Bronze Devil: Interview with a Translator, Part III

The Bronze Devil

3. Edogawa often breaks the fourth wall (Dear Reader). This is common to a great deal of manga, in which even a somewhat self-contained story will include a tiny note from the mangaka, off to the side in a panel, about how the character feels about being a character in a manga. Of course, these types of asides are also fairly typical of a certain era and genre, such as E. Nesbit’s children’s fiction. Do Japanese authors break the fourth wall more often than western authors? Is it an ongoing staple of the fiction? Or does its popularity rise and fall as it does in the West?

Serialized fiction like manga and light novels are still popular in Japan. By its very nature, serialized fiction creates an ongoing relationship between the writer and the reader. In the manga and anime Bakuman, about the creation and publication of a manga series, the manga artists constantly receive feedback from their readers, on whom their careers depend. I think this encourages the manga artist to engage in ongoing interactions with the audience. Social media long before the Internet.

Though in terms of Japanese authors in general, I don’t know if they break the fourth wall more often than western authors. 

 4. The chapter title for Chapter 6 is “Strange, Weird, and Bizarre.” The words have similar meanings in English but different connotations. That is, each word evokes different emotions and imagery. How important is connotation in Japanese? Connotation can rely heavily on cultural “insider” status, so a word like “slob” can mean something very different (and negative) to Greg’s mother in Dharma and Greg as opposed to Dharma’s parents. Does connotation carry such impact in Japanese fiction? Non-fiction? 

The Japanese expression in the chapter title is kiki-kaikai (奇々怪々), which is defined in the dictionary as: “very strange, fantastic, amazing, bizarre, freakish.” I covered all the bases. Though I think “strange, weird, and bizarre” is a good way of summing up the sense of the phrase.

Broadly speaking, I’d say there is more denotation in English and more connotation in Japanese (although there’s plenty of both in both). So much meaning in Japanese rides on the social context and the social status of the speaker relative to the setting and to the audience. 

Consider all the consternation that occurs in romances about whether to attach an honorific to a name. Or to address someone using a first or a last name. And when it comes to expletives, the same exact word can be translated quite differently depending on whether a child or adult is speaking and who they are speaking to and whether honorifics are involved. 

5. Is another Edogawa translation coming? 

For now, I’m working on Hills of Silver Ruins, a Pitch Black Moon. At over 1600 pages, it’s going to take a while. I may return to Edogawa after that. 

Thanks for the interview! Explore The Bronze Devil more here and here.   

The Bronze Devil: Interview with a Translator, Part II

The Bronze Devil

 2. A great many idioms in The Bronze Devil—as well as the antics of some of the characters—evoke magicians and the circus. Are magicians as popular in Japan as they are in America? Do some magicians get more attention than others? That is, does Japanese culture extol the David Copperfield approach (big elaborate tricks) or the classic stage magician (rabbits out of hats) or the sleight of hand magician (card tricks) or all of them? What about Penn & Teller—or are Penn & Teller a little too ironic/cynical?

I’ve observed that Japanese don’t do the whole “dripping with irony” thing. It’s sand in the gears of a culture that depends so much on going with the flow. So I’d say the Penn & Teller approach is probably a bit too knowing and cynical. I do recall an episode of a police procedural in which the murder victim is a magician who had the audacity to reveal the secrets of other magicians.

Cyril Takayama: Japanese-American

magician: American background

meets cultural Japan. Kate thinks he'd

make a good Fiend in the movies!

In my limited Japanese television-watching experience, I haven’t seen many David Copperfield types. More old-school vaudeville-style magicians. Rabbits out of hats and simple sleight of hand and lots of banter. But the performances always seem to me as more variety show material than the main event.

That said, Edogawa’s stories very often center around elaborate David Copperfield tricks rather than “traditional” crimes. Stage and circus magic acts figure into many of his novels, where the crime is solved by figuring out the trick, not whodunit. A big part of Doctor Magic (1956), for example, consists of Edogawa explaining several stage magic and circus acts. I was familiar with the “tricks.” Though his readers probably were not.

Cyril Takayama reminds me of a certain personality type you see a lot on NHK World. The foreign hosts (varying in Japanese extraction from zero to one hundred percent) walk that fine line between being extroverted enough to attract a crowd and stand out in it but not so much that they become intimidating. It's the art of being comfortably foreign. If you can master it, it's a good gig to have.

New Edogawa Translation: Interview with a Translator, Part I

The Bronze Devil by Ranpo Edogawa, translated by Eugene Woodbury, is now gearing into action!

In longstanding tradition, Interview with a Translator returns:

1. As you mention in the introduction to The Bronze Devil, there are multiple clues in the novel that the events are taking place post-war (despite no direct references to the Occupation)—from the empty lots to the orphaned children to the backstory of some characters. What was Edogawa’s opinion of World War II? The Bronze Devil has a youthful, energetic, and optimistic feel. Is that attitude exclusive to Edogawa? In any way reflective of a general attitude at the time?

I haven’t studied Edogawa enough to know what he thought about the war itself. One of his stories was banned by government censors but he remained active in his local neighborhood organization (he wasn’t a rabble rouser). He mostly wrote under a pseudonym during the war years and set aside his franchise Boy Detectives Club and Detective Akechi series. He was obviously taking a wait-and-see attitude.

The years immediately following the war were hard ones. The economy had literally burned to the ground. The “Reverse Course” starting in 1947 put the idealistic objectives of the Occupation on hold and focused on the economy. This included fiscal austerity measures to counter skyrocketing inflation. The effects were brutal in the short term but laid the foundation for Japan’s future economic growth.

In 1948, Japanese voters rejected plans to continue down the planned economy route—inspired by socialist-leaning New Deal bureaucrats in the Occupation—and voted in a slate of free-market economic conservatives, who have pretty much remained in power ever since. By the end of the decade, Japan’s economy had returned positive growth, even before the outbreak of the Korean War gave it a huge boost.

So in 1949, the year The Bronze Devil was published, things were looking up. This change in attitude is reflected in the “Showa drama” genre. The Showa drama takes place during the reign of Emperor Hirohito (1926-1989), with a focus on the post-war years. I am a big sucker for feel-good Showa dramas, in which the upward arc of the story parallels the economic recovery of Japan after WWII.

Just Published! Another Donna Howard Mystery

My latest (and tenth) novella is now available!

Making the most of her unique ability to speak to remnants of the dead, Donna Howard researches the provenances of art and antiques. This time, her investigation into a colonial-era portrait delves into the dark history of her adopted niece, SarahAnn, uncovering a kidnapping and a murderer who got away scot-free.

The journey to uncover that history takes the Howards and Gregersons from Maine to upstate New York, from wedding venues to house museums.

Facing a past she never knew she had, SarahAnn questions what constitutes a person's "real" heritage and whether breaking the law is justified to prevent a more heinous crime. There are times when honestly confronting the past can leave descendants with no choice but to choose their own ancestors.

Out of all my protagonists, I feel the closest kinship to SarahAnn--but of course, she is her own character with her own very unique history.  I did enjoy writing about my birth state of New York (this is upstate New York with cows and horses and changing leaves). Unlike the other Donna Howard books, this one takes place in "real" time, the fall of 2019 leading up to New Year's 2020. In fact, at one point, I checked the current weather in Saratoga Springs for the sake of accuracy!

As always, much thanks to Eugene as editor, cover designer, publisher: all around book guru!

Interview with a Translator: Edogawa, the Boy's Adventure Part

Kate: Like Robinson Crusoe and the middle of Moby Dick, Edogawa spends a great deal of time explaining the workings of a stakeout or a piece of machinery. Although assumptions are always fraught with complications, boys’ adventure stories seem to contain many more such passages than do literature aimed at girls. Why do such detailed “how to” passages fascinate boys?  

Eugene: Not just boys but men of all ages. Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. The male mind is dominated by left-brained, how-the-world-works thinking probably because a successful caveman had to have a theory of how the world worked and put that theory into practice by tinkering with it until he came up with something useful. The Tim Taylor model of social evolution.

Science fiction emerged in the mid-19th century with Jules Verne when a growing middle class had the time and resources to make a hobby of tinkering. As would Jobs and Wozniak, guys like Edison and the Wright brothers turned tinkering into careers.

A big driver of the computer revolution during the 1970s and 1980s was that the personal computer sated the tinkering impulse in a big way—without getting your hands literally dirty. Those early computers were like old car engines, demanding geeky how-to knowledge and using tools and taking things apart and sitting around the newsletter and magazine campfires and discussing the problem with other similarly-minded guys.

Now the metaphorical campfires are on the Internet. Computers have become appliances and the enthusiastic tinkerers have moved on to high-end gaming machines. And robots. And code.

Immediately after WWII, the black market in Akihabara became a magnet for electrical equipment startups. It grew into a Mecca for electronics wholesalers and hobbyists and today is the center of the otaku universe. Even in 1953, Edogawa was plugged into the state of the art. The same way guys devour magazines about cars they can’t afford and computers they don’t need, I’m sure his audience was eager for more.

After all, they would be the ones building modern Japan.

Kate: I remember you building go-carts in the garage when I was growing up. (Basically, my childhood was living with Sid, the kid next door in Toy Story.)  What are the Tim Taylor parts of your personality?

Eugene: I’m not a "more power" kind of guy, and have no desire to own a home or pick up a tool heavier than a hammer, but I’m a fan of This Old House and similar DIY shows and love wandering around hardware stores. I once owned all of Asimov’s science essay collections.

Kate: The Japanese enjoy lots of How-To shows. How does how-to show up in Japanese fiction? Is there an equivalent to Tim Allen's Home Improvement?

Eugene: The Japanese fascination with "how-to" is fully on display in what I call the "Cute girls doing interesting things in a cute way" genre. The typical approach is to have the protagonist get interested in a relatively unique activity, discover that her friends are interested in it too (or enthusiastically recruit them), and plunge in.

Plots are slice-of-life, often with little actual drama and only the rudimentary scaffolding of a plot, but with considerable attention given to the specifics of the activity, very much as a how-to guide. Recent examples include Encouragement of Climb (hiking), Laid-Back Camp (camping), and Long Riders (bicycle touring).

A related (and more plot-driven) genre has the protagonist mastering a sport or activity that most people know about but don't know a lot about. Enough expository material has to be integrated into the story so the audience can follow the drama. Recent examples include Chihayafuru (karuta), March Comes in Like a Lion (shogi), and Tsurune (Japanese archery).

I can't think of a series specifically like Home Improvement, though the movie All About Our House is basically an extended Home Improvement episode. There are plenty of programs similar to those you find on PBS Create.

Kate: And the connection to sci-fi? 

Eugene: Remember that long sequence from Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Like coverage from an auto show or an air show only in the future. The geek-out mentality is what produced it, and they thought it was so cool they didn’t edit it. It’s what Kyle Hill does on Because Science and Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman do on Mythbusters—come up with empirical and how-to explanations for improbable things.

Hard science fiction is figuring out the how-to for the future. Caper flicks, from Kelly’s Heroes to the whole Mission Impossible genre, are the same—as much about the how-to as the derring-do.

I think even conspiracy theories are driven by the desire to understand the world in a Newtonian and clockwork manner. As Archimedes said, “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the whole world.” Of course, the problem with conspiracy theories is that one should never attribute to brilliant malice that which is adequately explained by mundane stupidity.

Interview with a Translator: Edogawa, The Genre

Kate: It appears that everyone is fascinated by aliens! Edogawa’s book is reminiscent of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and, even more so, Orson Welles’ infamous radio broadcast of Wells’ famous book. What about Roswell? Is Japanese fascination with aliens equivalent to that phenomenon? Or does Japanese fascination take its own particular path?

Eugene: Very much the equivalent, and no less pervasive in popular culture. On a sociological level, it’s not hard to read this fascination as a metaphorical or psychological representation of Japan’s historical encounters with the outside world, from the 16th century Jesuits and Portuguese traders to Matthew Perry’s “Black Ships” in the 19th century to the Occupation following WWII in the 20th.

Aliens show up in droves in the sillier Godzilla sequels. In the 1970s, Leiji Matsumoto’s Space Battleship Yamato defined the “combat” space opera, with evil aliens destroying the Earth Independence Day style, and another race of “good” aliens providing Earth with the technology they need to survive, except the Yamato has to fight its way through enemy territory to get it.

Also starting in the 1970s, Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura took an I Dream of Jeannie approach, with a cute alien called Lum attaching herself to a hapless teenage boy. Basically, aliens are everywhere in Japanese genre fiction.

Kate: Do the Japanese enjoy The X-Files? How do the Japanese feel about conspiracy theories?

Eugene: The X-Files is still popular, so much so that the theme music is used during talk and infotainment shows to indicate that something “mysterious” is about to be discussed.

Conspiracy theories are great fodder for plot material. As in Witch Hunter Robin and Hellsing, institutions like the Catholic Church and the historical Inquisition show up in the most unlikely places. Superheroes often work out of Buddhist and Shinto temples, while exercising their superpowers undercover. A good example is Noragami, which has the gods as well conspiring against each other.

The wide-ranging Magical Girl genre is rife with secret organizations, while everything remains “normal” on the surface. Alice & Zoroku is a recent example par excellence (it also riffs off Alice in Wonderland). Watching Alice & Zoroku, I couldn’t help seeing parallels between the “good guy” agents and Mulder, Scully, and Skinner.

The “conspiracies” can also have a kind of fairy godmother function, as in Oh My Goddess, in which the Norse goddesses labor behind the scenes to keep the Earth on an even keel, but now and then slip up and grant rather unusual requests.

The police procedural Aibou (“Partners”) mostly does “cozy” mysteries during the
regular season, and then wraps up with a two-hour TV movie special. The specials often involve complicated government conspiracies with secret agencies vying against each other and some poor sap getting murdered in the process. I personally prefer the cozy mysteries.

I don’t mind the conspiracy genre as long as I’m not being asked to take it seriously as some sort of higher political commentary.

Kate: Parts of this novel have a strong horror element—more creepy than merely suspenseful. Is horror a popular genre in Japan? What type of horror? Slasher? Monster? Hitchcock? Ghosts? All of the above?

Eugene: Definitely all of the above. Horror is huge in Japan and has been for centuries, if not millennia. You can find every type of horror in abundance, from low-brow exploitation and splatter flicks to psychological to theological, mixed and matched with an enormous library of folk and fairy tales, from which, for example, the whole “girl ghost with long black hair” character emerges.

In Makai Tensho (“Samurai Resurrection”), remade at least three times with varying degrees of explicitness, the leader of the 1637–1638 Shimabara Rebellion, the “Christian Samurai” Shiro Amakusa, rises from the dead to wreak vengeance and it’s up to Yagyu Jubei (another historic character and samurai flick favorite) to save the Shogunate.

Japanese writers eagerly tap into Japan’s long history with Buddhism and Shinto, and Christianity since the 16th century, and do not hesitate to borrow whatever religious elements might make for a good story. One result is Saint Young Men, a slice-of-life comedy that has Buddha and Jesus hanging out in Tokyo.

According to the critics (I’ve only read his young adult novels), Edogawa favored a psychological and modernist approach in his novels for adults. It stands to reason that such material should work its way into his young adult novels.

Kate: Like Dracula, The Space Alien indicates a fascination with new technology. This combination has been largely—though not completely—split in the West with Supernatural, for example, occasionally employing high tech, and Star Trek occasionally having a horror episode. Are the genres split in Japan? Do they overlap more than they do in the West? Or less?

Eugene: I’d say it never occurred to Japanese writers to split them apart. To be sure, there are the traditional categories like space opera and horror and mecha and magical girls and the ever-popular police procedural. But in Mob Psycho 100, a teen coming-of-age dramedy in the John Hughes mode blends in the horror and action genres, with a Buffy-style world-almost-ending in the second cour.

Dimension W starts out as hard science fiction with a premise borrowed from Asimov’s The Gods Themselves, tosses in an action hero straight out of the Fast & Furious franchise, a cute android sidekick (from Asimov’s robot novels), and often ends up with stories that would work as X-Files episodes.

A SF&F genre I consider unique to Japan, arising not only from the previous century of Japanese history but from the past thousand years, starts with an apocalyptic event that destroys a major city, after which the population picks themselves up and gets on with life. It’s not the end of the world. In fact, as in Blood Blockade Battlefield (a hellmouth opens in the middle of Manhattan), it’s a good opportunity to start a new business.

Interview with a Translator Returns!

Give a hearty Earthian welcome to The Space Alien by Ranpo Edogawa, translated by Eugene Woodbury! A new translation of a classic, The Space Alien is now available on Amazon. An introduction to Edogawa begins the book. These upcoming posts deal (mostly) with the translator and the art of translation.

The posts will cover the following: An Introduction to Edogawa & His Translator, The Genre, Boys' Adventure Stories, The Plot, and Language.

Kate: Where/when did you first come across Ranpo Edogawa’s works?

Eugene: Like Arthur Conan Doyle, Ranpo Edogawa is part of the zeitgeist. More people know of him than have read him. (At the other end of the literary spectrum, also true of Kenji Miyazawa.) He is referenced everywhere on Japanese television, from Antiquarian Bookshop Biblia's Case Files to Bungo Stray Dogs to the hugely popular Detective Conan.

Incidentally, Arthur Conan Doyle is no less a metaphysical presence. The titular character in Detective Conan goes by the pseudonym “Conan Edogawa.” Recent manga and anime titles include Holmes of Kyoto and the upcoming Kabukicho Sherlock.

Kate: What attracted you to this book specifically?

Eugene: Aozora Bunko (the Blue Sky public domain library, the Japanese version of Project Gutenberg) has all of his novels online. After reading Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro on Aozora Bunko, I was looking for lighter fare that’d be fun to translate. Edogawa’s young adult novels seemed a good place to begin and The Space Alien had an intriguing title.

Kate: What is Edogawa’s influence in media? 

Eugene: I compiled the following list of derived work from the Japanese Wikipedia entry for “Boy Detectives Club.” As with Sherlock Holmes, there’s always room for another adaptation.

A 1956 radio drama. Eleven movies released between 1954 and 1959. A television series from 1958 to 1960 (81 episodes). A television series from 1960 to 1963 (152 episodes). A 1968 anime series (35 episodes). A 1975 television series (26 episodes). A 1977 television series (26 episodes). A television series from 1983 to 1984 (47 episodes). A 2015 television series (11 episodes). A 2016 anime series (no end date).

Recent editions of the books were published by Poplar Books, in 26 volumes featuring original and revised covers, plus five volumes of stories by contemporary authors.

Kogoro Akechi brings to mind a less flamboyant version of Joe Shishido’s hard-nosed private eye in Detective Bureau 2-3. But the entire story structure of the Boy Detectives Club series is largely reflected in the Detective Conan series (ongoing since 1994, spinning off both animated and live-action series and movies), in which it is called the “Junior Detective League.”

It is easy to make one-to-one associations between the two series. The names of the Conan Edogawa and private detective Kogoro Mori are homages to Edogawa. One big difference is that Conan solves most of the cases but gives the credit to Mori, who functions as a kind of well-intentioned Lestrade. The “Black Organization” is more malevolent than the “Fiend,” their crimes are more violent and felonious.

Kate: Are you planning to translate more of Edogawa’s works? If so, which ones?

Eugene: I’ve started The Bronze Devil.

Kate: What other translations are you planning? 

Eugene: Fuyumi Ono’s massive new Twelve Kingdoms novel is scheduled for release this October and November in four volumes. Even after it’s published, I won’t be doing anything other than reading it for a while. But I plan to get around to it at some point.

Tales of the Quest in Print!

My latest novella, Tales of the Quest, is now available in print!

Tales of the Quest is a collection of fantasy short stories based within a single universe and tied together by a Princess Bride-like history (think of the "editorial" comments of the "annotator," William Goldman). Every tale tackles a problem faced by questers and questees: What if the wrong prince wins? Should a prince pursue treasure or love? What about the princess--what does she want? And, just to complicate matters, what problems ensue when magic and magical creatures enter the picture?

Tales of the Quest even has a (very, very, very) implied yaoi relationship. It is (perhaps too) subtle, involving none of the main male friendships. I'm aware of it because, after all, this is my universe!

Tales of the Quest is book four in The Roesia Chronicles, a fantasy series I began with a tale about a debutante who becomes a cat. Each novella can be read separately, including Tales, but characters from each novella make appearances in others.