Of course, setting that as a hard limit would at least mean the authorial ignorance would be limited to ignorance in time, not space.

A few historians might get out of joint, but I could probably handle that.

The thing is, I’ve never been to medieval Japan.

Based on what I’ve seen, historical fiction and science fiction, which have much in common, both largely died in this century. Fantasy too.

All appear to be dominated by tie-ins, of which but a few are good [these do exist- in Star Wars, Plagueis is almost literature if you step into the mindset of thinking the SW galaxy is real and has a history].

Also by increasingly turgid writing, or simpleminded writing at the other end, simple premises, long series, trite takes on characters and situations and moral problems, poorly sketched Mary Sue characters, and so on. And there are far more Mary Sues than Marty Stus, and its getting worse.

Yes, 90% of everything is crap. But I think Sturgeon was over-egging the pudding in his time, even for SF. Now it’s more true of his genre than it was then.

There’s exceptions, there always are, at least in SF. HF, I have a harder time finding it.

In other words, a few good descriptions in an interesting story is enough to take me there. By contrast, I have seen movies and read novels and begun too much to notice period detail. I felt the movie/book was trying too hard to put me in ‘the time.’ A little lighter touch in such fringe features might have made me concentrate more of the flow of the story.

I’m thinking I could do it as what passes as SF these days, just fictionalize the society thoroughly enough to have plausible deniability. “It’s not really Krappistan! It’s an alien planet! Yeah, that’s the ticket!”