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

[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.