional, compelling lead than this intuitive, thoughtful young weirdo who drools in excitement not over beautiful people, but over fungi and bezoars.

Maomao approaches understanding human beings in the same way she approaches understanding plants. She is always mentally placing herself at arm’s length from others, partly because she had a difficult upbringing, but more so because she has the mind of a scientist and defaults to objectivity at all times. Maomao cannot resist a puzzle, and she cannot leave a loose thread uncut. She carries a needle and thread in her sleeves just in case she needs to fix a garment or stitch a wound, and her arm is bandaged because she experiments with allergens and poisons on her own skin for fun. When Maomao, working in the wider city, is kidnapped and brought to the rear court to work as a servant, does she wallow? No. Instead, she gets to work. She leaves a quiet note that saves a royal infant from face-powder poisoning and incidentally catches Jinshi’s eye. When she is subsequently promoted to work as a poison tester, her reaction is delight. After all, she loves trying poisons and has developed immunities to many of them, and she’ll get to eat some fantastic upper-crust food, too! 

False freckles notwithstanding, Maomao is so fundamentally herself at all times, unabashed and outspoken when need be. She only truly gets angry when someone else’s ignorance harms another, or when someone betrays a good person, as when her absent biological father tries to invade her life after abandoning her mother. Even if all creatures, human and plant and animal, are specimens on a slide to Maomao, she cares about those specimens. After all, she was raised by some very humane courtesans. 

Jinshi, who cannot openly be himself, is drawn to Maomao’s lack of deceit. He begins to follow her around the court like a bored child, but also goes to her when a problem arises, comforted by the certainty that she will solve it. While other girls fawn over his beauty, Jinshi craves attention only from the girl who sees him, not in any cruel sense, as something of a bad experiment.

It’s such a waste, Maomao thinks, when she first meets Jinshi and learns he is a eunuch. It is a professional thought rather than a wistful or unkind one. Jinshi is a man whose beauty is described as otherworldly, whose stature is tall and proud, whose eloquence has wooed many.  But eunuchs cannot have children, and so Maomao thinks it’s a shame that all his excellent attributes will not be inherited someday. Maomao, raised by practical women, assesses people’s physical attributes in the same way a farmer might assess his cows. She also sees right through his smarmy smile, like a cat who instinctively senses a distrustful person.

Over time, Jinshi drops the polished mask around Maomao, whether he realizes it or not. She, too, starts to see that he is not a frivolous man, despite trying so hard to project that image, and that he cares deeply for people and his country. At one point, she sort of accidentally figures out that Jinshi is probably the emperor’s son, but then shrugs it off, because what business is that to a servant girl? She’s more interested in paper manufacturing and the medicinal properties of rare wildflowers.

Jinshi is not a traditional male lead, and Maomao is not a traditional female lead. Instead, they are wonderful, multi-dimensional people who cater to gender roles and expectations only in order to survive and help others in their circles. They are fantastic, and obviously, one day they will be in love, but for now (in season one), their every interaction is worth savoring, whether it be bitter or sweet.

The Rear Palace

The majority of season one takes place in the Rear Palace, where the Emperor’s imperial harem resides. The Rear Palace is a walled city unto itself that only consorts, female servants, and eunuchs may enter, and most of the women cannot leave without permission. Within this harem are four High Consorts, the Emperor’s favorites, who are expected to bear his heirs.

Is this historically accurate? Certainly. Modern skeptics might be forgiven for wondering how such a restrictive setting could be progressive, but author Natsu Hyūga understands a truth that is sometimes forgotten when we view history only as print on a page or a screen: people have always been people. Women from prior millennia were no less clever because they lived in a time before electricity. Education is one thing, but intelligences are manifold and human beings have not evolved in the past 1000 years. Denying people of the past agency on the sole basis that they lived in the past is reductive. 

Maomao begins working as a lady-in-waiting and poison-tester for Gyokuyou, known as the Precious Consort, a gentle woman from a faraway land. Thanks in part to Maomao, Gyokuyou is raising the Emperor’s only (publicly recognized) surviving heir, Princess Lingli. Gyokuyou is a well-rounded, thoughtful character. She places her trust in a select few, but is magnanimous to all, so it’s no surprise that she has become the Emperor’s favorite. But for all her kindness, Gyokuyou’s real asset is one revealed behind closed doors. She has a shrewd, fair mind, and her daughter will likely survive because of it. She excels at manipulating court politics while appearing disinterested in them. And because her father is a merchant, she remains informed of events in the surrounding world. Gyokuyou may be physically confined, but mentally and socially? Far from it.

The other High Consorts, though very different, feel no less real. There’s Lihua, the Wise Consort, who is initially bedridden with grief after the death of her baby. She has a reputation for being haughty, even arrogant, but this loss has seemingly defeated her. Under Maomao’s care, Lihua finds her way to her feet again. We learn that, proud though she is, she is also caring and fair. When she learns that her lady-in-waiting has accidentally poisoned her, she forgives her. And when Lihua finally recovers and Maomao reassures her that she can probably give birth again, her gratitude is palpable. Maomao has helped restore not only her pride, but her purpose.

Look. I am an asexual woman who has no plans of ever having children, and I do not think having children is a woman’s “purpose” unless she wants it to be. I will die a grumpy spinster, happily surrounded by cats and tchotchkes. But so well-written are these characters that I can easily empathize with Lihua, both professionally and personally, when it comes to her desire to have healthy children. She is determined to do her job as a consort well, but also wants to be a mother for her own sake.

Another High Consort, the Virtuous Consort Lishu, is a child. While every red flag can and should be raised here, her inclusion in the story is a critical one. Maomao remarks that the prior emperor had a proclivity for young girls. Lishu became a royal consort during his reign, when she was just (ugh) nine years old. The former emperor died before he could harm her, and the current emperor has no interest in assaulting children. Pedophilia has been all too frequently documented throughout history. While The Apothecary Diaries could have avoided the subject, that would have been disingenuous. Let me be clear: the inclusion of Lishu’s plight is not a condonement of it. The Apothecary Diaries does not leave such practices unchallenged. The current Emperor, a man who seems generally okay, will not touch a child, but also does not want to fire her from her position in the court, as that would ruin her life. It is a strange sort of morality, but moral all the same, as we watch the girls in the court pass judgement with a scowl on the prior Emperor’s tastes, and express the concern they feel for young Lishu. Lishu, for her part, is desperate to do well but earnest to a fault. She’s a kid, after all.

I could go on about the nuanced characterization of all of these consorts and more besides, but this ode to fantastic writing cannot be drawn out forever. While the Rear Palace has its share of problems, with murders and crimes aplenty for Maomao to solve, the women working there are paid and protected. They are also, however ironically, existing in a microcosm that is not defined by men. After working there for a while, Maomao realizes that she doesn’t hate the job. It is a functional if flawed little society, and a strangely comforting one, where women run the show.

The Verdigris House

I cannot skip over the other powerful female-run stronghold in The Apothecary Diaries. In the pleasure district outside the palace walls, there stands a brothel of unparalleled repute: the Verdigris House, where Maomao was born and raised.

Paralleling the four High Consorts of the Imperial Harem, the Verdigris House harbors its own cast of priceless courtesans known as the Three Princesses. Overseen by an aging manager known as Madam, the Verdigris House rakes in profit and esteem. The Princesses are sex workers, but they are also artists, musicians, and performers, their charms well-cultivated and their skills unmatched.

The Three Princesses are unaffordable to all but the wealthiest of clients, ensuring they hold a lot of sway in society. If anyone wishes to buy out one of these courtesans’ contracts, it would cost a decade’s worth of salary. However they may have struggled to reach the highest pinnacles of success in the Red-Light District, the Three Princeses make most of their own decisions—although Madam can be a cutthroat businesswoman. Maomao and her adoptive father, the apothecary Luomen, rent out space in the brothel for medicinal work, which benefits the women and helps them prevent and abort pregnancies as well as avoid STDs. It is a useful working arrangement for both parties.

Now, there is a dark side to every brothel, and this is explored with fantastic insight during the final arc of the first season, which I do not want to spoil. Suffice it to say, the show does not shy away from diseases that afflict sex workers, or what a pregnancy can do to ruin a worker’s livelihood. Just watch the show, and I suspect you will feel, as I do, that few other stories have addressed this plight so well. While the Three Princesses may be respected, the lesser courtesans in the hierarchy face any number of struggles. But they are also protected by the house’s walls and reputation, and in this world and story, there are, for many, worse fates than steady work. 

Judgment Has No Place Here

Because The Apothecary Diaries, like Maomao herself, maintains an objective stance on most situations, its characters are freed from the heavy burden modern moral outrage sometimes inflicts on storytelling. This is the world as it existed 1200 years ago, and here are the good and bad people who must do their best to flourish within it. Like all living things, human beings are trying to survive. And just as a rose cannot choose where it is planted, or decide whether or not it will be subjected to dyeing experiments by a young, tenacious apothecary, the people in this world have not chosen their initial lot.

Unlike plants, however, people make choices that can alter that lot, little by little, with care and planning and chance. We are all victims of circumstance, from the moment we are born, but that doesn’t make us helpless. We all love to bemoan the eras we are born into: “Man, I wish times were a little less interesting.” Well, when were times ever less interesting? Things are sometimes pretty damn awful right now, but people have been thinking things like that for as long as there have been people. It is the most people-y thought out there. And you know what? Most people keep on living all the same, and work hard to make the most of what they’re left with.

Even in deeply conservative centuries and countries, women have always quietly made vital choices. The choice to end pregnancies, to choose their lovers and chase a career, to leave dangerous situations with their children in tow, to pick their way forward through life’s brambles and thorns, whatever those may be. Choices, no matter their constraints, are powerful. Agency is humanity’s greatest strength. And when our rights are stripped away, no matter the era, people fight to reclaim them. We can and we must and we always should.

And however rough a decade we feel we’re living in, it’s some comfort that we exist in the same one as The Apothecary Diaries and its remarkable, aspirational characters.