TWIB-III: 17 (02/01-02/07)

[akujunkan]

One book last week, in Japanese.

1) ねこのばば - 畠中恵
     Neko no Baba - Hatakenaka Megumi
Neko no Baba (no translation of the title because it would ruin a pun involved in a big reveal) is the third volume in Hatakenaka's Shabake series. It's a collection of four short stories following the adventures of Ichitaro, son of a prosperous wholesaler in Tokugawa-era Edo. Ichitaro is confined to bed by illness more often than not, but luckily he's the grandson of a powerful supernatural creature and is protected and served by a melangerie of other supernatural creatures (youkai, in Japanese) as a result. Together, they engage in shenanigans and solve unsolvable murders. Yes, Ichitaro is Suish, and yes, the youkai are a deus ex machina par excellence, but so are the characters and plot elements of 99% of all murder mysteries.

And to be honest, the mysteries seem tangential to the real entertainment value of the novels, which lies in their depiction of everyday life in Edo and the quirky habits of the various youkai with whom Ichitaro interacts. (My favorites are byoubunozoki and the yanari-tachi.) It's a gimmick to be sure, but one that largely salvages the frankly cliched plots and pages of exposition at the end of each story explaining what happened. (Lest you think I'm being unnecessarily critical, check out the afterword for a categorical list of all the other authors from whom Hatakenaka has plagarised taken her inspiration plagarised pretty much all of the main aspects of the series beyond the already obvious plot "twists.")

Technically, the novels are a fairly easy read despite the archaic vocabulary and dialect; I'd recommend them to anyone who enjoyed Yumemakura's Onmyoji series but wished he'd written the novels more accessibly (and with slightly less sexism). The eponymous "Neko no Baba" is the standout story in this collection, but they're all pretty fun, and I enjoyed this collection more than its predecessor (ぬしさまへ/Nushisama e).

That will be all.

Comments

[theosakakoneko.livejournal.com]

I'd recommend them to anyone who enjoyed Yumemakura's Onmyoji series but wished he'd written the novels more accessibly (and with slightly less sexism).

Yeah, I was never able to read that because it was too hard, so I wouldn't know about the sexism part (but I watched the movies!! This is the same thing?), but maybe that means I am who you are talking about!! :D (Not in particular, just that I fit the bill).

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

The novels certainly aren't impossible to read: there's a big learning curve at the beginning that requires a lot of looking up vocabulary in a J-J dictionary, but after the first 50 pages or so it's entirely doable.

As for the sexism: remember the female chara in the first movie who had the dragon inside her that almost killed Hiromasa? The one who exchanged her life for Hiromasa's in the end?

Well in the book, she's an immortal "prostitute" who's doomed to let any man screw her for free, regardless of how violent, old, leprous...you get the picture. Furthermore, the dragon of the movie is actually all of the sperm of the men she's been forced to sleep with, which because (for some reason being immortal means) she can't have kids, transforms into a hideous demon that hangs around in her vag until good ole Seimei exorcises it once every century or so. I so wish I were making this up, but nope, there it is in a published and critically acclaimed book.

So yeah, kinda sexist. (I mean, I know Heian-era Japan was not exactly an exemplar of gender equality, but...really?)

[theosakakoneko.livejournal.com]

Very very nice. So the evil one is actually MAN corrupting poor defenseless woman...who just happens to be forced to sleep around? XD

Oh, Japan, I love you...

[theosakakoneko.livejournal.com]

(BTW how bad is it that I want to read this now?)

But I will probably not, because there are too many things I want to read...that I somehow feel are worth my time..despite being hard. I still want to get to the point where I can read Yoshiya Nobuko's harder stuff without it phasing me - for some reason Ban Sensei was like the easiest thing I ever read but I still stumble over Hana Monogatari... (maybe just cuz it's ... kinda boring? XD).

And my dirty secret, that I still have one Novala book I haven't read because I can't get into it because the beginning is all difficult complicated Christian history bs...

I should stop letting difficulty keep me from reading books, but I'd just so much rather put it down and pick up a Murakami Ryu off the shelf and switch to that instead...so lazy...

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Actually, the implication seemed to be more along the lines of: women who can't have babies are evil and useless. Needless to say, I do like your interpretation better^^

Oh, Japan, indeed. And yet I stick around.


Okay, this probably makes me a horrible person, but who is Yoshiya Nobuko? And yeah, Chinese history in Japanese is *rough*, although I did see Red Cliff and found myself reading the subtitles really fluidly...OTOH I was not trying to keep track of the pronunciation of proper nouns or military titles, which I would be doing with a book, and it's much easier to keep track of who's who when you have visuals to go along, which you don't get with a book. Which is a longwinded way of saying that I think you'd be able to overcome the rough bits relatively frequently.

OTOH, although I know I should be reading more Meiji/Taisho-era authors, I can't bring myself to do it, for the same reasons you mention below.

[theosakakoneko.livejournal.com]

It doesn't make you a horrible person, it makes you a different style geek than me. XDXD
Yoshiya Nobuko was one of the most important writers of shoujo shousetsu in like the pre-war and early post-war years. Kinda like Japan's Louisa May Alcott??? (She wrote Little Women, right? -.-;;) Late Taisho/early-mid Showa periods? I love that era, especially shoujo-y stuff from that time, so I adore her. It's all very very flowery and sweet and moralistic and such with all these really strong female relationships and friendships. Also, she was pretty well-known for being a lesbian, and a lot of her books had that kind of undercurrent, but in a way that stressed the sisterly type of relationship, taking care of each other and such, all very sickeningly sweet...and boring to most modern readers? haha
If you know Nakahara Jun'ichiro, he did most of the cover illustrations for her works, and they worked together a lot, and I'm a huge Nakahara Jun'ichiro fan. But you probably don't know him either. It's really far too girly of a subculture for you to waste your time with...but I love the supremely girly stuff. :D

What is OTOH? hahaa ><

Hmm..keeping track of how to pronounce things..I should do that more often.. this is why I can't read kanji. I should especially do it at work, because usually when I translate something I'll have to interpret on the same topic later, and it would be good to understand what they're saying...but I often don't. Alc doesn't tell me sound! DX hahaha OTL I suck...

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha. Like I said, novels and stuff from those eras are on my TBR list, but I need to get through the pile of books I already own before I start going out and buying more. Have you heard of Yosano Akiko? She's a poet, not an author, but an all-around excellent writer nonetheless. I've been working through Midaregami and some of her other poetry anthologies, but it's slow going. Nevertheless, based on what you've said above, I think she might appeal.

OTOH = On The Other Hand^^

Actually, ALC doesn't always tell you pronunciation. Sometimes there's a 読みかな function that pops up next to the ワードリンク function at the top of the search page; click "on" and it'll give you the yomikana for most (but not all) of the kanji on the page. Why it does or doesn't appear (or why it sometimes refuses to bring up yomikana even when it's there) is beyond me, however.

[theosakakoneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah but the yomikata almost never actually works... D: That's why I usually have both alc and wwwjdic open in tabs on my browser. That and the fact that alc's servers are hella slow.
I find that it more often shows yomikata for the surrounding words in the phrase/sentence, but not the one you are actually looking up.

I don't know if I've heard of her or not. I kinda hate most poetry so chances are I wouldn't have. I dunno why but I've just never been able to get into poetry. I guess because you have to read it even in your head in a cadence and it slows me way down and I just don't care enough. haha

[akujunkan.livejournal.com]

You know, I think the yomikana assumes you already know it for the term you're searching (but not the other terms that appear in the sentence in it).

Alas, alc doesn't realise how many gaijin rely on its services.

Being in Dai Nippon, it's the wwwjdic that's hella slow for me...which is actually a pretty good incentive to learn those readings, already now that I think about it.

I'm not a fan of poetry either (unless people are singing it as lyrics) but since I've never managed to find the cadence in Japanese poetry it just reads like prose to me.