I've posted the ebook files for book 4 of Hills of Silver Ruins. The Notes link on the Index page lists the relevant blog posts along with the illustrations.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, ebooks, fantasy, japanese, translations

Japan's most famous kirin watch over Nihonbashi.

The kirin (麒麟) is a Chinese unicorn. In the universe of the Twelve Kingdom, the shapeshifting kirin is born on Mt. Hou and becomes prime minister to the emperor or empress he personally selects.

A kirin has two mandates, choosing the emperor and ensuring the general welfare of the kingdom. The first is a one and done. In order to carry out the second, the kirin serves as chief advisor to the emperor, governor of the capital province, and commander of one half of the Imperial Army.

That last portfolio might seem odd, given the kirin's aversion to blood and violence. This aversion, coupled with the second mandate, the general welfare of the kingdom, is why kirin are known as "creatures of compassion."

Except a kirin is less a pacifist and more a military general directing the action from behind the lines. Adopting a "moral equivalent of war" approach, whereby the ends often justify the means, they can become so focused on their objectives that the fates of ordinary humans escape their attention.

Yari observes that for Taiki, "the fate of Tai always took precedence." This explains why Taiki returned to Kouki. Tai needed saving now. Everything else fell by the wayside, including the search for Gyousou.

When Taiki, Yari, and Kouryou break into the palace prison to rescue Seirai, Taiki can't yet persuade himself to kill the guard. But he has no problem with Yari and Kouryou dispatching a whole platoon basically for having the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Keiki commits half a dozen felonies when he first meets Youko. Kourin can barely bring herself to stab Youko in the hand, yet when ordered by the Imperial Kou, repeatedly dispatches her shirei to kill Youko.

Taiki's willingness to go to any lengths to get the job done is just getting started. Drawing on deep reserves of self-discipline, he forces himself to bow to Asen, even though doing so feels like "a spike driven through his forehead" and makes him literally bleed out of his eyes.

In the climactic scene, Taiki kills a guard and wounds several others. Hence Rousan calling Taiki a "monster" unlike any kirin before him. But as the example of Rokuta makes clear, a kirin has enormous latitude to expand its job description.

The existence of the kirin itself so defied the normal constraints of the world that it was reasonable to conclude that only Heaven could have made them that way. And so it followed that the Divine Will was whatever the kirin said it was.

But even kirin must yield to the supernatural laws that govern a kirin's nature. Like Kourin, Taiki pays a price for warring against that nature. Fortunately for him, unlike the Imperial Kou, who takes Kourin with him to the grave, Gyousou steps forward to tell Taiki that enough is enough.

It will still take Taiki months or even years to recover. When he does, unlike his younger self, this battle-hardened kirin will provide a strong check and balance on Gyousou's actions going forward. And I'm sure that Gyousou can be counted on to return the favor.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, geography, japan, japanese culture, politics

I've posted the ebook files for book 2 of Hills of Silver Ruins. The Notes link on the Index page lists the relevant blog posts along with the illustrations.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, ebooks, fantasy, japanese, translations

A reader wondered why chapter 7 of book 4 in Hills of Silver Ruins [19-7] ends on page 59 but chapter 8 [20-1] begins on page 62. The reason is that the titles for section breaks are placed on the recto, rather than the next page, in this case leaving page 60 blank.

In publishing terms, recto is the front of a leaf (or page) and verso is the back. By tradition, page 1 starts on the recto, the right-hand page in left-to-right languages (such as English). Recto and verso are reversed in right-to-left (vertically typeset) Japanese books, so odd-numbered pages are on the left.

Because the typesetter started each section in Hills of Silver Ruins on the recto, these numbering gaps are scattered throughout the books. Here is the spread for part 20. As you can see, the recto is on the left. The page on the right (the verso of page 59) is blank (click image to magnify).


Typical print book layout also begins front and end material on the recto. But not necessarily chapter headings. A chapter usually gets a new page that is either the next page (recto or verso) or always recto (if saving paper isn't an issue).

In Hills of Silver Ruins, though, chapter headings do not get a new page, only white space. Another clever design decision was to use kanji numbers for the section headings but not the chapter headings. Japanese typography offers these options to book designers and greatly simplifies several other variables.

Characters in a given font and size occupy a box the same width and height, including punctuation. There is no spacing between characters (except in children's books). Imagine typing in a non-proportional font and having the line wrap at the right-hand margin regardless of where the cursor is in a word.

As a result, Japanese typesetters don't have to worry about justification, hyphenation, or widows and orphans (unless the result is quite ungainly, such as a single character on an otherwise blank page).

The one exception is punctuation. An end punctuation mark should not be separated from the preceeding text if it falls at the beginning of a line or the top of a column of text. To prevent this from happening, it is acceptable to kern a punctuation mark or push it into space reserved for the bottom or right margin.

In the example below, you can see the chapter number demarcated only with white space, and a comma and period pushed into the bottom margin. Even rudimentary Japanese word processing software has this capability (click image to magnify).


In vertical text, the comma, period, and close quotation mark (、。」) are located at the top (or left) of the aforementioned box while an open quotation mark (「) is at the bottom (or right). Thus the trailing space is built into the punctuation. Quotation marks rotate 90 degrees when printed vertically.

A paragraph indent is one box wide, the same width (or height) as hitting the spacebar once.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, japanese, publishing, translations

Maps
Notes
Glossary
Downloads
More about the title
More about the covers

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, ebooks, fantasy, japanese, translations

Chapter 01 Chapter 02 Chapter 03 • Chapter 04 Chapter 05 Chapter 06 Chapter 07 Chapter 08 Chapter 09 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 • Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 •

Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 • Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 •

Maps
Notes
Glossary
Downloads
More about the title
More about the covers

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, ebooks, fantasy, japanese, translations

Since the founding of the Meiji era in 1868, a single era name (nengou) has been assigned to the reign of each emperor. This was not always the case. As Donald Keene explains in Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World,

Until the adoption of Meiji as the name for Mutsuhito's entire reign, the nengou was traditionally changed several times during the reign of a single emperor—at two fixed points in the cycle of sixty years, or when a series of natural disasters were attributed to an inauspicious nengou, or when some prodigy of nature required recognition in the calendar.

The kanji for the era name of Gyousou's new and improved dynasty are bright (明) and banner (幟).

I comment a bit more about the conclusion of the series as part of my latest discussion with Kate (click on the INTERVIEW WITH A TRANSLATOR label for more installments).

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

"Fields of Gold" by Sting popped into my head while I was translating this chapter (and got stuck there).

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in fields of gold

So she took her love
For to gaze a while
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me?
Will you be my love?
Upon the fields of barley
We'll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in fields of gold

See the west wind move like a lover so
Upon the fields of barley
Feel her body rise when you kiss her mouth
Among the fields of gold

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We'll walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

I've posted chapter 39 (book 4) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

I couldn't resist the Hamlet reference. From Act 1, Scene 4: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Kaei was the last person to see Risai before she departed for Kei in chapter 6 of The Shore in Twilight.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

The description of Sokou at the beginning of the chapter conjures up the image of an other-worldly Venice of the North.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

In this chapter we learn that the army encircling Kouka at the end of chapter 27 in Book 4 was commanded by Eishou.

The technical name for the color referred to here is orpiment (雌黄), a "deep-colored, orange-yellow arsenic sulfide mineral."

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

I borrowed a line from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, his 1854 poem about the disastrous British cavalry charge against a heavily defended Russian artillery battery during the Battle of Balaklava.

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Kirin are susceptible to two potentially lethal diseases. The shitsudou (失道) is caused by imperial wrongdoing, especially involving violations of the Divine Decrees. The esui (穢瘁) results from the kirin's own actions, often from being exposed to blood in the environment or his diet.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

The Hall of Supreme Harmony was once called Fengtian Hall (奉天殿). To avoid confusion, I'm only using the former name.

During the Han Dynasty, the Huben (虎賁) was an elite imperial guard unit. The name means "Rapid as Tigers."

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

In Greek architecture, the multilevel platform that forms a building's foundation is called a crepidoma. The uppermost level is the stylobate (基壇).

The Sumeru Throne (須弥座) is an architectural feature of Chinese pagodas. The elevated base or first story is designed so that the pagoda appears to be rising out of a lotus flower, with petals circling its circumference. The Sumeru Throne itself is a symbolic representation of Mount Meru, the center of all of the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual universes.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

The Enchou (燕朝) encompasses the personal residences of the Inner Palace and the Imperial Court of the Outer Palace. It is above the Sea of Clouds and has direct access to the Forbidden Gate.

Although the furigana in this instance read simply as "clock," the kanji (漏刻) refer specifically to a water clock or clepsydra. Sophisticated water clocks were invented in China as early as 600 BC.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

I've posted chapter 31 (book 4) of Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

The Hall of Supreme Harmony (奉天殿) is the largest building within the Forbidden City. Built in 1421 during the Ming dynasty, it was destroyed by fire several times during the Qing dynasty, and rebuilt in his current form between 1695 and 1697.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

A real world example of the machinations described by Ansaku is the quote attributed to Henry II of England, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Though not an order, the outburst prompted four knights in the king's retinue to ride to Canterbury and kill Archbishop Thomas Becket.

Later in the chapter we see preference falsification in action.

A taika (胎果) is a person born in China or Japan because of a shoku event that transplanted a ranka (卵果) into the body of a pregnant woman. A child like Youko will genetically resemble her parents until she returns to the Twelve Kingdoms, at which point she "sheds" her outer skin.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations

The fate of Hoyou and Gamon Temple resembles that of Oda Nobunaga when Akechi Mitsuhide and his army surrounded Honnou Temple and set it ablaze. Nobunaga's remains were never found. Legend has it that Yasuke, Nobunaga's African retainer, escaped with his head.

"A kirin who cannot choose an emperor will eventually die." This is what happened to the kirin of En before Rokuta.

Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, translations