"The company had originally proposed using the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty for subject matter. Besides a basic curiosity that Japanese have about Chinese history, might it not be that the Ch'ing dynasty, which was a case of a minority population being able to defeat the Han majority which outnumbered them many times over, matched the Japanese national character of external expansion?"
「原來當時那個出版公司提出以『滿清』為題材，除了基於日本對中國歷史的好奇之外，清朝以少數民族卻能打敗人數千萬倍於他們的漢族，不正與日本積極向外擴張的民族性契合嗎？」