Amedama: Seia Tanabe

It can be weird at times, being a translator of a variety of books with a brain that is a battler of even more books. By day, I read books I might never have otherwise read and turn them into English for all the monolinguals, and by night, I read all the books I dream of bringing to all the monolinguals in English. Naturally, there is overlap between these two selves. Sometimes, the dream of translating a beloved book comes true (like my precious baby Magician A, coming to Kickstarter backers very soon and to select bookstores later this year!), and sometimes, I discover that a book I’m translating is a true beloved (I will never stop pushing After the Rain and Requiem of the Rose King on everyone who asks me what they should be reading; they are perfect and true books in their own beautiful ways). And sometimes, translating something leads me to picking up other work by the same author.

After translating a short story by Seia Tanabe years ago for the Haikasoru collection Phantasm Japan, I kept my eyes open for more from this author of quietly frightening stories based on Japanese ghost and folk tales, eventually stumbling across her novel Ningyo no Ishi, a book I still reflect on surprisingly often two years after finishing it. Her prose is so sparsely moody and yet strangely down to earth for the tales of the supernatural that she tells.

And I know I should be used to this by now because authors stumble across my posts here about their work surprisingly often (and let this be a lesson to those of you who would use a foreign language as a secret code to gossip about people on a crowded train or some other such public place—there is inevitably a speaker of that foreign language somewhere near you who understands every word you’re saying and will no doubt take the first opportunity that presents itself to publicly shame/embarrass you if you are talking any kind of smack about anyone), but a few months after I posted about that novel, Tanabe reached out to me to thank me for reviewing the book and offered to send me some of her other books. Which was a delightful surprise and kind as hell, and you know that I gratefully accepted. (Thank you, Tanabe-san!)

Kaguyaden: Chiho Saito

Dang. This year’s already got me on the run and it’s barely just begun. I’ve been chained to my desk the last three weeks, translating one book after another and just barely keeping up with my deadlines. I have this terrible habit of taking way too much time with novels in particular because there are so many more words and I want them to be the most perfect translation babies of all but perfection is impossible so I just keep picking at them and polishing since there will always be some new flaw to fix. And then I look up at my calendar with a gasp and realize I really need to get to work on all the other books in my schedule. After all, they are all my precious translation babies, equally deserving of my tender translation affections. However, devoting my attentions to my future children means no extra attentions for my bastard child aka this blog. But maybe I’ve dug myself out of that hole and can actually come and ramble here about books again?? Fingers crossed!

But before the rambling begins, I have to say thank you to all of you who made the Kickstarter Magician A a success! Not only did we reach our target, we also made it to all of our stretch goals! So everyone wins with fancy French flaps and super nice paper when the book eventually makes it to bookstores sometime later this year. And all the Kickstarter backers double win since they get the beautiful book plus an exclusive interview zine in which I talk with creator Natsuko Ishitsuyo about her career and her work, and we take a little side trip into spirituality and mythology. I’m hoping to post some of the interview here at some point, as a little teaser taste of what you can expect to find in the pages of Magician A, so once again, fingers crossed!

Chikyu Seijin: Sayaka Murata

Let’s welcome in this new year with books, the best way to start a year, a month, a day—any moment in your life that needs starting! How about this book I translated and am producing with my pals over at the new press started by The Beguiling’s Peter Birkemoe?? Magician A is a wild ride through smutty town, a collection of stories that examine desire and capitalism and spirituality in ways you will never see coming. (No, that is not intended as a pun.) I know I have been hassling you about maybe backing the Kickstarter for the book, but I promise this will be the last time. Because the Kickstarter ends this week! So if you’ve been halfway persuaded by my previous sales pitches, maybe this will push you over the edge and you will buy my sweet translation baby?? It is worth it, I promise. (If you need more convincing, see my post about the book back when it came out in Japanese and was not yet even a dream in this translator’s eye.) There are stretch goals even. French flaps! Build a tiny book fort with fancy flaps! And a special interview with creator Natsuko Ishitsuyo in which we discuss mythology of all kinds and go to the shrine to pray for the success of the English translation among other things.

But if you are feeling less comics-oriented in this new year and more word-y, perhaps you would be interested in Sayaka Murata’s recent Chikyu Seijin, which comes out in English translation by my pal Ginny Tapley Takemori in this the year of our Lord 2020. And now that I have read the book, dang! I do not envy Ginny this difficult task. In fact, when I turned the last page of the book, I said out loud to my empty apartment, “What the fuck, Murata-san?” This book is taking you places you maybe didn’t want to go, but too bad, Murata’s got you in her sights now, so you’re going whether you like it or not.

Veil: Kotteri

Friends! As I write, Magician A is almost fully funded. It’s so exciting to see people getting excited about this book I love! And gratifying! I was sure there was an audience for a book like this in English, but it is one thing to know that in your head and another to see the love your precious baby is getting out there in the world. If you haven’t already pledged to get a slightly smutty treat early next year, maybe you could do so now?? I really want everyone to read the interview I did with Ishitsuyo earlier this year, but that’s a stretch goal, so we need to get those numbers up. Pep talk! Then you can hear all about how I went to a shrine and paid a priest to pray for the success of the English translation! (Yes, it was a weird experience.)

And now that I have sufficiently promoted myself, how about we talk about some books? The internet is doing some interesting things to the world of manga. I’ve commented before on the trend of including the number of Twitter followers an artist has on the obi of manga, and we’re seeing more and more of the series artists are publishing independently on pixiv or their own platforms being picked up by publishers and released in book form, the most notable of which is probably My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. That book (and its sequels) exploded in a way that I think no one really expected, no matter how many views Kabi’s work had gotten on pixiv. The (well deserved) success of Lesbian opened the door to a wave of autobiographical essay manga spilling in from various corners of the internet. And fictional manga was soon to follow. But while the memoir comics tend to stick to a monotone colour palette, the fiction was branching out and experimenting with colour and form in a way that was not exactly done traditionally in manga.

Girls in Love: Shimura/Nakamura

Before we talk about books, I have an important announcement! You may remember how I read a book called Majutsushi A a couple years ago and fell utterly in love with it and the stunning talent of the artist, Natsuko Ishitsuyo? And how I said no one would ever publish it in English? I was wrong about that last bit! Because I am publishing it in English! Well, it’s actually Peter of The Beguiling who’s doing the publishing part of things, but I did do the translation and worked together with a great team of people, including editor Penny Clark, letterer Karis Page, and many Beguiling staff members, to make the publication a real thing that is happening in this world. And now you can buy this translation baby we have worked so very hard on for the last year. Support our campaign on Kickstarter and be the first in line to hold this pretty princess in your hot little hands! 

Thank you for indulging me in this bit of self-promotion. With that out of the way, we can get to the important thing here: the books. As always, one of my first stops upon escaping from painfully wintry Toronto to pleasantly temperate Tokyo was the bookstore, where I stocked up on the latest volumes of all my favourite series, plus a couple of new series by favourite authors. Weirdly enough, both of those new books are girls’ love and published within a week of each other, so I figured why not compare and contrast these different takes on the world of women who love women.

Yatagarasu V3-6: Chisato Abe

Well, it’s been a wild ride, but we all knew that it had to come to an end. I mean, going into the Yatagarasu series, I was aware that there were only six books in it. This isn’t some light novel series that drags out its tale volume after volume until its translator prays for mercy. And I have at last finished all six of those books. I’d intended to keep writing about each volume as I finished it, but of course, work and life and travel and other books all got in the way of me actually sitting down to write, even as I kept reading. And now I’ve finished the last of the six books, Iyasaka no Karasu, and all my brain wants to do is the big overview, so here we are.

Let’s just get this out of the way now: publishers, please, please license this series and hire me to translate it into English. People will want to read these books! They are unlike anything I’ve ever read in the world of science fiction and fantasy, and we could all use some beautifully written fantasy based on Japanese mythology and culture. I’m so tired of orcs and elves! Let’s get some crows and monkeys on the SFF shelves!

Ijuin Hayato-shi no Fuon Naranu Nichijo: est em

Although I am a professional manga person, I am sometimes shockingly ignorant of manga. Not on purpose, of course. But there is a lot of manga out there in the history of manga and I am just one person with one set of eyeballs. Plus, I also like to read novels, non-fiction, and a variety of work in English, too. It’s just not possible for me (or anyone really) to have read all the manga. So I’ve never read Ashita no Joe or Cardcaptor Sakura or Slam Dunk or really any of the really famous titles. I read the first couple volumes of Vagabond on the recommendation of my hairdresser at the time? I’ve always been more interested in randomly picking up whatever title I happen upon at the bookstore than “educating” myself on the “classics”, a stance I take with pretty much all books. All those lists of “a thousands books you have to read before you die” can go to hell, as far as I’m concerned. Read what you love, read what draws your eye. You’re not over here writing a history of the canon or anything. (Unless you are and then you should probably read all those big old books.)

Which is not to say I haven’t read any of the classics. Just that I read them when they come to me in a more organic way. Which is why I didn’t read Kaze to Ki no Uta until just a few years ago. And I utterly adored it, most likely because I wasn’t forcing myself to read it in the name of reading all the manga. So it will come as no surprise that I have never read a single one of the thirty-five volumes of City Hunter. Nor have I seen any of the anime or films based on the manga. Until recently, all I knew about City Hunter was the name. And then est em stepped into the picture