flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2007-09-07 09:19 pm
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Yet I am thankful:

(if my heart were great, 'twould burst at this.)

To have seen Nureyev or Pavarotti in their heyday, you must necessarily now be well into decrepit middle age, and I am. (Very decrepit middle age- structural problems, you know.) But I did. It all balances out.

Last night was devoted to reading the first story in Phantom Moon Tower 2. Yes, it took me three hours. I had to read it three times. I'm still convinced that Ima's narrative technique consists of writing the main plot points down on cards, throwing them up in the air, and drawing them in the order in which they come down.

The story in question begins with Young Dork, in the company of a beautiful woman, seeing Yosaburo at the door of a building embracing another beautiful woman, who seems to be a geisha, while each says Gomen nasai to the other. Being a native speaker might limit the number of possible interpretations of gomen nasai available to one, but not that much, I think. Is it a personal or impersonal gomen nasai? One only discovers this after many many pages. And meanwhile Young Dork is saying Male geisha mustn't fall in love with female geisha you know, while Yosaburo gives what I think is a distinctly misleading answer- But what if she's a woman worth falling in love with? And then it's discovered that there's blood in the room from which Yousaburou came, but no body to be found.

I tried to analyze from this how Ima puts a story together and why her stories give me such an impression of twistiness: and couldn't, simply because the story is so twisty. But thinking of it as a Judge Dee story helps, because van Gulik too usually has three plots happening simultaneously, only more easily separable one from the other.

So in this story, beginning with the dramatis personae of that first scene, we have The Case of the Infatuated Housewife (which explains why Yosaburo is where he is- and where he is, it takes a while to emerge, is not the front door of the PMT, but the tea house/ assignation house in back of it, which is also under quite separate management.) On Young Dork's side, we have The Case of the Runaway Wife, which ultimately becomes The Case of the Murdered Mother-in-law. And occupying stage centre is The Case of the Bloody Handprints, which close to the end of the story reveals itself to be in fact The Case of the Star-cross'd Lovers. There's a link, which I still don't understand, between Infatuated Housewife story and Star-cross'd lovers story; I don't understand it because AFAICS Ima doesn't tell us what the relationship is between the Infatuated Housewife who rents the tea house in order to meet the kabuki actor she has a pash for, the young master of the tea house who seems not to take much interest in the business side of it, and the IH's husband, who seems to be somehow in the young master's employ- enough to be able to burst into his house begging for his help and to discover the severed hand that's been delivered to his study.

The origin of the severed hand itself is something I still can't make sense of. I can only take comfort from reviews of later volumes of 100 Demons on amazon.jp, where readers complain that the stories are hard to understand. So it's not just my Japanese after all.
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2007-09-08 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)
At least with Judge Dee you get the big courtroom scene where the guilty are dealt with, plus the later explanations to assistants.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-09-08 10:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Whereas *nobody* dammit is explaining that severed hand. I must conclude the dead woman cut it off herself.

At least Judge Dee is text-only in English, and not likely to illuminate salient points with an ambiguous visual detail hidden off in the lower frame of a panel.

Conclusion: do not wish for intelligent mangaka. You may get them.

[identity profile] sho-sunaga.livejournal.com 2007-09-09 04:14 pm (UTC)(link)
I read your post and I figured you were talking about幻月楼I have not bought the 2nd volume yet, so I picked it up at the book store and read VERY carefully.

IH's husband is not in the employee of the young master of the tea house, he just burst into his room thinking since he(the young master) is the owner of the house he has to help him. The origin of the severed hand is probably from Akiko's father so that at least the hand can stay with him. He probably cut it off after his daughter died of TB.



[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-09-09 05:03 pm (UTC)(link)
he just burst into his room thinking since he (the young master) is the owner of the house he has to help him.

I'm still fuzzy. Why does he need the master's help? Why is he at the house in the first place? Who is he anyway? And who's the bald guy who sets the assignation up?

And back on p 34, when the housekeeper(? is she?) comes and finds the guy passed out, and says '奥様はとり押さえましたよ, ご主人さま’-- err, does she think she's talking to the young master? which okusama does she mean? The Infatuated Housewife? Does 押さえました mean the woman's been arrested? What for?

Truly, I have *no* idea what's going on here.

the severed hand is probably from Akiko's father so that at least the hand can stay with him. He probably cut it off after his daughter died of TB.

'Good God, we're out of our depths here.'

No, OK, I can see the only person likely to be strong enough to do it is the father, but sheesh- 'please keep this rotting hand beside you for remembrance. PS- BTW she's dead.' Do people do this often, she asks palely? (Remembering the old senryuu about 'Having received a severed finger as a love token, he has no idea what to do with it.' Well no, one wouldn't. And a whole *hand*?)

[identity profile] sho-sunaga.livejournal.com 2007-09-10 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Ok the bald guy is in with the IH's husband. The guy who found the hand is IH's husband, even though she forgot to make his hair black. They want to "catch her" in a compromising situation so that he can have a reason to divorce her. He(the IH's husband) needs the young master's help because his wife probably went hysterical after looking so calm with her mother sitting next to her. Yozaburo hints as much when he says he left her with her mother so the situation won't ge bad.

The maid or one of the workers of the Ochaya means that "We calmed down/taken down your wife, sir" meaning she probably went nuts and went sort of violent on her husband for being such a beast.

The whole hand thing also creeped me out but why not her hair or something....Maybe it is a 呪い・恨みpresent from the mother? But I don't see her strong enough to cut of her daughters hand. Then again it is supposed to be kaidan, right?

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-09-10 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I know the bald guy is setting the IH up, but she doesn't ever say who he is, right? And I knew it was the husband who found the hand, from his clothes, but I didn't know why he was running to the young master. So the essential piece of information was とり押さえました, the only indication that the IH who seems so calm two pages back (if slightly indignant) went berserk. And of course 'calm down' isn't the first meaning I think of for that. This is why I hate Ima Ichiko.

There's also the little question of how there was *time* for the IH to summon her mother between Yousaburou telling her what he'd overheard and the husband bursting in.

Yeah, we're just full of things that make no sense. Someone sent him a hand. End story.