Sometimes you read something and you immediately want to fit it into your role-playing campaign. Such is the case with the 1905 Hibiya Riot in Japan. I recently read Soseki Natsumi's satirical novel I Am a Cat, which references the event and how rioters burned down police boxes. POLICE BOXES. Well. I know my Doctor Who RPG campaign is on hold right now, but that one's hard to resist. Not that Japan's police boxes looked anything like the TARDIS, you understand.
But then, our TARDIS has a working chameleon circuit and it would be a nice nod to the source series if it materialized near Hibiya Park as a police box, one that was soon - in First Doctor style - made off-limits by the Riot. Tokyo is under martial law, and maybe the TARDIS really IS on fire. But how?! What's a Doctor Who story without some double-take-inducing mystery?
A great resource on this event, filled with images, pictures, and look, even a map of 1905 Tokyo -
- is this MIT essay on
Social Protest in Japan, written by Andrew Gordon. Makes me want to research other long lost bits of history and start The Shepherd Series 3...
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