One from the head

[flemmings]

Now, see, this I feel nothing particular about, beyond a mild relief that I finally managed to finish a fic. Otherwise it might as well be one of my articles or reviews: it doesn't get anywhere near to where I live. Seimei stories don't because Seimei stories need me to construct a plot for them, and the intellectual exercise of putting together a plot distances me from the story. Necessarily such stories aren't any great pleasure to write either, and sadly aren't even much fun to have written. It follows that this is the only kind of fic I'd write for someone else's pleasure rather than my own, and if people wanted to discuss it or critique it I'd be utterly unmoved.

Whatever, paleaswater expressed a civil wish that I'd write more Yumemakura pastiche, so here it is. And I do like certain things about it after all, so I'm glad I did.

Comments

[incandescens]

I enjoyed that very much. Thank you.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. And a general happy birthday for sometime-this-week.

[incandescens]

Thanks! (It's Wednesday. Must lay in cakes to take to the office.)

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

I like it very much too. ^_^ see, no comments on anything specific-

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Of course it was you (http://www.livejournal.com/users/flemmings/30387.html?thread=168115#t168115) who inspired it.

[franzeska]

How lovely. I appreciated your attention to detail.

(I found you by searching google's blog search function for Onmyouji related things, by the way.)

Have you read the novels?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

How lovely. I appreciated your attention to detail

Thank you. ^_^

Have you read the novels?

Some of them- maybe half the current output. I was warned away from the one that apparently is mostly about a guy with a great wart or wen on his face. With illustrations, I hear. Unfortuantely amazon.jp doesn't tell you what's *in* the novels so I don't know which one it was.

Will add- you're translating Okano's manga? My deep and sincerest sympathy.

[franzeska]

Well... slogging through it with my dictionary might be more accurate. My Japanese really isn't good enough for this task, but it amuses me, and no one else is likely to do so. The manga is quite pretty at least. Maybe I'll inspire someone on onmyoujium to buy it.

How are the novels in terms of difficulty? I hate watching movies made from books and then not going and reading the books, but I suspect they'd be too hard for me at this point.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The novels are easier than the manga, I think. Okano isn't merely deliberately obscure as to motivations and events, half the time she gets into these discussions of the principles of onmyou which involve midnight-black onmyou vocabulary. All my copies come from Book-off in NY, kindness of paleaswater so I know they have them periodically for less than Kinokuniya charges.

[franzeska]

That's where I've been shopping, actually. Everything is in such good shape but so cheap!

The vocabulary is murder, but partly because I am quite bad with ranks. I wish I could find a decent book about the Heian period in English that actually had Japanese equivalents in it. Generally, I have to look things up on google in Japanese and hope I can understand the definition. I'm getting pretty good with architectural terms though.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I know the Morris translation of Sei Shonagon has a chart of the ranks but I don't think it gives the Japanese. I just go by equivalence- oh yeah those kanji must mean junior councillor. Not that I think the ranks in Okano are that important. Important to *her*, Heian otaku that she is: Yumemakura has a note about how she kept saying But what do you *mean* you don't know about You-name-it. But for the general reader it all probably comes off as pastiche of The Pillow Book anyway.

[franzeska]

It's not just court ranks though; I have trouble with all of the position titles. It came up more in another manga I was reading where there are tons of guards and I can never keep straight who's a city guard and who's a palace grounds guard and who's a palace guard and... I'll probably turn into a horrible Heian otaku before I'm done.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mh? Which manga?

[franzeska]

緋桜白拍子

Does that show up properly? It's Hiou Shirabyoushi by Toujou Meguru. It's at a much easier reading level than Okano's stuff, but I started reading it when my Japanese was even worse. I suspect it wouldn't be as hard now.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Shows. But if the title is any indication of the difficulty- eeps.

[franzeska]

I'd say it's aimed at girls in junior high and not especially good readers either. However, it's liberally strewn with poetry and such. The dialogue and the narration relating to the plot are quite easy, but the more general narration and poetry parts are a real pain at times.

The main character is an assassin who dresses up as a shirabyoushi when she goes out killing. It's fairly silly.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Yes well- I had to look up shirabyoushi in my J/J because it's not part of my daily vocabulary. Poems... can be a pain, especially if the mangaka reverts to Heian spelling and forms. Yumemakura has a number of them that do, but is generally nice enough to paraphrase them in modern Japanese. (Still beats those Chinese-inspired manga with the original Chinese poem, the nearly as obscure kanbun paraphrase, and the thank god modern Japanese translation.)

[franzeska]

Hiou Shirabyoushi is pretty good about having modern translations of the poems.

Do you have any recommendations for J/J dictionaries? My Japanese is getting a bit better, so I might buy one at some point.

One question: in reading Onmyouji, I keep coming across the phrase "鬼の上前はねる". 'Uwamae' and 'haneru' are in my dictionary, but the definitions don't seem to make much sense with 'oni'. Do you have any idea what this means?

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Well, the Daijirin and the Daily Shingo Jiten are already available online (http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/), so my favourite J/J is the Shinmeikai from Sanseido that a Japanese friend recommended. It's informative and amusing.

Uwamae wo haneru is to take a portion of something for oneself- the Shinmeikai says it was originally 上米, the top layer of rice in the barrel or whatever that the official skimmed off.

When Hiromasa uses it in vol 1 he must be referring to the previous story and the fact that he thinks Seimei's taken the woman the oni loved and made her his mistress- gained her love- where the demon itself failed to do so. To that extent he's 'taken a cut from the oni's share.' I don't know how you'd translate it exactly- all I can think of is something like 'cut an oni out' for the woamn's love.

[franzeska]

Thank you so much! I looked it up, but I couldn't figure out what sort of cut Seimei could be taking, so I thought it must be an idiomatic expression that wasn't in my dictionary. I see I just missed the context entirely. Oops.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The old Japanese translators' refrain- there are only three things that matter in Japanese: context, context, and context.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Possibly because you don't watch Teletubbies, you mean (or maybe because you dont hang out with two-year-olds.) That's Laa-Laa looking for her ball, that she keeps forgetting here and there.

She's playing catch. You send to me, I send to you, because the kid is the focus of the game in her own mind. Kemari is a team sport where the only object is to keep the ball in motion and there's no order AFAIK in which to pass the ball around. The same person can keep the ball for several turns until he has enough control of it to kick it elsewhere. Naturally a two-year-old doesn't get this idea. 'Send it to ME!!'