What Is Water Margin, the Novel Behind Suikoden?

Water Margin was among the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin, the language of the street rather than the court. Tradition attributes it to Shi Nai'an (c. 1296 to 1372), and the usual dating puts it in the mid-14th century, but the first external reference to the finished novel appears only in 1524, and scholars still debate both the author and the date; some credit the last thirty chapters to Luo Guanzhong, perhaps Shi's student.

The story is set around 1120, in the Northern Song dynasty, and grows out of a historical kernel: the History of Song records a real outlaw named Song Jiang whose band operated in the Huainan region and surrendered to the government in 1121. The novel expands those few dozen men into a legend.

The novel opens with a release. Marshal Hong, sent to fetch a Celestial Master to cure a plague, forces open a sealed hall and frees 108 demon stars that had been imprisoned under an ancient stele. The stars are reborn into the world as the novel's heroes, and destiny itself drives them to gather at Liangshan Marsh.

The 108 divide by rank into the 36 Heavenly Spirits and the 72 Earthly Fiends, a pairing drawn from Daoist star lore: each hero carries a star, and in the novel's Grand Assembly the full company is ranked and named. They are not saints. They are soldiers, scholars, thieves, monks, and murderers, most of them pushed into outlawry by corrupt officials, which is the book's real subject: the rebellion is the court's fault.

The ending is the part the games soften. Granted amnesty, the Liangshan company is spent on the empire's wars, and the band is destroyed by the very state that pardoned it.