December 11, 2024
The happens to be rule
In my review of Spy x Family, I argue that in the universe of secret superheroes, the controlling half of the dual personality—Clark Kent or Superman, Bruce Wayne or Batman—ultimately determines the direction of the narrative.
As Kate points out, Lloyd and Yor in Spy x Family are "decent, family people who just happen to be a spy and assassin rather than a spy and assassin pretending to be decent people."
Spy x Family puts Yor in the same moral position as Arnold Schwarzenegger's Harry Tasker in True Lies, "Yeah, but they were all bad." The Yor-centered stories make clear that her targets are, by and large, reprehensible human beings.
Lloyd is more conflicted than Yor, but he is not an enemy of Ostania. He often ends up working tangentially toward the same goals as Yor and her brother, and does his level best to inflict as little collateral damage as possible.
The climactic ending of Code White being a case in point. Lloyd, Yor, and Anya end up saving the day for Ostania.
After all, his overall mission is to establish a diplomatic backchannel with Donovan Desmond. Killing him, he admits, would be easy, but would also not be in any of their interests (and certainly not Desmond's).
If the intelligence services in Westalis suspect that the Berlint Wall is about to collapse, then it would be in the self-interests of both sides for a moderate government to survive and steer the ship of state between the political extremes.
This is a far more politically and intellectually challenging task than saving the world on a weekly basis. Lloyd and Yor spend much of their undercover time picking off extremists on both sides.
When your job is preventing a world apocalypse on a regular basis, those kinds of qualms are bound to fall by the wayside. To start with, you're not going to have the time.
Lloyd's more real-world missions require that he keep his honne and tatemae in close alignment, even though they may seem as far apart as night and day. His ultimate struggle is to accept that he is a family man at heart.
Since the start of the series, his success as a spy and his success as a father have become inextricably intertwined.
The Forgers are a pair of eccentric but otherwise ordinary suburban parents (like Rob and Laura Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show or Mike and Vanessa Baxter from Last Man Standing) who happen to be a spy and an assassin.
The order matters. If you get the happens to be rule wrong, you may end up with the wrong audience tuning in. Nothing will doom a series faster than the feeling a bait and switch is going on.
The premise of Moonlight is right up my alley. But halfway through the first season, it turned into a melodrama about a vampire who happened to be a private detective rather than a police procedural about a private detective who happened to be a vampire.
Not that there's anything wrong with that. But in a ratings-based world, the core values of the viewers (as expressed by tuning in to watch) must largely overlap with the values of the characters (as expressed by the writer and director).
The same things goes for message-based entertainment. If a show runner wants to preach a message, it had better be one the audience wants to hear or at least is able to ignore because everything else about the show is so good.
One of the great advantages of anime and especially manga is that quantity has a quality all of its own. You are all the more likely to find titles that match up the honne and tatemae of the characters in an order that matters to you.
Labels: anime, criticism, japanese, language, movies, thinking about writing
May 11, 2024
Japanese language links
My main online dictionary is Weblio. I also reference Eijirou and Word Bank.
NHK World Japan is NHK's English language service. The live feed can be viewed online, along with an extensive VOD library and OTA in some areas (9.4 in Northern Utah). There are apps for most streaming platforms.
The previous 24 hours of NHK Radio newscasts can be streamed online.
For now, my primary sources for anime and Jdrama are Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Tubi. Many of the Japanese historical dramas on Tubi are distributed by Samurai vs Ninja. I purchase emanga at BookWalker.
A Japanese tutoring YouTube channel I watch on a regular basis is Kaname Naito.
Related links
Weblio
Eijirou
Word Bank
Word Hippo
NHK World (Japanese)
NHK World (English)
News from Japan
NHK Radio News
Crunchyroll
Tubi
Netflix
Samurai vs Ninja
BookWalker (Japanese)
BookWalker (English)
Kindle Store
Yes Asia
Labels: anime, bookwalker, crunchyroll, ebooks, hidive, japanese, japanese tv, jdrama, jme, kindle, language, netflix, nhk, nhk world, samurai vs ninja
February 03, 2024
The za
As a general rule, Japanese speakers who acquired only Japanese as their first language will have difficulty pronouncing consonant clusters.
With the exception of stopped consonants and the /n/ phoneme, Japanese phonology expects every consonant to be followed by a vowel. For example, the /ts/ consonant cluster is common but is always followed by /u/. Since "fruit" is pronounced /furuutsu/ in Japanese, we get the cute transliterated English title of Fruits Basket.
The /th/ phonemes /ð/ and /θ/ don't exist, so a word like "the" is pronounced /za/ (and sometimes /ji/). As such, /za/ has come to occupy its own weird sociolinguistic dimension as a repurposed cognate.
Peter Backhaus digs into the unique ways Japanese have come to use /za/ (ザ) in The Japan Times.
As Backhaus concludes, "there is nothing the Japanese language can't swallow when eating its way through the English language."
With the exception of stopped consonants and the /n/ phoneme, Japanese phonology expects every consonant to be followed by a vowel. For example, the /ts/ consonant cluster is common but is always followed by /u/. Since "fruit" is pronounced /furuutsu/ in Japanese, we get the cute transliterated English title of Fruits Basket.
The /th/ phonemes /ð/ and /θ/ don't exist, so a word like "the" is pronounced /za/ (and sometimes /ji/). As such, /za/ has come to occupy its own weird sociolinguistic dimension as a repurposed cognate.
Peter Backhaus digs into the unique ways Japanese have come to use /za/ (ザ) in The Japan Times.
One of its chief functions is to spotlight some sort of prototypicality in the word it is paired up with.
Take the phrase ザ・月曜日 (za getsuyōbi, "the" Monday). When someone says this to you, they do not simply want to inform you about the day of the week. What this means is it's one of those miserable, most Monday-like Monday mornings that really have it in for you. Think sick kids, torrential rainfalls, train delays, etc.
Another example from my own collection of ザ cases: A Japanese friend who had just changed jobs complained to me that the new work environment was really ザ・会社 (za kaisha, "the" company). Which was to say it was full of red tape, opaque procedures, cemented hierarchies and everything else one commonly associates with the unpleasant aspects of corporate life.
The stereotyping capacities of ザ also come to the fore when pigeonholing people. ザ・お嬢様 (za o-jōsama, "The" Miss Princess), for instance, can be used to characterize someone who's perceived as excessively posh, and ザ・サラリーマン (za sararīman, "the" salaryman) is for people who are, well, extraordinarily ordinarily salaryman-like.
But ザ also does a great job in extracting positive stereotypes.
Two examples from [linguist Ayako] Kajiwara's data are ザ・トマト (za tomato, "the" tomato) and ザ・和食 (za washoku, "the" Japanese cuisine). The first one designates a particularly "tomatoic" specimen of the fruit, in terms of color, taste, juiciness, what have you, while the second evokes a textbook example of a classic Japanese meal. The washoku that out-washokus all others.
As Backhaus concludes, "there is nothing the Japanese language can't swallow when eating its way through the English language."
Labels: japanese, japanese culture, language
April 30, 2022
A title by any other name
The anime industry in Japan now takes in as much income from overseas markets as it does from domestic distribution. One logical consequence of this international growth is that anime studios are increasingly incorporating English titles into the opening credits of original Japanese productions.
The best known example to date is probably your name. For the North American release, all they had to do was flip the font sizes.
Besides keeping publicity efforts inside and outside Japan on the same page (a constant challenge for news sites like ANN is what to call a new series announced in Japan but not officially licensed), this is a clever way for writers and artists to exert control over their content.
The most basic approach is to translate nothing and instead transliterate the original Japanese into its romaji equivalents, as with anime like Chihayafuru and Hinamatsuri and movies like Akira Kurosawa's Ran.
Taking a step up in complexity is a straightforward (if abbreviated) translation of the Japanese title. Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away is the last word in the full Japanese title, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. More recent examples include Sound! Euphonium and Children of the Whales.
A title can double up on the meaning by addressing one aspect in Japanese and another in English. Ghost in the Shell, which Masamune Shirow adapted from Arthur Koestler's philosophical treatise, The Ghost in the Machine, is titled "Mobile Armored Riot Police" in Japanese.
And then there's the uniquely Japanese approach that creates the English title first then transliterates it back into katakana for the Japanese title.
To be sure, it has long been common practice for Japanese distributors of Hollywood movies (especially action flicks with plots that can be summed up in a poster) to phonetically transliterate the English titles into katakana. Congratulations! You can read Japanese.
As Brian Ashcraft points out, "One thing Hollywood continually gets wrong [is that] when it tries to recreate Japan, it puts everything in Japanese, which simply isn't done in reality." English is ubiquitous in public spaces, though not necessarily the English that native speakers of the language are used to.
English is a required subject in Japan, and Japanese students are very good at mastering the subject well enough to pass the tests. But not much beyond that. The result is a working comprehension of English that is, well, quirky. The kind of quirky that can make the end results all the more striking.
I mean, it's hard to imagine even an imaginative native English copywriter coming up with titles like Made in Abyss, Angel Beats! and No Guns Life. Again, the Japanese titles simply transliterate the English into katakana.
And here's one more.
Wait a minute, what happened to the North American release?
Rifle is Beautiful is a great title. Chidori RSC is utterly opaque. It stands for "Chidori High School Rifle Shooting Club," which you would never figure out without watching it first. I initially assumed that "Chidori" was the name of the main character.
I can only imagine that Sentai Filmworks thought Rifle is Beautiful sounded like an NRA bumper sticker and wanted to avoid catching any flak about it. Because, you know, somebody might get triggered. I do understand the caution, but this series is as harmless as the rifles the girls shoot.
But especially with light novel titles growing to unwieldly lengths, tweaking the name of a series may become a simple necessity. So "A Corpse is Buried Under Sakurako's Feet" is Beautiful Bones in English, leveraging the main character's similarities to Temperance Brennan in Bones.
Star Blazers was the title attached to the first Space Battleship Yamato series for its broadcast debut in the United States in 1979. That title has now become part of the franchise name.
And speaking of the Yamato, the docudrama Yamato (「男たちの大和」) did well in Japan but brought in hardly any box office overseas. Nevertheless, the name of the battleship (the final two kanji) is repeated in big romaji characters on all the posters anyway. Because it's just way cooler that way.
The best known example to date is probably your name. For the North American release, all they had to do was flip the font sizes.
Besides keeping publicity efforts inside and outside Japan on the same page (a constant challenge for news sites like ANN is what to call a new series announced in Japan but not officially licensed), this is a clever way for writers and artists to exert control over their content.
The most basic approach is to translate nothing and instead transliterate the original Japanese into its romaji equivalents, as with anime like Chihayafuru and Hinamatsuri and movies like Akira Kurosawa's Ran.
Taking a step up in complexity is a straightforward (if abbreviated) translation of the Japanese title. Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away is the last word in the full Japanese title, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. More recent examples include Sound! Euphonium and Children of the Whales.
A title can double up on the meaning by addressing one aspect in Japanese and another in English. Ghost in the Shell, which Masamune Shirow adapted from Arthur Koestler's philosophical treatise, The Ghost in the Machine, is titled "Mobile Armored Riot Police" in Japanese.
And then there's the uniquely Japanese approach that creates the English title first then transliterates it back into katakana for the Japanese title.
As Brian Ashcraft points out, "One thing Hollywood continually gets wrong [is that] when it tries to recreate Japan, it puts everything in Japanese, which simply isn't done in reality." English is ubiquitous in public spaces, though not necessarily the English that native speakers of the language are used to.
English is a required subject in Japan, and Japanese students are very good at mastering the subject well enough to pass the tests. But not much beyond that. The result is a working comprehension of English that is, well, quirky. The kind of quirky that can make the end results all the more striking.
I mean, it's hard to imagine even an imaginative native English copywriter coming up with titles like Made in Abyss, Angel Beats! and No Guns Life. Again, the Japanese titles simply transliterate the English into katakana.
Wait a minute, what happened to the North American release?
Rifle is Beautiful is a great title. Chidori RSC is utterly opaque. It stands for "Chidori High School Rifle Shooting Club," which you would never figure out without watching it first. I initially assumed that "Chidori" was the name of the main character.
I can only imagine that Sentai Filmworks thought Rifle is Beautiful sounded like an NRA bumper sticker and wanted to avoid catching any flak about it. Because, you know, somebody might get triggered. I do understand the caution, but this series is as harmless as the rifles the girls shoot.
But especially with light novel titles growing to unwieldly lengths, tweaking the name of a series may become a simple necessity. So "A Corpse is Buried Under Sakurako's Feet" is Beautiful Bones in English, leveraging the main character's similarities to Temperance Brennan in Bones.
Star Blazers was the title attached to the first Space Battleship Yamato series for its broadcast debut in the United States in 1979. That title has now become part of the franchise name.
Labels: advertising, anime, business, japanese culture, language
February 27, 2021
Hills of Silver Ruins (2/5)
The Daishikuu (大司空) runs the Ministry of Winter. The Taishi (太師) is the Lord Privy Seal, one of the emperor's three court advisors.
Honorifics are so important in Japanese sociolinguistics that not using them gets its own word, yobisute (呼び捨て). When talking about Asen in this chapter, Buen and Kouryou never attach an honorific to his name. Buen goes further and occasionally uses the suffix –me (め), a kind of anti-honorific.
Honorifics are so important in Japanese sociolinguistics that not using them gets its own word, yobisute (呼び捨て). When talking about Asen in this chapter, Buen and Kouryou never attach an honorific to his name. Buen goes further and occasionally uses the suffix –me (め), a kind of anti-honorific.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, language, translations
April 11, 2020
Twelve Kingdoms (glossary)
I number the chapters sequentially for file management purposes. The [part + chapter] style used in the books is displayed at the beginning of each chapter.
I will be adding to and amending this abridged glossary as I proceed. Corrections and clarifications to the translation and the glossary are welcome.
Administrative Divisions
General Terminology
An allotment (給田) is allocated to all legal residents of a kingdom when they reach their majority. A single allotment equals one hectare. A hamlet consists of eight allotments plus a ninth that serves as the commons. An allotment can be leased or sold but reverts to the kingdom when the owner dies.
This post discusses in greater depth the physical layout of the allotment and hamlet system in the Twelve Kingdoms.
In traditional Chinese culture, it was considered disrespectful for members of the same peer group to address each other by their given names. Instead, they would adopt an azana (字) or "courtesy name," basically a formalized nickname.
A practical reason for using an azana is to differentiate among individuals who share the same surname. In all of China, the 100 most common surnames account for 86 percent of the population.
A blue bird (青鳥) is a bird-based voice mail system. The sender dictates a message. The bird flies to the recipient and repeats it verbatim. A blue bird also performs the same tasks as a carrier pigeon. The short story "Pen-pals" in Dreaming of Paradise has Youko and Rakushun corresponding via blue bird.
The Chousai (冢宰) serves as the Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Rikkan. In the governments of dynastic China, the Chousai was the Minister of Heaven and served as the minister-in-chief or prime minister. But in the Twelve Kingdoms, the Chousai need not be a member of the Rikkan. And there is the Taiho.
I think the Taiho better fits the literal meaning of prime minister. In Japan, the Chief Cabinet Secretary "coordinates the policies of ministries and agencies in the executive branch," a good description of the Chousai. Though in many kingdoms, the Chousai ends up running the government on a day-to-day basis.
The Rei'in (令尹) is the Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Provincial Rikkan.
At the imperial level, the Daiboku (大僕) commands the Praetorian Guard and serves alongside the emperor as his personal bodyguard. At the provincial level, the Daiboku is the Taiho's or the province lord's bodyguard. The Daiboku serves under the Shajin (射人) in the Ministry of Summer.
The Daishikou (大司寇) is the Justice Minister and runs the Ministry of Fall. The Shuushikou (州司寇) is the Provincial Justice Minister. This terminology dates to the Zhou Dynasty. The short story "Prison of Dusk" in Hisho's Birds focuses on the work done by the appellate courts in the Ministry of Fall.
The Divine Decrees (太綱) are a fusion of constitutional and natural law. Laws promulgated by the emperor cannot deviate from the Divine Decrees. Violations have drastic consequences. Two common manifestations of imperial wrongdoing are that youma proliferate and the kirin falls ill (the shitsudou).
If the emperor does not mend his ways and the kirin dies from the shitsudou, the emperor will die too.
Some repercussions are more immediate. Regardless of the reasons, an emperor who invades another kingdom will die almost at once. At the end of Shadow of the Moon, Youko enlists the help of the Imperial En in reclaiming the throne of Kei. She does this legally by deputizing him as a soldier in her army.
In The Shore in Twilight, Youko recruits emperors and empresses and their kirin from around the Twelve Kingdoms to figure out how to assist Taiki without going against the Divine Decrees. This proves to be a difficult but not insurmountable problem.
The Enchou (燕朝) encompasses the personal residences of the Inner Palace and the Imperial Court of the Outer Palace. Sort of a combination of the White House, the West Wing, and Number One Observatory Circle. It is located above the Sea of Clouds and has direct access to the Forbidden Gate.
Large cities are castle towns surrounded by a loop road accessible through twelve gates. Each gate is identified by a member of the Chinese zodiac: rat (子門), ox (丑門), tiger (寅門), hare (卯門), dragon (辰門), serpent (巳門), horse (午門), ram (未門), monkey (申門), rooster (酉門), dog (戌門), boar (亥門).
The gengou (元号) or nengou (年号) dating system begins with an era name created specifically for the reign of that emperor. The year of the enthronement counts as year one. The era name of Youko's dynasty is Sekiraku (赤楽). The kanji refer to the color red and the first character of Rakushun's name.
A hanjuu (半獣) is literally a "half beast." The other half is human. Like kirin, they can switch between human and animal forms.
The treatment of hanjuu varies throughout the Twelve Kingdoms. In Kou, hanjuu are harshly discriminated against, one reason Rakushun travels with Youko to En, where he can attend university. Youko abolished the anti-hanjuu laws in Kei and promoted Kantai, a hanjuu bear, to general in the Palace Guard.
A hinman (賓満) is a youma with a transluscent, gelatinous form and jellyfish-like appendages. A human beings possessed by a hinman can share the hinman's enhanced martial skills, such as riding a youjuu and wielding a sword. Youko is possessed by a hinman at the beginning of Shadow of the Moon
Hourai (蓬莱) is a mythical paradise derived from the Chinese legend of Penglai. It is also a classical geographical name for Taiwan, which in the Twelve Kingdoms has come to mean Japan.
Kaikyaku (海客) are people from this world (as opposed to taika) who are transported by shoku across the Kyokai from Japan.
Kijuu (騎獣) are domesticated youjuu. Like a pegasus, kijuu can fly or leap great distances. The ki (騎) refers to equestrian activities. The juu (獣) means an animal. Like horses, the best ones cost a small fortune.
The kirin (麒麟) is a Chinese unicorn. Born on Mount Hou in the Yellow Sea, the kirin hearkens to the Divine Will and chooses the sovereign. If the kirin dies, so does the sovereign, and the throne will remain empty until another kirin is born on Mount Hou and grows old enough to choose a new ruler.
The same way the president of the United States is also commander in chief of the armed forces and the chief executive, the Taiho (台輔) or Saiho (宰輔) also serves as chief advisor to the emperor, province lord of the capital province, and commander of the Provincial Guard, which constitutes half of the Imperial Army.
The Koushi (郊祀) ceremony ("the ritual of the outskirts") is the most important of the Imperial rites and rituals. It involves traveling to the southern district of the city during the Festival of the Winter Solstice, making offerings to Heaven, and praying for the protection of the kingdom.
A koshuu (鴣摺) is a rare species of blue bird that can fly to a specific location or person. Once it has met a person, it will find them again no matter where they go. In Hills of Silver Ruins, the mysterious Genkan uses a koshuu bird carrying a black bamboo tube to deliver his messages.
Koushu (黄朱) are citizens of the Yellow Sea. Shusei (朱旌) are traveling entertainers. Also citizens of the Yellow Sea, they travel throughout the Twelve Kingdoms, incorporating regional history and folklore into their performances and functioning as an informal news network.
The Kyokai (虚海) is the Sea of Nothingness that surrounds the Twelve Kingdoms. Japan is located at the eastern reaches of the Kyokai, though there is no way to physically travel across the Kyokai to Japan. Nor is it possible to circumnavigate the Kyokai (at least no one has lived to tell the tale).
So while it stands to reason that if Japan is to the "east" of the Kyokai, China must lie to the "west," sankyaku (山客) from China instead come across the Adamantine Mountains in the Yellow Sea.
A rike or rika (里家) is a foster home and school for orphans and the aged that also serves as a community center. The rike is run by the superintendent (閭胥).
The Rikkan (六官) literally means "six ministries." It is the equivalent of the cabinet: Administration (天官), Education (地官), Protocol (春官), Defense (夏官), Justice (秋官), Public Works (冬官). Also known as the Ministries of Heaven, Earth, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
The Rishi (里祠) is the sacred building where the riboku (里木) tree is enshrined. The ritual of petitioning the riboku for a child resembles the custom of writing a wish on a paper strip (tanzaku) and tying it to a bamboo branch during the Tanabata festival. If the petition is granted, a ranka (卵果) grows at that spot.
The roka or roke (廬家) is a building on the commons where farmers can stay if they choose to winter over on their allotment. This post goes into greater depth about the physical layout of the allotment and hamlet system in the Twelve Kingdoms.
The Rokushin (六寝) comprises the residential quarters for the emperor in the imperial palace. It is located within the Enchou.
Ryou'un Mountain (凌雲山) or "skyscraping mountain" is a category of mountain whose summit reaches above the Sea of Clouds. Each province has at least one Mount Ryou'un that houses the imperial or provincial palaces and government offices. The mountain itself can have a different name.
Sankyaku (山客) are people from this world who come across the Adamantine Mountains in the Yellow Sea from China, known in the Twelve Kingdoms as Kunlun (崑崙), a mountain range in central China. Analogous to Hourai, Kunlun is also a mythical mountain said to be a Taoist paradise.
The Shashi (射士) is in charge of public security at the provincial level. The Shishi (司士) handles personal security. Their boss is the Taiei (太衛). The Daiboku (大僕) works under him as the personal bodyguard of the province lord or Taiho. As in the case of Taiki, more than one Daiboku can fill the role.
Shirei (使令) are youma subjugated by the kirin. They serve as the kirin's servants, messengers, and bodyguards. Older kirin may have dozens or hundreds of shirei at their command. Taiki had only two shirei, and the injury to his horn and being stranded in Hourai (Japan) resulted in him losing them.
According to the kirin's quid pro quo with the shirei, in exchange for the shirei's service during the kirin's lifetime, the shirei get to eat the kirin when he dies.
Although immortal, kirin are susceptible to two potentially lethal diseases. The shitsudou (失道) is caused by imperial wrongdoing, especially violations of the Divine Decrees. The esui (穢瘁) is an an illness that usually results from the kirin being exposed to blood either in the environment or his diet.
In Confucian and Taoist terms, shitsudou means to "stray from the Way."
A shoku (蝕) is a wormhole between two parallel universes. Or as Rakushun explains in Shadow of the Moon, "[A] shoku is when here and there get tangled up together." Shoku can be engineered on purpose by a wizard or kirin, as with Youko, but also occur at random, as with Suzu in A Thousand Leagues of Wind.
A meishoku (鳴蝕) is a shoku triggered by a kirin in distress. Even small shoku are highly destructive. Natural shoku can occur silently and imperceptibly. Kirin and their shirei can travel back and forth to Japan and China with few side effects. But a high-status individual like an emperor will cause a massive shoku.
Shoku are not supposed to occur above the Sea of Clouds, making the meishoku that results when Taiki is attacked in The Shore in Twilight so calamitous.
Raising the Yellow Banner (黄旗) over the rishi announces the commencement of the Shouzan (昇山). As depicted in The Wings of Dreams, the Shouzan is an arduous journey to the heart of the Yellow Sea, at the end of which the kirin selects the next emperor from the candidates who survived the gauntlet.
There are emperors and empresses who did not go on the Shouzan, such as Youko and Shouryuu. The kirin purposely sought them out and urged them to accept the throne. But even in those cases, in order to officially complete the imperial accession, they had to travel at least once to Mount Hou.
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 who is born as a result will genetically resemble her parents until she returns to the Twelve Kingdoms, at which point she "sheds" her outer skin.
Youjuu (妖獣) are animals from the Yellow Sea that can be captured and domesticated. The you (妖) refers to their magical properties.
Youma (妖魔) are creatures from the Yellow Sea that usually emerge during a kingdom's decline and fall. The ma (魔) refers to things of an evil or demonic nature. Youma cannot be domesticated but can be subjugated by the kirin.
The White Pheasant or Hakuchi (白稚) sings once when the emperor is enthroned and once when the emperor dies, after which it also dies. The White Pheasant is thus known as Ni-sei (二声) or "the two cries." A Phoenix bird in each kingdom repeats the song of the White Pheasant.
The Minister of the Two Cries or Nisei-shi (二声氏) is the government official who tends to the White Pheasant.
Wizards of the Air (飛仙) who achieve their status through their own effort are listed in the Registry of Wizards (仙籍) on Mount Hou. Wizards of the Air can also be appointed by the sovereign and have an imperial title but do not serve in the government.
Wizards of the Earth (地仙) are government officials who have risen high enough in the civil service to have their names listed in the Registry of Wizards. Like Wizards of the Air who are appointed, they are listed in the Registry of Wizards of that kingdom.
Wizards of the Air and Earth who are delisted resume their mortal lifespans from the point when they were appointed.
Emperors and empresses have a separate Registry of the Gods (神籍) on Mount Hou and cannot be delisted, though they can be killed by decapitation and will die if the Taiho dies. A sovereign who abdicates will die soon thereafter.
The Yellow Sea (黄海) is an island in the middle of the Twelve Kingdoms. Ringed by the impenetrable Adamantine Mountains (金剛山), it is accessible through four massive gates at specific times during year. The Yellow Sea is home to the youma and youjuu. Mount Hou (蓬山) is one of five holy mountains at its center.
I will be adding to and amending this abridged glossary as I proceed. Corrections and clarifications to the translation and the glossary are welcome.
| Administrative divisions in the Twelve Kingdoms closely follow those of China, as illustrated in this Wikipedia table. | |||
| 国 | Kingdom | Emperor or empress | Comprised of nine provinces. |
| 州 | Province | Province lord | Or marquis. |
| 郡 | District | Comprised of 50,000 households or four prefectures. | |
| 郷 | Prefecture | Governor | Comprised of five shires. |
| 県 | Shire | Administrator | Or county. |
| 党 | Township | ||
| 族 | Town | Mayor | The smallest walled community. Villages may be surrounded by stockades. |
| 里 | Village | Village manager and superintendent | The superintendent runs the rike and advises the village manager. |
| 廬 | Hamlet | Comprised of eight families. | |
An allotment (給田) is allocated to all legal residents of a kingdom when they reach their majority. A single allotment equals one hectare. A hamlet consists of eight allotments plus a ninth that serves as the commons. An allotment can be leased or sold but reverts to the kingdom when the owner dies.
This post discusses in greater depth the physical layout of the allotment and hamlet system in the Twelve Kingdoms.
In traditional Chinese culture, it was considered disrespectful for members of the same peer group to address each other by their given names. Instead, they would adopt an azana (字) or "courtesy name," basically a formalized nickname.
A practical reason for using an azana is to differentiate among individuals who share the same surname. In all of China, the 100 most common surnames account for 86 percent of the population.
A blue bird (青鳥) is a bird-based voice mail system. The sender dictates a message. The bird flies to the recipient and repeats it verbatim. A blue bird also performs the same tasks as a carrier pigeon. The short story "Pen-pals" in Dreaming of Paradise has Youko and Rakushun corresponding via blue bird.
The Chousai (冢宰) serves as the Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Rikkan. In the governments of dynastic China, the Chousai was the Minister of Heaven and served as the minister-in-chief or prime minister. But in the Twelve Kingdoms, the Chousai need not be a member of the Rikkan. And there is the Taiho.
I think the Taiho better fits the literal meaning of prime minister. In Japan, the Chief Cabinet Secretary "coordinates the policies of ministries and agencies in the executive branch," a good description of the Chousai. Though in many kingdoms, the Chousai ends up running the government on a day-to-day basis.
The Rei'in (令尹) is the Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Provincial Rikkan.
At the imperial level, the Daiboku (大僕) commands the Praetorian Guard and serves alongside the emperor as his personal bodyguard. At the provincial level, the Daiboku is the Taiho's or the province lord's bodyguard. The Daiboku serves under the Shajin (射人) in the Ministry of Summer.
The Daishikou (大司寇) is the Justice Minister and runs the Ministry of Fall. The Shuushikou (州司寇) is the Provincial Justice Minister. This terminology dates to the Zhou Dynasty. The short story "Prison of Dusk" in Hisho's Birds focuses on the work done by the appellate courts in the Ministry of Fall.
The Divine Decrees (太綱) are a fusion of constitutional and natural law. Laws promulgated by the emperor cannot deviate from the Divine Decrees. Violations have drastic consequences. Two common manifestations of imperial wrongdoing are that youma proliferate and the kirin falls ill (the shitsudou).
If the emperor does not mend his ways and the kirin dies from the shitsudou, the emperor will die too.
Some repercussions are more immediate. Regardless of the reasons, an emperor who invades another kingdom will die almost at once. At the end of Shadow of the Moon, Youko enlists the help of the Imperial En in reclaiming the throne of Kei. She does this legally by deputizing him as a soldier in her army.
In The Shore in Twilight, Youko recruits emperors and empresses and their kirin from around the Twelve Kingdoms to figure out how to assist Taiki without going against the Divine Decrees. This proves to be a difficult but not insurmountable problem.
The Enchou (燕朝) encompasses the personal residences of the Inner Palace and the Imperial Court of the Outer Palace. Sort of a combination of the White House, the West Wing, and Number One Observatory Circle. It is located above the Sea of Clouds and has direct access to the Forbidden Gate.
Large cities are castle towns surrounded by a loop road accessible through twelve gates. Each gate is identified by a member of the Chinese zodiac: rat (子門), ox (丑門), tiger (寅門), hare (卯門), dragon (辰門), serpent (巳門), horse (午門), ram (未門), monkey (申門), rooster (酉門), dog (戌門), boar (亥門).
The gengou (元号) or nengou (年号) dating system begins with an era name created specifically for the reign of that emperor. The year of the enthronement counts as year one. The era name of Youko's dynasty is Sekiraku (赤楽). The kanji refer to the color red and the first character of Rakushun's name.
A hanjuu (半獣) is literally a "half beast." The other half is human. Like kirin, they can switch between human and animal forms.
The treatment of hanjuu varies throughout the Twelve Kingdoms. In Kou, hanjuu are harshly discriminated against, one reason Rakushun travels with Youko to En, where he can attend university. Youko abolished the anti-hanjuu laws in Kei and promoted Kantai, a hanjuu bear, to general in the Palace Guard.
A hinman (賓満) is a youma with a transluscent, gelatinous form and jellyfish-like appendages. A human beings possessed by a hinman can share the hinman's enhanced martial skills, such as riding a youjuu and wielding a sword. Youko is possessed by a hinman at the beginning of Shadow of the Moon
Hourai (蓬莱) is a mythical paradise derived from the Chinese legend of Penglai. It is also a classical geographical name for Taiwan, which in the Twelve Kingdoms has come to mean Japan.
Kaikyaku (海客) are people from this world (as opposed to taika) who are transported by shoku across the Kyokai from Japan.
Kijuu (騎獣) are domesticated youjuu. Like a pegasus, kijuu can fly or leap great distances. The ki (騎) refers to equestrian activities. The juu (獣) means an animal. Like horses, the best ones cost a small fortune.
The kirin (麒麟) is a Chinese unicorn. Born on Mount Hou in the Yellow Sea, the kirin hearkens to the Divine Will and chooses the sovereign. If the kirin dies, so does the sovereign, and the throne will remain empty until another kirin is born on Mount Hou and grows old enough to choose a new ruler.
The same way the president of the United States is also commander in chief of the armed forces and the chief executive, the Taiho (台輔) or Saiho (宰輔) also serves as chief advisor to the emperor, province lord of the capital province, and commander of the Provincial Guard, which constitutes half of the Imperial Army.
The Koushi (郊祀) ceremony ("the ritual of the outskirts") is the most important of the Imperial rites and rituals. It involves traveling to the southern district of the city during the Festival of the Winter Solstice, making offerings to Heaven, and praying for the protection of the kingdom.
A koshuu (鴣摺) is a rare species of blue bird that can fly to a specific location or person. Once it has met a person, it will find them again no matter where they go. In Hills of Silver Ruins, the mysterious Genkan uses a koshuu bird carrying a black bamboo tube to deliver his messages.
Koushu (黄朱) are citizens of the Yellow Sea. Shusei (朱旌) are traveling entertainers. Also citizens of the Yellow Sea, they travel throughout the Twelve Kingdoms, incorporating regional history and folklore into their performances and functioning as an informal news network.
The Kyokai (虚海) is the Sea of Nothingness that surrounds the Twelve Kingdoms. Japan is located at the eastern reaches of the Kyokai, though there is no way to physically travel across the Kyokai to Japan. Nor is it possible to circumnavigate the Kyokai (at least no one has lived to tell the tale).
So while it stands to reason that if Japan is to the "east" of the Kyokai, China must lie to the "west," sankyaku (山客) from China instead come across the Adamantine Mountains in the Yellow Sea.
A rike or rika (里家) is a foster home and school for orphans and the aged that also serves as a community center. The rike is run by the superintendent (閭胥).
The Rikkan (六官) literally means "six ministries." It is the equivalent of the cabinet: Administration (天官), Education (地官), Protocol (春官), Defense (夏官), Justice (秋官), Public Works (冬官). Also known as the Ministries of Heaven, Earth, Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.
The Rishi (里祠) is the sacred building where the riboku (里木) tree is enshrined. The ritual of petitioning the riboku for a child resembles the custom of writing a wish on a paper strip (tanzaku) and tying it to a bamboo branch during the Tanabata festival. If the petition is granted, a ranka (卵果) grows at that spot.
The roka or roke (廬家) is a building on the commons where farmers can stay if they choose to winter over on their allotment. This post goes into greater depth about the physical layout of the allotment and hamlet system in the Twelve Kingdoms.
The Rokushin (六寝) comprises the residential quarters for the emperor in the imperial palace. It is located within the Enchou.
Ryou'un Mountain (凌雲山) or "skyscraping mountain" is a category of mountain whose summit reaches above the Sea of Clouds. Each province has at least one Mount Ryou'un that houses the imperial or provincial palaces and government offices. The mountain itself can have a different name.
Sankyaku (山客) are people from this world who come across the Adamantine Mountains in the Yellow Sea from China, known in the Twelve Kingdoms as Kunlun (崑崙), a mountain range in central China. Analogous to Hourai, Kunlun is also a mythical mountain said to be a Taoist paradise.
The Shashi (射士) is in charge of public security at the provincial level. The Shishi (司士) handles personal security. Their boss is the Taiei (太衛). The Daiboku (大僕) works under him as the personal bodyguard of the province lord or Taiho. As in the case of Taiki, more than one Daiboku can fill the role.
Shirei (使令) are youma subjugated by the kirin. They serve as the kirin's servants, messengers, and bodyguards. Older kirin may have dozens or hundreds of shirei at their command. Taiki had only two shirei, and the injury to his horn and being stranded in Hourai (Japan) resulted in him losing them.
According to the kirin's quid pro quo with the shirei, in exchange for the shirei's service during the kirin's lifetime, the shirei get to eat the kirin when he dies.
Although immortal, kirin are susceptible to two potentially lethal diseases. The shitsudou (失道) is caused by imperial wrongdoing, especially violations of the Divine Decrees. The esui (穢瘁) is an an illness that usually results from the kirin being exposed to blood either in the environment or his diet.
In Confucian and Taoist terms, shitsudou means to "stray from the Way."
A shoku (蝕) is a wormhole between two parallel universes. Or as Rakushun explains in Shadow of the Moon, "[A] shoku is when here and there get tangled up together." Shoku can be engineered on purpose by a wizard or kirin, as with Youko, but also occur at random, as with Suzu in A Thousand Leagues of Wind.
A meishoku (鳴蝕) is a shoku triggered by a kirin in distress. Even small shoku are highly destructive. Natural shoku can occur silently and imperceptibly. Kirin and their shirei can travel back and forth to Japan and China with few side effects. But a high-status individual like an emperor will cause a massive shoku.
Shoku are not supposed to occur above the Sea of Clouds, making the meishoku that results when Taiki is attacked in The Shore in Twilight so calamitous.
Raising the Yellow Banner (黄旗) over the rishi announces the commencement of the Shouzan (昇山). As depicted in The Wings of Dreams, the Shouzan is an arduous journey to the heart of the Yellow Sea, at the end of which the kirin selects the next emperor from the candidates who survived the gauntlet.
There are emperors and empresses who did not go on the Shouzan, such as Youko and Shouryuu. The kirin purposely sought them out and urged them to accept the throne. But even in those cases, in order to officially complete the imperial accession, they had to travel at least once to Mount Hou.
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 who is born as a result will genetically resemble her parents until she returns to the Twelve Kingdoms, at which point she "sheds" her outer skin.
Youjuu (妖獣) are animals from the Yellow Sea that can be captured and domesticated. The you (妖) refers to their magical properties.
Youma (妖魔) are creatures from the Yellow Sea that usually emerge during a kingdom's decline and fall. The ma (魔) refers to things of an evil or demonic nature. Youma cannot be domesticated but can be subjugated by the kirin.
The White Pheasant or Hakuchi (白稚) sings once when the emperor is enthroned and once when the emperor dies, after which it also dies. The White Pheasant is thus known as Ni-sei (二声) or "the two cries." A Phoenix bird in each kingdom repeats the song of the White Pheasant.
The Minister of the Two Cries or Nisei-shi (二声氏) is the government official who tends to the White Pheasant.
Wizards of the Air (飛仙) who achieve their status through their own effort are listed in the Registry of Wizards (仙籍) on Mount Hou. Wizards of the Air can also be appointed by the sovereign and have an imperial title but do not serve in the government.
Wizards of the Earth (地仙) are government officials who have risen high enough in the civil service to have their names listed in the Registry of Wizards. Like Wizards of the Air who are appointed, they are listed in the Registry of Wizards of that kingdom.
Wizards of the Air and Earth who are delisted resume their mortal lifespans from the point when they were appointed.
Emperors and empresses have a separate Registry of the Gods (神籍) on Mount Hou and cannot be delisted, though they can be killed by decapitation and will die if the Taiho dies. A sovereign who abdicates will die soon thereafter.
The Yellow Sea (黄海) is an island in the middle of the Twelve Kingdoms. Ringed by the impenetrable Adamantine Mountains (金剛山), it is accessible through four massive gates at specific times during year. The Yellow Sea is home to the youma and youjuu. Mount Hou (蓬山) is one of five holy mountains at its center.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, black moon, fantasy, japanese, language, translations
April 04, 2020
Last name first
On March 30, NHK World's foreign-language services and websites reverted to the traditional format for Japanese names. This follows a policy adopted six months ago by the Japanese government to prefer the surname-first style in Latin script documents.The surname-last name order for Japanese names in Latin script came into fashion during the Meiji era, when Japan aligned itself with the West. After 150 years, the Japanese government decided it wasn't its job to do the orthographic flip-flopping anymore.
Japan is actually catching up to the rest of Asia in this regard, as surname-first in Latin script publications has long been standard practice for Chinese and Korean names. Chinese President Xi Jinping, for example. And South Korean President Moon Jae-in. But not Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Prime Minister Abe Shinzo would like that to change. This update to the NHK World style guide is one small step.
Incidentally, when names originally written in Latin script are transliterated into katakana, the surname order is preserved. So "Brad Pitt" is still "Buraddo Pitto" (ブラッド・ピット). Following the cultural conventions of the source material is a good rule. Though this rule can cause confusion.
Hosts and anchors with Japanese names who were not born in Japan or are not Japanese citizens may stick with the surname-last format. On domestic NHK broadcasts, such names would be written in katakana, not kanji, making the distinction clear. But that clue gets lost on NHK World.
So some Japanese names on NHK World are surname-first while others are surname-last, leaving it up to the viewer to guess why.
In my own writing, I'm all over the map. Accustomed to rendering historical names surname-first, that's what I did in Serpent of Time. In the contemporary Fox & Wolf, I reverted to surname-last, as I do in the Boy Detectives Club novels.
It comes down to trying to anticipate what the reader expects, and western readers generally expect surname-last. Then again, it might not be a bad idea to start changing those expectations.
A related style conundrum are long and double vowels. In Serpent of Time and Fox & Wolf, I used Hepburn romanization. In the Boy Detectives Club novels, I don't bother. In the Twelve Kingdoms, I transliterate the vowels as they would be written in hiragana, which is my linguistic preference.
Labels: history, japanese, japanese culture, japanese tv, language, nhk, nhk world, politics, streaming
September 19, 2019
Red hair and redheads
In her translation of Anne of Green Gables, Muraoka Hanako titled the novel Akage no Anne (「赤毛のアン」). The kanji ke (毛) can refer to fur, wool, down, as well as hair, while kami (髪) specifically means the hair of the head. So a strand of hair on your head is kami no ke (髪の毛).
Anime characters aside, actual human red hair (of the scarlet variety) is very rare in Japan. So while common hair colors like black (黒髪) and white (白髪) use kami, the ke (毛) in akage sets it apart from the norm.
The popularity of Akage no Anne after its publication in 1952 was such that subsequent translations have followed suit, and akage (赤毛) has come to mean "redhead" and all its related synonyms.
By comparison, the manga and anime Snow White with the Red Hair (「赤髪の白雪姫」) uses akagami. The association of akage (赤毛) with Anne Shirley is so pervasive that Sorata Akizuki (or her publisher) likely wished to avoid any confusion between the two literary redheads.
Anime characters aside, actual human red hair (of the scarlet variety) is very rare in Japan. So while common hair colors like black (黒髪) and white (白髪) use kami, the ke (毛) in akage sets it apart from the norm.
The popularity of Akage no Anne after its publication in 1952 was such that subsequent translations have followed suit, and akage (赤毛) has come to mean "redhead" and all its related synonyms.
By comparison, the manga and anime Snow White with the Red Hair (「赤髪の白雪姫」) uses akagami. The association of akage (赤毛) with Anne Shirley is so pervasive that Sorata Akizuki (or her publisher) likely wished to avoid any confusion between the two literary redheads.
Related posts
Hanako and Anne
Mary Sue to the rescue
Snow White with the Red Hair
Labels: anime, anne, japanese, japanese culture, language
August 08, 2019
New Twelve Kingdoms novel (title)
On August 1, Shinchosha announced the title of Fuyumi Ono's new Twelve Kingdoms novel: 『白銀の墟 玄の月』 (Shirogane no Oka, Kuro no Tsuki). I have tentatively translated it, "Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon."
The furigana oka lends the kanji for "ruins" (墟) the meaning of "hill," which is difficult to incorporate without getting wordy. Based on the hiragana for the title (above), it would read, "[A] Silver Hill[s], [a] Black Moon."
As for the literal meaning, all that remains of most medieval castles in Japan are overgrown hills. Oda Nobunaga's magnificent Azuchi Castle was destroyed by fire after his assassination in 1582, leaving behind only the stone foundation.
Without the actual context, other than the Kingdom of Tai being in the midst of a civil war, these are the images the title brings to mind. Considering the northern climate of Tai, "silver" could also describe ruins covered with snow.
The Traditional Colors of Japan website assigns「玄」a web color of #3E1E00, closer to "maroon." But it also describes「玄」as a synonym for black and suggests that「玄」is less a traditional color than a metaphysical concept associated with the dark arts or the darkness before the dawn.
Metaphorically, "silver" and "black" could refer to the silver-haired Gyousou and Taiki, a rare "black kirin." Using the possessive particle no (の), "silver" and "black" can function as both adjectives and nouns in Japanese.
Attempting the equivalent in English would sound clunky. So at this juncture, the English version will lean more heavily on the dictionary meanings.
At the end of July, Shinchosha released a Twelve Kingdoms promotional video (in Japanese). The narrator is Ken'ichi Suzumura, who played Rakushun in the NHK anime series.
The furigana oka lends the kanji for "ruins" (墟) the meaning of "hill," which is difficult to incorporate without getting wordy. Based on the hiragana for the title (above), it would read, "[A] Silver Hill[s], [a] Black Moon."
As for the literal meaning, all that remains of most medieval castles in Japan are overgrown hills. Oda Nobunaga's magnificent Azuchi Castle was destroyed by fire after his assassination in 1582, leaving behind only the stone foundation.
Without the actual context, other than the Kingdom of Tai being in the midst of a civil war, these are the images the title brings to mind. Considering the northern climate of Tai, "silver" could also describe ruins covered with snow.
The Traditional Colors of Japan website assigns「玄」a web color of #3E1E00, closer to "maroon." But it also describes「玄」as a synonym for black and suggests that「玄」is less a traditional color than a metaphysical concept associated with the dark arts or the darkness before the dawn.
Metaphorically, "silver" and "black" could refer to the silver-haired Gyousou and Taiki, a rare "black kirin." Using the possessive particle no (の), "silver" and "black" can function as both adjectives and nouns in Japanese.
Attempting the equivalent in English would sound clunky. So at this juncture, the English version will lean more heavily on the dictionary meanings.
At the end of July, Shinchosha released a Twelve Kingdoms promotional video (in Japanese). The narrator is Ken'ichi Suzumura, who played Rakushun in the NHK anime series.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, advertising, black moon, books, business, fantasy, japanese, language, publishing
June 27, 2019
The ear of the beholder
A cuss word is a cuss word because it violates a social norm. If you don't comprehend a cuss word it arouses no emotional response unless it is tied to a tone of voice or observable physical affect. Even a cuss word in a foreign language you do understand likely lacks same emotional impact as in your first language.That's because the cuss word itself contains no relevant information outside the immediate sociolinguistic context. The popular fallacy that "there aren't any cuss words in Japanese" is due to a fundamental disconnect over what constitutes an offensive violation of social norms.
English speakers really are obsessed with "manners," meaning the visible and audible markers of public propriety. These words are "good"; those words are "bad." The words themselves are magically imbued with certain qualities that otherwise mean nothing until filtered through a specific sets of brains.
Stop to think about it and it is utterly strange that the FCC deems "crap" and "dung" acceptable but not "shit." One could argue as well that nobody really cusses in English either. We play games with semantics and pretend to take offense until the offense-taking becomes so imbued that it goes unquestioned.
One curious consequence is that most Shakespearean vulgarities do not offend modern ears because we haven't been to trained to take offense when we hear them. They're just funny-sounding words delivered with a British accent. You know, like Monty Python.
In Japanese, fewer words are "bad" in and of themselves. Rather, a "vulgarity" violates a social hierarchy or crosses the line from acceptable private usage to unacceptable public usage, or from a "high" to a "low" usage. So whether kuso means "crap" or "shit" depends entirely on the social context.
To be sure, some words are inherently offensive for the same reasons they are in English. The "c" word, for example. Then again, the equivalent medical term (for the most part) isn't.
And then there are words like teme, one of the myriad of second-person pronouns in Japanese. Teme is the "low brow" equivalent of kisama, the latter being preferred by a more gentile class of cusser. You would be right to conclude that using teme in a "high brow" context is even ruder.
Teme is a linguistic finger jabbed in your face. It's violation of social hierarchies. This flies over the head of English speakers because English (American English in particular) shed the T–V distinction a while back. The tables in this Wikipedia article apply equally well to Japanese.
In Japanese, T–V distinctions also permeate verb conjugations. As with the quite ordinary shinu ("to die"), the command form is a particularly harsh and a yakuza-ish thing to say. Because what makes a yakuza a yakuza is less the substance of what they say than how they say it.
To start with, they get in your face and invade your personal space. And they roll their Rs. I mean, really roll their Rs. A yakuza does so in an instantly recognizable manner, identifying his social class and lack of normal social constraints. The message: "I'm a scary person who could do anything."
This unpredictability and disrespect for social order is the eternal wellspring of "honest" vulgarity.
Labels: anime, honorifics, japanese, language, pronouns, social studies
April 11, 2019
Beautiful Bones
Given a title like Beautiful Bones, you might jump to the conclusion that this light novel and anime series shares much in common with Bones, the police procedural starring Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.And you'd be right.
Those obvious assumptions are obviously intended. This a good example of "localizing" an anime or light novel title rather than literally translating the original. The actual title of the light novel series is "A Corpse is Buried Under Sakurako's Feet" (「櫻子さんの足下には死体が埋まっている」).
Long light novel titles have become trendy of late, which can give overseas publishers fits.
Like Deschanel's Temperance "Bones" Brennan, Sakurako Kujo is a socially maladroit osteologist with a penchant for stumbling across dead bodies. She isn't a famous author but comes from old money and lives in the (Gothic) family mansion with an elderly housekeeper and the menagerie of animal skeletons she reconstructs as her hobby.
She's more eccentric than Temperance Brennan, closer in personality to House and Holmes on the brilliant antisocial obsessive detective scale. Her Watson (or Wilson) is Shotaro Tatewaki, a high school student who does his best to keep her more manic proclivities in check.
Being a kid ("shonen"), he can only do so much. I can't help wondering how the series would play out if Sakurako were paired with Boreanaz's Agent Booth, someone with the strong personality and physical presence to root her more firmly in the real world.
But there's nothing wrong with this version either. Shotaro is a competent kid. Well, he has to be, given who he hangs out with. The result is, like House, Sakurako ends up with more room to be her own brilliantly semi-unbalanced self.
As voiced by Shizuka Ito, Sakurako often reminds me of Jolene Blalock's T'Pol on Enterprise, constantly having to put up with humans and their annoying illogical emotions.
Of course, when you create a smart detective, you have to create smart crimes for her to solve. That means the detective has to be smarter than the criminal, and the screenwriter has to be smarter than them both.
Making the smart detective a scientist gives them (the detective and the writer) access to a pool of deductible facts that is both technically complex and accessible through research (or hire a consultant). Shiori Ota, author of the novels, has clearly done one or the other or both.
The result is a well-structured set of mysteries that mostly play fair—we are privy to the same information as Shotaro. Each mystery concludes in one or two episodes. An unresolved arc involving a Moriarty-type figure runs through the series, but never overwhelms the individual episodes.
The anime ran for only one cour, so the unresolved arc remains unresolved, though the villain's identity and motives are revealed in the penultimate episode. But it does not end on a cliffhanger, and the light novels series is still active, with fourteen volumes now in print. So a second cour may be in the offing.
One other unique thing about Beautiful Bones is that the series takes place in Hokkaido, where the author grew up. It makes for a nice change of setting and provides for the kind of wide-open spaces (and much more driving) than you'll experience in Tokyo.
Labels: anime, anime reviews, language, mystery, thinking about writing, translations
April 04, 2019
The name of the new era
In Japan, the school year and the fiscal year begin on the first day of April. This year saw another first on the first. Shortly before noon, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced the era name that will mark the reign of Emperor Naruhito after he is enthroned on 1 May 2019.
The name of the new era is "Reiwa" (令和), pronounced "lay-wah" in Japanese. In a unique step, instead of referencing the Chinese classics, the usage for the kanji was taken from the Man'yoshu. Dating to the 8th century, it is the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry. The Japan Times explains,
In contemporary Japanese, rei (令) means "dictate" or "decree." The more common wa is the same "wa" as in "Showa," the era name of Emperor Hirohito. It means "peace" or "harmony." So a literal reading of Reiwa based on modern meanings might be along the lines of "order and peace."
As University of Tokyo historian Kazuto Hongo observes, "The name sounds as if we are ordered to achieve peace, rather than doing so proactively."
The intended meaning based on the context provided by the Man'yoshu is something more like "auspicious harmony." In an effort to counter the "order and peace" interpretation, the Foreign Ministry has since clarified that the "official" English translation of Reiwa is "beautiful harmony."
In a press conference following the presentation by the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Prime Minister Abe waxed poetic.
As far as that goes, the kanji 麗 (rei) does unambiguously refer to beauty, but it violates the "simple to read and write" rule that a modern gengou must follow. Both 麗 and 令 (especially as a radical) have long been used in names for girls. In the coming years, they will likely become more common.
The proclamation of the era name traditionally follows the death of the emperor. Two years ago, in a national address, Emperor Akihito made clear his desire to retire, citing his age and declining health. A year later, a bill was passed by the Diet creating the necessary legal framework and timeline of events.
Emperor Akihito will formally abdicate on 30 April 2019. His son becomes emperor on 1 May 2019, and the new gengou will begin. So the rest of 2019 will be Reiwa 1 and 2020 will be Reiwa 2.
Unique among Asian nations, the gengou (元号) or nengou (年号) is not simply ceremonial, but is used in all government documents, from currency to birth certificates, and is widely adopted throughout the private sector. Practically any official document will include the gengou and the Gregorian date.
In their day to day activities, especially in years like 2019 with two gengou, Japanese have to be "bilingual" in gengou and Gregorian.
The modern gengou system (since 1868) actually constituted a great improvement. As Donald Keene explains in Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World,
In the modern era, a group of scholars in classical Japanese and Chinese literature and history comes up with a list of era names. Then the Chief Cabinet Secretary gathers input from leading opinion leaders, such as Nobel laureate Shin'ya Yamanaka and Naoki Prize winning writer Mariko Hayashi.
The short list is presented to the leadership of both chambers of the Diet, after which the full Cabinet makes the final selection.
Over the next month, computer programmers will have their hands full updating all of the date-dependent software. Crown Prince Naruhito is a healthy 59 years old, so the Reiwa era should last a good twenty or thirty years, at which point the whole process will begin once again.
The name of the new era is "Reiwa" (令和), pronounced "lay-wah" in Japanese. In a unique step, instead of referencing the Chinese classics, the usage for the kanji was taken from the Man'yoshu. Dating to the 8th century, it is the oldest extant anthology of Japanese poetry. The Japan Times explains,
The Man'yoshu passage that inspired Reiwa was written by poet Otomo no Tabito as an introduction to 32 plum-themed poems penned by his poet friends, according to officials. In the introduction, rei refers to "reigetsu" or "auspicious month," while wa describes the peaceful manner of an early spring breeze.
In contemporary Japanese, rei (令) means "dictate" or "decree." The more common wa is the same "wa" as in "Showa," the era name of Emperor Hirohito. It means "peace" or "harmony." So a literal reading of Reiwa based on modern meanings might be along the lines of "order and peace."
As University of Tokyo historian Kazuto Hongo observes, "The name sounds as if we are ordered to achieve peace, rather than doing so proactively."
The intended meaning based on the context provided by the Man'yoshu is something more like "auspicious harmony." In an effort to counter the "order and peace" interpretation, the Foreign Ministry has since clarified that the "official" English translation of Reiwa is "beautiful harmony."
In a press conference following the presentation by the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Prime Minister Abe waxed poetic.
We have decided the new name to be "Reiwa" in the hope that Japan will be a country where each Japanese person can achieve success with hopes for the future like plum flowers that bloom brilliantly after the severe cold.
As far as that goes, the kanji 麗 (rei) does unambiguously refer to beauty, but it violates the "simple to read and write" rule that a modern gengou must follow. Both 麗 and 令 (especially as a radical) have long been used in names for girls. In the coming years, they will likely become more common.
The proclamation of the era name traditionally follows the death of the emperor. Two years ago, in a national address, Emperor Akihito made clear his desire to retire, citing his age and declining health. A year later, a bill was passed by the Diet creating the necessary legal framework and timeline of events.
Emperor Akihito will formally abdicate on 30 April 2019. His son becomes emperor on 1 May 2019, and the new gengou will begin. So the rest of 2019 will be Reiwa 1 and 2020 will be Reiwa 2.
Unique among Asian nations, the gengou (元号) or nengou (年号) is not simply ceremonial, but is used in all government documents, from currency to birth certificates, and is widely adopted throughout the private sector. Practically any official document will include the gengou and the Gregorian date.
In their day to day activities, especially in years like 2019 with two gengou, Japanese have to be "bilingual" in gengou and Gregorian.
The modern gengou system (since 1868) actually constituted a great improvement. 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.
In the modern era, a group of scholars in classical Japanese and Chinese literature and history comes up with a list of era names. Then the Chief Cabinet Secretary gathers input from leading opinion leaders, such as Nobel laureate Shin'ya Yamanaka and Naoki Prize winning writer Mariko Hayashi.
The short list is presented to the leadership of both chambers of the Diet, after which the full Cabinet makes the final selection.
Over the next month, computer programmers will have their hands full updating all of the date-dependent software. Crown Prince Naruhito is a healthy 59 years old, so the Reiwa era should last a good twenty or thirty years, at which point the whole process will begin once again.
Labels: akihito, history, japanese culture, language, naruhito, nengou, politics
May 31, 2018
Laughing matters
A consistent observation from long-time Western observers is that Japanese don't do the whole "dripping with irony" thing. It's sand in the gears of a culture that depends so much on going with the flow. (Google "Japan" and "sarcasm" for many links about the subject.)
The sociolinguistic concept does exist in Japanese and hiniku (皮肉) seems to cover all the lexicographical bases. To paraphrase Tom Selleck at the end of Quigley Down Under, "I said I didn't have much use for it. Didn't say I didn't know what it means."
At the other end of the spectrum, clever word-play (kakekotoba) has been prized since before the Heian period and is a key element of classical poetry. Japanese attitudes in this regard can be very British English, bouncing wildly between Oscar Wilde and Benny Hill.
A broad streak of Benny Hill-type slapstick is part and parcel of any "fan service"-heavy anime comedy. Like horror and monster movies, these genres are more familiar in the west because subtle comedy just doesn't translate well, West to East or East to West.
Hollywood loves action films because comedy is such a hard sell in the huge Asian market (and even the action genre is no guarantee these days). There's even a term in Japan for the problem: "American joke," meaning the kind of humor that only Americans think is funny.
The American contemporary solo "standup" style never took hold in Japan. Japan's solo format is rakugo, storytelling based on an established repertoire of Aesop's Fables-
The standup format is manzai, which hearkens back to the old vaudeville duos.
Manzai is how a nation of introverts work out their inner rage in public (Sheldon Cooper + Penny = manzai). Trading insults (as distinguished from sarcasm) is part and parcel of the genre, as is physical humor (whacking each other on the head).
At best, manzai compares to a Smothers Brothers routine, revolving around the repartee between a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke). But can also be so aggressively passive-aggressive that I find it painfully unfunny (and difficult to follow).
Well, that's what I think of the Three Stooges too.
Manzai duos aside, comedy in Japan is often skit-based (known in Japanese as konto, from the French conte) or revolves around group activities, including every sort of chat show imaginable.
NHK regularly broadcasts stage performances of vaudevillian-style melodramas. Despite the Edo period settings (interrupted by anachronistic jokes, breaking fourth wall, and characters finding excuses to burst into song), they are surprisingly accessible.
Then there are all those game shows. Americans typically only hear about the ones so obvious or outrageous they don't need translation. But many are dang high-brow, like using using Auto-Tune technology to measure how precisely on-tune the contestants can sing a popular song.
The participants in these "game shows" mostly come from the ranks of B-list celebrities. More Hollywood Squares than Family Feud. Japanese by and large prefer to watch other people having a good time than get up on stage and make fools of themselves (though there are those too).
One of the longest-running shows on Japanese television is Shouten. It resembles What's My Line (though the participants usually remain seated). The panel members are all veteran rakugo performers.
Again, the emphasis is on wordplay, trading insults, and the occasional pratfall (and mild sexual innuendo). I get about half of the verbal jokes.
I do get most of the kanji jokes, where they start with a standard kanji radical and then add a few strokes to invent a new word that creates a humorous juxtaposition.
The sociolinguistic concept does exist in Japanese and hiniku (皮肉) seems to cover all the lexicographical bases. To paraphrase Tom Selleck at the end of Quigley Down Under, "I said I didn't have much use for it. Didn't say I didn't know what it means."
At the other end of the spectrum, clever word-play (kakekotoba) has been prized since before the Heian period and is a key element of classical poetry. Japanese attitudes in this regard can be very British English, bouncing wildly between Oscar Wilde and Benny Hill.
A broad streak of Benny Hill-type slapstick is part and parcel of any "fan service"-heavy anime comedy. Like horror and monster movies, these genres are more familiar in the west because subtle comedy just doesn't translate well, West to East or East to West.
Hollywood loves action films because comedy is such a hard sell in the huge Asian market (and even the action genre is no guarantee these days). There's even a term in Japan for the problem: "American joke," meaning the kind of humor that only Americans think is funny.The American contemporary solo "standup" style never took hold in Japan. Japan's solo format is rakugo, storytelling based on an established repertoire of Aesop's Fables-
The standup format is manzai, which hearkens back to the old vaudeville duos.
Manzai is how a nation of introverts work out their inner rage in public (Sheldon Cooper + Penny = manzai). Trading insults (as distinguished from sarcasm) is part and parcel of the genre, as is physical humor (whacking each other on the head).
At best, manzai compares to a Smothers Brothers routine, revolving around the repartee between a straight man (tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke). But can also be so aggressively passive-aggressive that I find it painfully unfunny (and difficult to follow).
Well, that's what I think of the Three Stooges too.
Manzai duos aside, comedy in Japan is often skit-based (known in Japanese as konto, from the French conte) or revolves around group activities, including every sort of chat show imaginable.
NHK regularly broadcasts stage performances of vaudevillian-style melodramas. Despite the Edo period settings (interrupted by anachronistic jokes, breaking fourth wall, and characters finding excuses to burst into song), they are surprisingly accessible.
Then there are all those game shows. Americans typically only hear about the ones so obvious or outrageous they don't need translation. But many are dang high-brow, like using using Auto-Tune technology to measure how precisely on-tune the contestants can sing a popular song.
The participants in these "game shows" mostly come from the ranks of B-list celebrities. More Hollywood Squares than Family Feud. Japanese by and large prefer to watch other people having a good time than get up on stage and make fools of themselves (though there are those too).
One of the longest-running shows on Japanese television is Shouten. It resembles What's My Line (though the participants usually remain seated). The panel members are all veteran rakugo performers.Again, the emphasis is on wordplay, trading insults, and the occasional pratfall (and mild sexual innuendo). I get about half of the verbal jokes.
I do get most of the kanji jokes, where they start with a standard kanji radical and then add a few strokes to invent a new word that creates a humorous juxtaposition.
Labels: japanese culture, japanese tv, language, nhk, social studies
February 15, 2018
Right to left to right
The Winter Olympics are being held in Pyeongchang, South Korea, a good enough excuse to discuss how the written word works in that part of the world. (My knowledge of Korean is mostly informed by Wikipedia, so feel free to correct the record.)
Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Turkic belong to the Altaic language group. Unlike Chinese, they are not tonal languages. If you can pronounce Spanish, you can pronounce Japanese. What trips up Westerners is speaking Japanese with the iambic metre (da-DUM) common to English.
The proximity of Japan and Korea to China accounts for both adapting Chinese characters into their orthography. Japan and Korea subsequently invented their own "alphabets": kana and hangul. But the two are independent and quite dissimilar creations.
The written Korean language (hangul) is more similar in structure to the English alphabet than to Japanese kana, which is technically a syllabary. Hiragana is an elegant syllabary, but one so tightly bound to Japanese that it can be repurposed for other tasks only with great difficulty.
Like English and unlike kana, hangul separates vowels and consonants. But imagine that in English you could form ligatures with almost any letter combination and do it vertically as well as horizontally.
The squashed-together characters may look like kanji, but they're "letters." To quote Wikipedia: "Each syllabic block consists of two to six letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are then arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom."
Like that "Love" sculpture.
Kanji (Chinese characters) aren't used at all in North Korea, and have fallen out of use in South Korea. All kanji in a defined font take up the same box of space (including punctuation), so they can easily be stacked vertically.
Although Korean was traditionally read vertically and right to left (as was Japanese), the disappearance of kanji and the influence of European languages (including punctuation and spaces separating words) has made horizontal orthography more practical and now universal.
The persistence of kanji in Japanese is why I think vertical orthography (read right to left) continues to predominate. When written horizontally, until fairly recently, Japanese and Chinese and Korean were read right-to-left too but have since switched from left-to-right.
In Japan, the change came abruptly in 1946. Although hangul was developed several centuries after kana, the horizontal left-to-right standard was promoted by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in the late 19th century, which may also account for its wider adoption in Korea.
As a result, manga that preserve the original formatting are read right-to-left while manhwa are read left-to-right.
Chinese can still be written vertically, though horizontally and left-to-right is quickly becoming the standard. In Taiwan, the government now requires that official documents be written horizontally and left-to-right.
Japanese may soon stand alone (vertically written, that is).
Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Turkic belong to the Altaic language group. Unlike Chinese, they are not tonal languages. If you can pronounce Spanish, you can pronounce Japanese. What trips up Westerners is speaking Japanese with the iambic metre (da-DUM) common to English.
The proximity of Japan and Korea to China accounts for both adapting Chinese characters into their orthography. Japan and Korea subsequently invented their own "alphabets": kana and hangul. But the two are independent and quite dissimilar creations.
The written Korean language (hangul) is more similar in structure to the English alphabet than to Japanese kana, which is technically a syllabary. Hiragana is an elegant syllabary, but one so tightly bound to Japanese that it can be repurposed for other tasks only with great difficulty.
Like English and unlike kana, hangul separates vowels and consonants. But imagine that in English you could form ligatures with almost any letter combination and do it vertically as well as horizontally.
The squashed-together characters may look like kanji, but they're "letters." To quote Wikipedia: "Each syllabic block consists of two to six letters, including at least one consonant and one vowel. These blocks are then arranged horizontally from left to right or vertically from top to bottom."
Like that "Love" sculpture.
Kanji (Chinese characters) aren't used at all in North Korea, and have fallen out of use in South Korea. All kanji in a defined font take up the same box of space (including punctuation), so they can easily be stacked vertically.
Although Korean was traditionally read vertically and right to left (as was Japanese), the disappearance of kanji and the influence of European languages (including punctuation and spaces separating words) has made horizontal orthography more practical and now universal.
The persistence of kanji in Japanese is why I think vertical orthography (read right to left) continues to predominate. When written horizontally, until fairly recently, Japanese and Chinese and Korean were read right-to-left too but have since switched from left-to-right.
In Japan, the change came abruptly in 1946. Although hangul was developed several centuries after kana, the horizontal left-to-right standard was promoted by Korean linguist Ju Si-gyeong in the late 19th century, which may also account for its wider adoption in Korea.
As a result, manga that preserve the original formatting are read right-to-left while manhwa are read left-to-right.
Chinese can still be written vertically, though horizontally and left-to-right is quickly becoming the standard. In Taiwan, the government now requires that official documents be written horizontally and left-to-right.
Japanese may soon stand alone (vertically written, that is).
November 23, 2017
The quintessence of the role
One of those truly cool marks is the word quintessential.
It derives from quīnta essentia, meaning the "fifth element" or essence of the heavenly bodies (believed to be "ether"). The other four elements are air, fire, earth, and water. (And now you also know where the title of The Fifth Element came from.)
For the past five centuries or so, quintessential (adj.) and quintessence (n.) have referred to the pure essence of a substance or the perfect embodiment of a thing.
I think it should refer to a school of acting.
The thought occurred after catching several episodes of Kojak (1973–
Inspired by gritty crime dramas like The French Connection (1971) and Serpico (1973), the grime and nihilism is lightened by Telly Savalas's witty, wry, better-
In the role, Savalas captures the quintessence of the hard-nosed Brooklyn detective. His performance reminds me of Luca Zingaretti's in Inspector Montalbano (not just because they're both bald). Both play to type, a Greek-American and a Sicilian, and play that type over the top.
Zingaretti plainly states that his Montalbano is an exaggeration, a "commedia dell'arte," which is a
theatrical form characterized by improvised dialogue and a cast of colorful stock characters that emerged in northern Italy in the fifteenth century and rapidly gained popularity throughout Europe.
It is exactly this embrace of the inner stock character that allows an actor to "transform and enlarge" the part, that allows the essence of the person represented by the character to shine through. Such a performance creates an emotional rapport with both the cast and the audience.
This is what makes Savalas's and Zingaretti's characters so memorable. They key in on our familiarity with the type (which all fictional characters must be to some extent) and use that familiarity to pull us deeper into the substance of the person they are playing and the story he is telling.
I call this "acting to the quintessence." It deliberately skirts the Stanislavskian approach because theater isn't real life and actors aren't the real people they are portraying. The most "realistic" portrayal on screen is ultimately a made-up story told against an artificial backdrop.
Even a rigorously objective documentary is a shadow on Plato's wall. Once a camera starts rolling, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
Brando was famously a method actor, except that all the "method" in the world wasn't going to turn him into a Japanese living in post-WWII Okinawa. What he could do was focus on those demonstrable aspects of the character that communicated the essence of his part in the story.
In other words, Brando acted like he was that person, and being a good actor, those actions resonated with the audience.
The job of narrative fiction, regardless of the medium, is not to recreate the real world. It is to draw in rough sketches with a specific and artificial focus, giving our own creative instincts enough material and latitude to fill in the rest. Our minds are the only virtual reality machines that matter.
Labels: language, movies about japan, social studies, television, thinking about writing
October 08, 2017
Blue Orchid (6)
The author uses a curious idiom in this chapter: 「梨の礫」 (nashi no subute). Literally, "a pear's small stones." It means to get no response to an action, which I translated as "hitting a brick wall" (p. 247).
In this case, nashi (梨) is an ateji (当て字), a written kanji assigned to a word based on how it is read aloud (the phoneme), not the meaning.
Perhaps the most common ateji known around the world is sushi (寿司). Its kanji, meaning "longevity" and "political administration," have nothing to do with fish or even food.
A little online research reveals that nashi should logically be written 「無し」 or "none, without any." Thus the expression literally means "no small stones." Throw small stones at a big problem and you'll get no response.
As the result of a semantic substitution or a malapropism that caught on, the adverb nashi was replaced by a noun ("pear") that is its homonymic equivalent but whose literal meaning is nonsensical.
To be sure, all languages, no less English, are plagued by such idioms and colloquial expressions. Off the top of my head (not the bottom or the side):
And when you're done, be sure to put the cat back in the bag.
In this case, nashi (梨) is an ateji (当て字), a written kanji assigned to a word based on how it is read aloud (the phoneme), not the meaning.
Perhaps the most common ateji known around the world is sushi (寿司). Its kanji, meaning "longevity" and "political administration," have nothing to do with fish or even food.
A little online research reveals that nashi should logically be written 「無し」 or "none, without any." Thus the expression literally means "no small stones." Throw small stones at a big problem and you'll get no response.
As the result of a semantic substitution or a malapropism that caught on, the adverb nashi was replaced by a noun ("pear") that is its homonymic equivalent but whose literal meaning is nonsensical.
To be sure, all languages, no less English, are plagued by such idioms and colloquial expressions. Off the top of my head (not the bottom or the side):
"head over heels" (not "heels over head"?)
"pull one's leg"
"drunk as a skunk"
"as all get out"
And when you're done, be sure to put the cat back in the bag.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, hisho, japanese, language
September 21, 2017
"Shogun" revisited (2/4)
It's hardly "serious" fiction, but the miniseries Shogun takes Japanese history more seriously than most recent Hollywood productions. One exception is Martin Scorsese's Silence. Scorsese stuck closely to Shusaku Endo's book and hired BYU professor Van C. Gessel as a consultant.
Gessel discusses the experience in the lecture featured below (the audio quality is unfortunately poor).
Shogun is also based on a novel. James Clavell did his homework too. But nobody sells 15 million copies of anything conducting a graduate course on medieval Japanese history and anthropology. So Clavell methodically runs through a checklist of every "educated" stereotype on the subject.
And probably promulgated a few new ones. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Stereotypes persist because of their utility. If 15 million people can be persuaded to read a 1152 page melodrama about Japan's Warring States period at the end of the 16th century, maybe they'll be game for more substantive fare.
But how does the miniseries otherwise hold up as a cinematic experience? Sure, it clunks rather loudly at times. But all things considered, better than I expected it would.
Shogun looks like a NHK historical drama from the early 1980s. That's a criticism and a compliment. It was shot at Hikone castle, Himeji castle, and at the legendary Toho, Shochiku, and Daiei-Kyoto Studios. It's nice to see real Japan in a movie about Japan.
The Last Samurai was shot in New Zealand, 47 Ronin was shot in Scotland and Hungary, and Silence was shot in Taiwan. This isn't all the fault of Hollywood. Japanese politicians haven't quite grasped the idea of local film commissions that recruit big budget film productions and cuts through the red tape on their behalf.
One advantage of building sets and shooting in places like New Zealand is not having to matte out the backgrounds. As Akira Kurosawa once noted, "Japan's penchant for power lines and retaining walls has left little unspoiled scenery for movie makers."
Shogun director Jerry London employed the same cheats as Masato Harada did shooting his 2017 historial epic, Sekigahara: high and low angles with tight fields-of-view (which is less annoying when the castle in the background is a real Japanese castle).
Shogun co-star Yoko Shimada wears too much makeup and the wigs aren't terribly convincing. Again, what you'd expect in a NHK drama from forty years ago. They've greatly improved in both departments since, though the chonmage (丁髷) is still a challenge.
The chonmage hairstyle lasted well into the 19th century. It's essentially a reverse Mohawk, hard to pull off without leaving a bump across the forehead. Issei Takahashi in Naotora wears one about as good as I've seen—except when viewed from the back.
But it's a costume drama, so—costumes. Richard Chamberlain wears a hakama quite nicely. But knowing a little more history (and being exposed to a lot more Japanese television) than I did back then, what first upset my suspension of disbelief was the casting of Ishido.
There's no arguing with Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga, nee Tokugawa Ieyasu, though sans the chonmage that in contemporaneous portraits Ieyasu is always depicted sporting. I suspect that Mifune, as well as Kaneko, simply didn't want to go through all the bother, the kind of thing an actor can get away with if he's a big enough star.
But casting Nobuo Kaneko as Ishido only made me grin. The problem is that Nobuo Kaneko resembles a Japanese Edward G. Robinson. Maybe they wanted to be obvious and have a heavy play the heavy.
Ishido's historical equivalent is Ishida Mitsunari, who led the Western armies against Ieyasu's Eastern forces.
Mitsunari was only forty-one at the Battle of Sekigahara. He was a capable administrator who single-highhandedly kept the regime viable as Hideyoshi turned into a paranoid Shakespearean villain, executing anybody who challenged his legitimacy or threatened the succession of his son and only heir.
Mitsunari made a lot of enemies as Hideyoshi's enforcer. He also lacked battlefield experience, not having fought in Hideyoshi's two pointless Korean campaigns. As a result, keeping his allies on the same page was like herding cats. Many simply disliked Ieyasu more than they disliked Mitsunari.
Ieyasu as well usually left the fighting to others. A wily politician and negotiator, he convinced (bribed and coerced) several of Mitsunari's generals to either sit out the fight or defect to his side. The cataclysmic battle was over in a single day, despite half of Ieyasu's army arriving a day late.
As one of history's great might-have-beens, Mitsunari has long been ensconced in the pantheon of Japan's heroic losers. As such, he is invariably played by a dashing young actor, like Shun Oguri's portrayal of Mitsunari in Tenchijin (also sporting a great chonmage).
In the run-up to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Mitsunari and Ieyasu jostled for political control of the regency created by Hideyoshi before his death. Sort of a Japanese version of The West Wing circa 1599. Alas, that's not the kind of material to make an American miniseries about.
There not being enough time or budget to show the battle itself, we're simply told about the subsequent events. This is unfortunate, considering that Adams himself removed the cannon from his ship, accompanied them to Sekigahara, and commanded the battery. Ieyasu had many reasons to prize the man's company.
So in order to place our protagonist in constant peril, Shogun exaggerates the importance of the Jesuits and the Portuguese in the months before Sekigahara. They mostly operated in and around Nagasaki. These confrontations foreshadow the fate of Japan's Christian community and the disastrous war soon to engulf Europe.
And Blackthorne's verbal spats with Father Alvito (Damien Thomas, whose Japanese isn't as "native" as his backstory suggests but is nevertheless quite good) make for better drama than the melodramatically overwrought romantic interludes with Mariko (Yoko Shimada).
Mariko is far more interesting as a spot-on illustration of the highly syncretic nature of religion in Japan, which can seamlessly blend Buddhist practice and Christian belief without a second thought. In fact, this may be the most accurate reading of Japan's contemporary culture in the miniseries.
But speaking of melodramatic excesses, rumors of conspiracies to assassinate Ieyasu really were rife. Though they never materialized, the Machiavellian Ieyasu leveraged them to his own advantage. And so do writers of historical fiction, such as Keiichiro Ryu's Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Gessel discusses the experience in the lecture featured below (the audio quality is unfortunately poor).
Shogun is also based on a novel. James Clavell did his homework too. But nobody sells 15 million copies of anything conducting a graduate course on medieval Japanese history and anthropology. So Clavell methodically runs through a checklist of every "educated" stereotype on the subject.
And probably promulgated a few new ones. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Stereotypes persist because of their utility. If 15 million people can be persuaded to read a 1152 page melodrama about Japan's Warring States period at the end of the 16th century, maybe they'll be game for more substantive fare.
But how does the miniseries otherwise hold up as a cinematic experience? Sure, it clunks rather loudly at times. But all things considered, better than I expected it would.
The Last Samurai was shot in New Zealand, 47 Ronin was shot in Scotland and Hungary, and Silence was shot in Taiwan. This isn't all the fault of Hollywood. Japanese politicians haven't quite grasped the idea of local film commissions that recruit big budget film productions and cuts through the red tape on their behalf.
One advantage of building sets and shooting in places like New Zealand is not having to matte out the backgrounds. As Akira Kurosawa once noted, "Japan's penchant for power lines and retaining walls has left little unspoiled scenery for movie makers."
Shogun director Jerry London employed the same cheats as Masato Harada did shooting his 2017 historial epic, Sekigahara: high and low angles with tight fields-of-view (which is less annoying when the castle in the background is a real Japanese castle).
Shogun co-star Yoko Shimada wears too much makeup and the wigs aren't terribly convincing. Again, what you'd expect in a NHK drama from forty years ago. They've greatly improved in both departments since, though the chonmage (丁髷) is still a challenge.
But it's a costume drama, so—costumes. Richard Chamberlain wears a hakama quite nicely. But knowing a little more history (and being exposed to a lot more Japanese television) than I did back then, what first upset my suspension of disbelief was the casting of Ishido.
There's no arguing with Toshiro Mifune as Toranaga, nee Tokugawa Ieyasu, though sans the chonmage that in contemporaneous portraits Ieyasu is always depicted sporting. I suspect that Mifune, as well as Kaneko, simply didn't want to go through all the bother, the kind of thing an actor can get away with if he's a big enough star.
Ishido's historical equivalent is Ishida Mitsunari, who led the Western armies against Ieyasu's Eastern forces.
Mitsunari was only forty-one at the Battle of Sekigahara. He was a capable administrator who single-highhandedly kept the regime viable as Hideyoshi turned into a paranoid Shakespearean villain, executing anybody who challenged his legitimacy or threatened the succession of his son and only heir.
Mitsunari made a lot of enemies as Hideyoshi's enforcer. He also lacked battlefield experience, not having fought in Hideyoshi's two pointless Korean campaigns. As a result, keeping his allies on the same page was like herding cats. Many simply disliked Ieyasu more than they disliked Mitsunari.
Ieyasu as well usually left the fighting to others. A wily politician and negotiator, he convinced (bribed and coerced) several of Mitsunari's generals to either sit out the fight or defect to his side. The cataclysmic battle was over in a single day, despite half of Ieyasu's army arriving a day late.
In the run-up to the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, Mitsunari and Ieyasu jostled for political control of the regency created by Hideyoshi before his death. Sort of a Japanese version of The West Wing circa 1599. Alas, that's not the kind of material to make an American miniseries about.
There not being enough time or budget to show the battle itself, we're simply told about the subsequent events. This is unfortunate, considering that Adams himself removed the cannon from his ship, accompanied them to Sekigahara, and commanded the battery. Ieyasu had many reasons to prize the man's company.
So in order to place our protagonist in constant peril, Shogun exaggerates the importance of the Jesuits and the Portuguese in the months before Sekigahara. They mostly operated in and around Nagasaki. These confrontations foreshadow the fate of Japan's Christian community and the disastrous war soon to engulf Europe.
And Blackthorne's verbal spats with Father Alvito (Damien Thomas, whose Japanese isn't as "native" as his backstory suggests but is nevertheless quite good) make for better drama than the melodramatically overwrought romantic interludes with Mariko (Yoko Shimada).
Mariko is far more interesting as a spot-on illustration of the highly syncretic nature of religion in Japan, which can seamlessly blend Buddhist practice and Christian belief without a second thought. In fact, this may be the most accurate reading of Japan's contemporary culture in the miniseries.
But speaking of melodramatic excesses, rumors of conspiracies to assassinate Ieyasu really were rife. Though they never materialized, the Machiavellian Ieyasu leveraged them to his own advantage. And so do writers of historical fiction, such as Keiichiro Ryu's Kagemusha Tokugawa Ieyasu.
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Labels: history, japanese culture, japanese tv, language, nhk, shogun, television reviews, translations