The official Japanese release of MDZS is published by Frontier Works, and translated by 鄭穎馨 (Zhèng Yǐngxīn? Cheng Ying Hsin?). The Japanese translation separates the story into 4 main volumes and an extra booklet. Why is beyond me. Volume 4 already contains half the extras. Another thing they do is instead of subdivide each chapter into parts the way the original web novel does, the chapters are all combined under one big header... making each “chapter” at least 50 pages long. For the English point of reference, I will be using the ExR translation, given that it does not combine the headers.
Volume 1 Table of Contents!
Revision from my initial thread on tumblr: finding English equivalents for some of these was especially rough, since there were some words I could only find in a Japanese kokugo dictionary, rather than a Japanese-English dictionary. It took some extrapolation...
JP chapter title
EN trans
ExR chapter titles
7S chapter titles
Comments
1. 復活
Resurrection
Reincarnation
Reincarnation
reasonable margin of error.
2. 荒狂
Rampage
Aggression
The Intractable
荒狂 is a nonstandard spelling of 荒れ狂う as in “to rampage”.
3. 驕傲
Pride, Arrogance
Arrogance
The Prideful
reasonable margin of error.
4. 雅騒
Elegance and Clamor
Refinement
The Elegant Flirt
This is not a word in any capacity I could find. I'm convinced it's copy pasta. Even Japanese people were stumped. I am shoving an unmarked "and" in there because Classical (and modern!) Chinese lets you do that, and for consistency with the Lan clan motto, which also has an unmarked "and" shoved in there.
5. 陽陽
Brightness, Calm
Contentment
The Sunny Pair
This feels like a stretch...
6. 陰悪
Malicious
Malice
The Malevolent
I like "Malevolence".
7. 朝露
Morning Dew
Dew
The Morning Dew
A prime example of ExR's tendency to just drop adjectives.
8. 草木
Vegetation
Grasses
The Stalk of Grass
According to ExR's notes, this is an allusion to a poem by Tang dynasty poet Du Fu. I'll translate that later, and possibly change my translation then.
Someone asked me this a long while ago, before the official title dropped. As I am reposting this here, I shall change the question.
How did NISA come up with the title Trails through Daybreak?
Great question. Because this won't be a short answer. you know how Japanese is a linguistic pack rat? Every kanji has an approximated Chinese phonetic reading and a Japanese semantic reading. 黎 is read REI in every dictionary instance of it I can find. I suspect the only place where it is read kuro specifically outside of this game is in some Classical Chinese literature (“kanbun” prose or “kanshi” poetry), but I do not have the academic resources to go on that sort of a scavenger hunt. Furthermore, as a general note, semantics is a “wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey” kind of thing because the Sino-Tibetan language family only exists in morpheme hell.
A non-exhaustive list of potential meanings for 黎 as a stand alone morpheme include:
dark
black
gray
many
common people
dawn
daybreak
There are 30+ kanji that can be read as "dark/black", so let’s take a look at compounds instead. The first compound I find containing this character which is not a proper noun is 黎明 reimei “daybreak” or like “the grey sky at dawn”. You’d also use this one for the “dawn of a new era” (黎明期 reimeiki) kind of “dawn”. With a little extra digging you get 黎民 reimin, 黎元 reigen, 黎庶 reisho, 黎首 reishu which are all synonyms for “the common people”. It just feels very apt for what we know about Calvard in general.
Now wait a minute, what about that asia-exclusive game, 暁の軌跡 Akatsuki no kiseki? 暁 also means “dawn”, true. 暁 specifically refers to the darkest part of the night right before you see the sun poke through on the horizon. 黎 has an additional implication of “something is about to begin” that 暁 does not. So like 黎 at the start of something, and 暁 is more for your darkest hour.
EVERYTHING BELOW THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS.
I could have cut my suffering short if I had read this one interview with Kondo, but I didn't because what sort of Trails fan would I be if I took the word of God without any evidence?
NISA/Playstation’s English game trailer actually features the line before what I would consider the most important line in the entire game. (The cut scene from the middle of Chapter 1, but this audio itself comes from Chapter 1’s ending cut scene.)
俺は警察でも遊撃士でもない。あくまで自分の流儀を貫くだけだ。
You know full well I’m not like the cops or bracers. I do things my own way. (EN trailer, 0:50)
The line after that is:
黒でも白でも、灰色すらない、黎（あおぐろ）い狭間の領域で。
お前までに染まる必要はーー
The way I deal with things isn’t black or white, it’s not even gray. It’s sort of in the realm of being bluish-black.
I don’t really think there’s any need to dye yourself too– (trans from the infamous spreadsheet)
It’s not black, or white, or even grey, but in the narrow livid area in between. There’s no need for you to be stained by– (trans by OP)
This line shows up verbatim 4 times–which says to me that the most important aspect of 黎 kuro is that IT IS A COLOR. And that the antecedent of this color is Van Arkride, ONLY. Sometimes it is used as a metaphor for his ethical alignment, but for the most part, it’s a metaphor for Van himself.
Note well that 黎 is not read kuro but aoguro, which jisho.org defines as “bluish black” (like Van’s hair), and proposes three different spellings:
青黒 blue & black shoved together
黝 pitch black, jet black (hold on. I’m getting to this.)
蒼黒 blue & black again but it’s a different blue. (I have a separate post about inconsistencies with the color blue, which I will link later.)
There’s a different aoguro that shows up after the final dungeon but before the final boss.
黝（あおぐろ）き＂核＂の力を秘めた《漂泊の魔王》――
The blue and black Demon Lord of Vagabonds, who holds power over time itself– (translation via spreadsheet)
The hidden power of the Vagrant Demon Lord’s stygian “core”– (translation by OP)
Side note: I have not read the entire spreadsheet someone graciously provided me with. Of what I have read, there are plenty of segments that seem to be well intentioned human’s writing as opposed to unedited machine translation output. The segment quoted above dropped a key word and added a relative clause which feels more speculative than factually based on the rest of Bergard’s paragraph.
Based on data I have pulled from trailsinthedatabase, this 黝 aoguro only shows up twice in the entire game script: here, and during the final boss cut scene, where Risette is parroting the aforementioned demon’s title.
The previous instance of the aoguroki kaku, “blue-black core” (Classical Japanese, my beloved) was at the very end of Chapter 5, where it was notably 黎, not 黝.
――それと申し訳ありません、件の＂黎（あおぐろ）き核＂については……
And I apologize, regarding that “blue-black core”… (translation via spreadsheet)
Also, my apologies, regarding the matter of the “livid core”… (translation by OP)
OP, if you’re a fan translator worth your kibbled salt, where are you getting your crayon colors from?
Great question, because I’ve been agonizing over this for 150 game hours and literal months since I was first asked the question and gave a preliminary answer above the cut.
I did call in a favor from a friend who has a copy of the unabridged New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary. Alas, New Nelson didn’t tell me anything Jisho.org hadn’t already.
黎 7049 | J7355 | M47994 REI dark, black; many
黝 7058 | J735b | M48082 YŪ. YU. aoguro blue-black; black; black soil.
My first thought was looking up “黎 color” with Japanese sources. When in doubt, kimono swatch websites usually have my back. Turns out that was a much longer shot than I hoped. I got nothing. Dawn/Daybreak colors also turned out to be a dead end. Looking that up returned purples, pinks, and oranges, but NOT blues or grays! Or, some very abstract strings of words adjacent to mood boards themes, candy, and makeup. I went through a bunch of paint chips as well. I didn’t get anything I liked in either the blue section or the black section. The blues all had too much chroma and not enough shade; the blacks had very little value differentiation.
Then it hit me like a brick: what if I look up synonyms for “black and blue” like a bruise. Between Oxford, Merriam-Webster, and a thesaurus, I landed on “livid”, hex color #6699C (I haven't figured out how to upload my own images yet). And I decided to run with it. Apparently, “livid” used to mean “blue in the face” exasperation before it became a flavor of “anger”. But it is a dark blue-grey—and that’s what I need!
Meanwhile 黝 via Kotobank tossed me in the deep end with genuine Chinese.
* 黝黝 yuuyuu or you3you3, うす黒色。a blackish color
* 黝黯・黝暗 (no Japanese reading) you3an4, 暗い．少しの光もない．Dark. Without even the slightest bit of light.
* 黝黑 you3hei1 (no Japanese reading) どす黒い．黒ずんでいる；暗い．Dusky. To darken; Dark.
* 黑黝黝 hei1you3you3 (no Japanese reading) 黒光りしているさま to have a black luster. 暗くてよく見えないさま Too dark to see.
So what this is says to me is that 黝 is a special kind of dark. I’m looking for a neighbor of pitch black or jet black. Just for funzies, let’s see what Trails in the Database has to say.
“Jet black” is exclusively 漆黒 shikkoku except when it refers to Rean’s physical appearance, which is just normal black 黒 kuro.
To the thesaurus I returned. I wanted something Atramentous. Sunless. Unlit. In total absence of light. I wasn’t totally sold on “stygian” as it has a secondary meaning of gloomy like a harbor in fog until I fell face first on Stygian Blue:
one such impossible colour, and is a chimerical type. It is said to be so dark and rich that it can only be perceived in complete darkness. Source
And you know what? That’s perfect.
But then if that’s all the case, then why did NISA call it "Trails through Daybreak” instead of something riffing on the color “black”? AO3 still has fics tagged under “trails in the dark” that need to be wrangled. The rationale for this choice didn’t hit me until one of Agnès’ lines right before the final boss.
でも、そんな貴方を支えて寄り添うことは出来ると思うんです。
まだまだ半人前ですけどあくまで私ならではの”色”で。
黒でもない、白でもない！ましてや灰色ですらないーー
夜明け前の優しい暗がりみたいに寄り添ってくれる貴方だけの色がーー
どうしようもなく愛おしくて何があっても失いかくないから！！
However, I do think that I can support you while you do all those things, and comfort you.
I’m still very half-baked, but I have my very own “color”.
It’s not black, or white, or any share of gray in between!
You’re the gentle color of the night, just before the dawn breaks through the darkness–
No matter what it takes, I refuse to lose someone I love so much! (translation via spreadsheet)
But, I think I’m able to support and hold fast to you.
I may not be fully qualified yet, but ultimately with my own “color”.
I can’t help cherishing your unique color holding fast to me—it’s not black or white! Least of all grey—like a gentle darkness before daybreak, because, no matter what happens, I don’t want to lose it!! (Translation by OP)
黎明 reimei and 夜明け yoake are synonymous. One-sided crushes on an adult who gives them any positive attention at all and being the unfortunate victim of Falcom's age-gap prone shipping tendencies aside, this section really encapsulates how not only Agnès but everyone feels about having Van in their lives, I think that’s beautiful.
Get adopted, Idiot
Post script: I’d also like to mention another shade of black does come up in the game, but it’s not in the game’s body script. It’s in one of Melchior’s crafts. 涅色 kuriiro something. I didn’t catch the whole thing, and it seems Kiseki wiki hasn't gotten that far either. A kimono swatch site tracked this color down with little effort: the color of “dirt at the bottom of a river.” If I needed to pull this out of a crayon box, I’d go with an “umber”.
A short list of Classical Chinese reading materials [reposted from tumblr]
(Disclaimer: I put this together from my notes rather quickly.)
So I went to see Inu-oh (2021)... [reposted from tumblr]
I went to see Inu-oh in theaters this past weekend. The morning after, my friend read me some absolutely horrible takes on this film from tumblr dot com. If you thought that this movie was about a “gay rock band,” then either you slept through the whole film or you’re sorely missing all the historical and cultural context. This post is here for those of you in the latter category. 90% of what I am about to say can be verified via English Wikipedia. The rest comes from Japanese sources including Wikipedia and Kotobank. I’m not in academia anymore so I’m not giving specific citations for the whole piece. I have been researching and writing this for 2 days now.
The Tale of the Heike, is an epic about the fall of Taira no Kiyomori and his subsequent extermination of his entire clan during the actual real-life event known as the Genpei War (1180-1185 CE). Science Saru has an excellent 11-episode anime that covers the whole epic. EVERYONE except the POV character DIES. The opening paragraph of this epic is:
> In the sound of the bell of the Gion temple echoes the impermanence of all things. … The proud ones do not last long, but vanish like a spring night’s dream. And the mighty ones, too, will perish like dust before the wind.
Citation: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1000ce_heike.htm
Crunchyroll subscribers can find it under “The Heike Story”.
Relevant details are that Taira no Kiyomori married his daughter off to Emperor Takakura. They had a son in 1178. His majesty dies, and their infant son gets named Emperor Antoku at the age of three. When war breaks out, the Tairas take the baby and run. The final battle of the Genpei war, the Battle of Dan-no-Ura, is a last-ditch effort naval assault that goes horribly awry. Realizing there’s absolutely no way out of this but death, the Emperor’s grandmother/Kiyomori’s widow, Taira no Tokiko, grabs now seven-year-old Emperor Antoku and jumps overboard. A lot of the Tairas forces jump overboard after her—they’d rather drown now than be executed later.
There would undoubtedly be a mass of treasure to salvage from all those sunken ships. On the boat with the Emperor was the Imperial Regalia—three divine treasures you can read more about in the Kojiki, or if you played Okami back in the day. These were considered lost for a time, particularly the Kusanagi/“Grass cutter” sword. This legendary blade belonged to Shinto deity Susanoō, and was used to slay the eight-headed snake beast Orochi. To be perfectly frank, the Wiki page for the Kusanagi sword doesn’t seem to clarify whether the sword the Imperial Family has in storage today is in fact the original blade. There are a couple fingers pointed about how it went missing but not so many about its recovery. For the most part we should assume the one that exists today is the same sword. Also, according to Wiki sensei, no one outside of the imperial line has actually seen it and survived. We have one description of the sword from a high priest whose entire sect appears to have died shortly thereafter. Everything after that is artistic renditions. Hold this thought for a moment.
Biwa hōshi were a variety of traveling entertainers during this period. They dressed like Buddhist monks, though they weren’t necessarily affiliated with temples. They were medieval bards. Yes, they did employ the blind. They got super famous specifically for recanting the Tale of the Heike—enough that it became a separate genre. The first written version of the Tale of the Heike is dated around 1330. Akashi Kakuichi (1299-1371) is accredited with the most widely read account, which has the official compilation dated at 1371. Hold onto this for a moment too.
If you remember anything about the Tokugawa Shogunate from world history class, you might remember there are a few more shogunates that predate that. The Ashikaga shogunate (1336-1573), and very specifically Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu (1358-1408), negotiated the end of a 57-year political conflict known as the Northern and Southern Courts period (1336-1392). This bureaucratic mess was nowhere near as exciting of a story as the Genpei War (1180–1185). In broad strokes, the country was split in half as a result of a hitch in the imperial line of succession from several factors, including the failed Mongol invasion of Japan (1274, 1281), overthrow of the Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333), failure of Kenmu restoration (1333-1336) to restore the Emperor as de facto head of state, and some more civil war. The Ashikaga clan endorsed the Northern court. Yoshimitsu was a star negotiator—just read his wiki page—who consolidated his power and legitimacy by acting as go between for a while. He even convinced the Southern court to give up the imperial regalia to the Northern court. (This was later given back when the Northern court eventually fell. As history is written by the winners, it is generally accepted that the emperors of the Southern court were the true imperial line.) The sword that Tomona and his dad recovered for those noblemen at the beginning of the movie was the Kusanagi sword. Those noblemen were almost certainly sent on behalf of the Ashikaga Shogunate, and recovering the sword was probably part of a political ploy. Tomona went blind and his father died because they were not supposed to see it as they’re not divinities on earth.
Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu was also a fan of Kan’ami Kiyotsugu (1333-1384)—author, actor, and musician who, along with his performer and playwright son, Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), are accredited for the foundation of Noh theater. Kan’ami’s troupe performed for Yoshimitsu around 1374. Yoshimitsu was totally enamored with 12-year-old Zeami’s performance and became a massive patron to Zeami. We are not going to get into the weeds of that relationship. You can read the scholarly accounts and conclude what you want on your own post. I would have to watch the movie one more time, but I’m pretty sure the child dancer in Yoshimitsu’s introductory scene is Zeami.
Yoshimitsu’s legitimate wife was Hino no Nariko (1351–1405). Nariko married Yoshimitsu around 1375 or 1376, and only gave birth to a daughter. Since daughters can’t hold office, said daughter’s birth date isn’t something I can easily grab without sifting through dense scholarly text which I currently don’t have access to. If I could, I would probably be able to date this movie based on Inu-oh’s final performance being during her pregnancy. For reference’s sake, Yoshimitsu’s concubines had the sons, the first one having been born in 1386.
Inu-oh (?-1413) was a real person. Not much about him is known other than he existed and he was a good performer. He respected sarugaku-noh trailblazer Kan’ami, and even performed for Kan’ami’s memorial service. He was also extremely well praised by Zeami. Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu, however, did not like Inu-oh. He eventually swayed the shogun’s forgiveness, but was still not all that much in favor. He was then subjected to imperial inspection in 1408.
Based on the above information, and the fact that the passage of time in this film is specifically not marked, I guestimate that the opening scene happened sometime during 1360’s, and that Tomona’s execution was probably in the late 1370’s or 1380’s. I might be able to pin this down a little further if I could get Nariko’s daughter’s birthdate, or the name of the person whose funeral Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu was conducting in his introductory scene, but again, I am just some weeb with a degree in Japanology on the internet. If I was still in academia, I might actually go on a medieval Japanese scavenger hunt.
When I googled why Japanese people way back when could change their names on a whim, I couldn’t find any good English sources. A summary of my Japanese sources is that it’s not totally on a whim. It’s about census data and tax evasion. The Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907) had some really awesome stuff going on, so Japan decided to copy them. This legislation was called the Ritsuryō system, and was implemented in the 6th century CE. This introduced koseki, the family register, which basically lists who is in your house: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, or adoptions. Legalese is boring. Laws have changed. Permanent identities like we know them now come out of the Meiji period (1868-1912), because they changed the tax laws and citizenship rules from fiefdom based to modern standards, and suddenly everyone needed surnames. If you were important enough to have a surname or a clan name, that was pretty much permanent throughout your whole life unless you married into someone else’s clan.
Personal names had more stuff going on. When you were born, you got a name from one of your relatives. You’d eventually grow out of that. You had your adulthood ceremony and you gave yourself an adult name. Then you need a court name because you had to deal with the imperial or shogunal court. Maybe you got a title or a moniker. Maybe you gave up the working world and became a monk/nun—then you got a Buddhist name. And then when you died, you got a posthumous epitaph. But that’s just for important people! What if you’re a pleb? To a certain degree, you really could just do whatever you wanted.
As with all cultures, your parents usually gave you a name and hope you make it to adulthood. If you entered a skilled profession, clergy or otherwise, you got a name. Having a part of your name bestowed upon you by a celebrated personage was a huge honor. When Tomona joins Kakuichi guild of biwa hōshi, he is given the character “ichi” from Kakuichi, making his name Tomoichi, and cementing his membership in the guild. Emphasizing again here that Kakuichi is not any old blind musician but THE Akashi Kakuichi.
Lifehack analyzer lists three reasons for why you would not continue to use your childhood name as an adult.
Strangers don’t need to know your real name. If they did then they have the power to curse you. (ANYONE IN THIS THREAD READ XXXHOLIC OR TOKYO BABYLON?)
The name your parents gave you expresses your thanks to them. As an adult, you want to express your thanks to someone else. It’d be too intimate for a total stranger to call you by your kiddy name when up until this point, the only people who knew you were family members, friends, and people in the neighborhood.
You need a public name.
Insofar as Tomona’s major life transitions, I would assess that changing his name to Tomoichi encompases point 2 and changing his name to Tomoari encompasses point 3. Changing it back to Tomona of Dan-no-Ura immediately before his execution is a strange flex in real life, but it’s important as a point of narrative catharsis. After Tomona’s story ends, and irl Inu-oh goes out to become the person history remembers, he also has a couple name changes. Pulling from Japanese Wiki: Ashikaga no Yoshimitsu’s Buddhist name was 道義 Dōgi. Inu-oh borrowed that and changed his name from 犬阿弥 Inuami (not getting any hits for this one) to 道阿弥 Dōami (finding a more entries under this name). Going out on a limb here and assuming that Inu-oh changed his name to Inuami because of 観阿弥 Kan’ami in the interim.
I’m not going to go into yōkai, cursed objects, masks, sarugaku or noh theater since that’d required more research outside my area of undergraduate expertise. For yōkai, I’d highly recommend The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore by Michael Dylan Foster. Honestly not sure where to redirect you for theater stuff.
Switching gears to the rock opera part. If you’ve seen Rocky Horror Picture Show or Jesus Christ Super Star, then you know what a rock opera is. It was breathing new life into the musical in the 1960’s. If you’re even vaguely familiar with the music and aesthetics of David Bowie, Alice Cooper, KISS, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, and to a lesser extent Elton John or Queen, then you’re at least vaguely familiar with glam rock and hair metal. I am not going to post YouTube links because those get region locked by IP address. It was a flamboyant, consumeristic, androgynistic, and campy kind of style with emphasis on outrageous costuming, makeup, and hairstyles among other things, from the early to mid-1970’s. The point was counter-culturalism toward gender norms.
Now we move forward to the 1980’s to Visual-kei. It’s basically the same aesthetics but with arguably different underlying politics. This all begins with X Japan. Let’s take a pause here to listen to their 1989 album Blue Blood. Other bands of the era include Luna Sea, Glay, Pierrot, Malice Mizer. As we move later into the 1990’s and 2000’s we get bands like L’Arc~en~Ciel, Shazna, Alice Nine, Girugamesh, Miyavi, Antic Café, The Gazette, and Versailles. Wiki sensei claims that visual-kei is not only inspired by western glam rock, but also by kabuki theater. Kabuki is what happened when Noh got old, stiff, and no longer accessible to the masses. And the androgynous element of traditional Japanese theater IN GENERAL is probably more on the fact that women weren’t allowed to be employed in theater than anything related to #/gender. Quoting the X Japan wiki entry directly:
Yoshiki briefly described their early years and the movement’s development, saying “when we started the band, the problem was we didn’t belong anywhere. Because we were playing very heavy music, we were wearing tons of make-up and crazy outfits. So we couldn’t belong anywhere”, “[We did our own thing and] that eventually became visual kei.”[183] He added “But visual kei is more like a spirit, it’s not a music style or, you know… I think it is a freedom about describing myself, a freedom to express myself, that’s what I believe visual kei is.”[183]
(I’m also going to shoehorn in here that in 1999, Yoshiki was formally requested by the Japanese Government to compose and perform at Emperor Akihito jubilee celebration.) The major criticism of later visual-kei is that the original spirit has been lost. That the bands of this movement started their fashion trend to stand out. Now new bands are doing it to fit in so the whole thing’s falling apart. I don’t have any more spoons to do a deep literature dive into the politics of what visual-kei represents over the past 30 years and how much the gay community may or may not have been involved. I haven’t found anything explicitly connecting the two communities at all. It’s been all set dressing and no soul, like Christmas and KFC.
Finally, subjectively, calling “Inu-oh” a “queer masterpiece” is giving credit where it is not due. Casting Avu-chan, the lead singer of fashion punk band Ziyoou-vachi (QUEEN BEE), as the voice of the titular sarugaku star exclusively for her queerness has about as much weight to it, OP feels, as casting Will Smith in “I, Robot” for his blackness. The studio needed someone who could perform in the role competently. For those out there deeply sighing about the #/Wokeness of the #/Gay Agenda, (yes, the theater community, rock/metal communities, and the queer community have historically had some crossover) that’s not what’s on display here. Conversely for those out there who think this is the gayest film of the year, those arguments sound like projection or wish fulfillment. For the shippers, your ship is not my ship and that’s ok. Queerness is certainly a part of counterculture but not all counterculture is inherently queer. If you at least came away with an understanding of art vs government censorship, authority of the narrative, the mythology of the masses, how theater magic works, and what exactly counterculture means in this context, you got the movie. If you feel otherwise, you don’t need to bite my head off.
Chapter 2 荒狂 Rampage [ExR trans: Aggression Part 3]
While I continue to struggle with not having enough hands to both live blog MDZS and pet a dog, and that autosave bug that kept eating my edits, I’ve been worrying for the last couple days about how I might be shoving a key into the ignition of a clown car with the license plate “pandora’s box”. You guys have been great so far, and I really appreciate it.
I must humbly thank one of my fandom elders for reminding me that translation is a form of transformative work, and therefore subject to Death of the Author (and Skoposof the client).Translation theory and translation studies in general is mostly done at the graduate level; of what I’ve been exposed to at the undergraduate level, Skopos theory is the only one that did not strike me as totally self-indulgent. I’ll do my best to lay out the facts as much as can be done, and leave the literary analysis to you.
Today we’re looking at the tail end of Chapter 2, Frontier Works pg. 41-53, and a tiny bit of the audio drama, Season 1 Part A Episode 1 first 12 minutes. Strap in, this is a LONG POST.
[[MORE]]
I spent these past 12 pages fixated on a particular notion: “I don’t think Mo Xuanyu is necessarily insane”. I will get back to that in a bit. Let’s talk about everything else first.
I know I’ve mentioned this before there’s been a bit of ambiguity regarding whether the body part rampaging Mo Manor is a hand or an arm.
bt. In that moment A-Ding suddenly burst into tears. “His hand… A-Tong’s left hand–!”
It’s a hand in this one segment. I’m using “burst into tears” to indicate more clearly that “cried” here should be the weeping kind, not the shouting kind.
On the next page
Suddenly saying this… It doesn’t seem like a coincidence. (ExR)（突然こんなことを言うなんて……まぐれとは思えない。）(FW pg. 45) bt. (Suddenly, saying this sort of thing [out loud]… I can’t think of it as a fluke.)
Clunky, but within a reasonable margin of error.
Moving forward a few pages to when Wei Wuxian turns the deceased Mo manorial lords into his minions… Do you think he is allowed to swear? やがる is an auxiliary verb meaning “to have the nerve to do X”, and in a lot of cases, it can be used as a free pass for an emphatic and/or expletive.
“Wake up!” (ExR)
「起きやがれ！」 (FW pg. 49)
“Wake the fuck up!”
In case you were wondering, he was politer to the first batch of corpses.
We finally get our first instance of 凶屍 kyoushi/xiong1shi1 on FW pg 50! I’d been wondering when that word would show up. I really hate “fierce corpse” but ExR’s use of “cruel corpse” instead doesn’t make it any better. I don’t think this term translates. As far as I know, zombie lore in English comes out of Central African mythology via the Caribbean. I worry that there are not enough similar base concepts between these two cultures that we even have the vocabulary to express the concept with words that are not Chinese.
And finally, 含光君 han2guang1jun1 = gankoukun. Sobriquets don’t get glossed. What’s it mean? May I direct you to this post? At some point I will revise the Chinese-to-Japanese table of proper names to include monikers and place names. Once I figure out a good way to format it for web…
Alrighty, now time for the thesis part. One of the central motifs of MXTX’s writing style is setting up a characterization based on third hand accounts, and then using the characters’ actions to subvert those expectations. The very first instance of this is in MDZS is the irony of Wei Wuxian, in the body of Mo Xuanyu, being the smartest person in the room despite never taken seriously. What do we actually know about Mo Xuanyu himself? What has he actually told the reader? He hasn’t. He’s very dead at this point. Everything we know is filtered through A) Wei Wuxian, and B) a third person limited POV narrator, both of whom are notably not omniscient. What we can take away from the diary entries is only what Wei Wuxian can surmise (FW pg. 18-19).
Mo Xuanyu is homosexual.
He is a famous cultivation clan leader’s bastard, clearly out of favor with his father’s clan.
His grandfather is the Manorial lord Mo.
The Manorial lord’s legitimate wife birthed his oldest daughter. Oldest daughter’s husband was legally adopted into the Mo clan. Oldest daughter is Mo Ziyuan’s mother.
The Manorial lord’s second daughter, Mo Xuanyu’s mother, was a maid’s daughter. She was good looking, so the Manorial lord had planed on marrying her off anyway.
MXY’s mother’s pregnancy at age 16, and his entire existence was seen as a mark of shame upon the manor until the Manorial lord realized how to use this new relationship for financial and political gain, i.e. the alimony stipend from the paternal cultivation clan and the allure of cultivation to boost the manor’s standing. This lasted until Mo Xuanyu was 4 years old when his biological father ceased visitation. MXY and his mother then fell out of favor for a decade.
At age 14, MXY was taken in by his paternal cultivation clan for training. Within the Mo manor, he returns to being in favor based on an expectation of success in a skilled profession. He loses favor again when he failed to meet that expectation, and is sent home.
The legitimate Mo manorial lords and their servants are verbally and physically abusive towards him. (FW pg. 14, 26)
Mo Xuanyu committed suicide to enact vengeance against his abusers via dassha of Wei Wuxian. (FW pg. 16)
He is older than Mo Ziyuan. (There are a couple different ways to spell “cousin” itoko, and relative seniority is built into the word: 従兄 older male cousin Mo Xuanyu vs 従弟 younger male cousin Mo Ziyuan.)
Mo Ziyuan’s exact age was never confirmed. Wei Wuxian just guessed “17” and the reader has to roll with it.
bt. And to make matters worse, what on earth happened to Mo Xuanyu when he returned to Mo Manor, he had become completely funny. Although on rare occasion he returned to sanity, it was as if he may have seen something dreadful and whether his mind suffered damage–Perusing up to this point, Wei Wuxian cocked an eyebrow. Better gay than touched in the head. This is what he made out.
Note 1: おかしい okashii means “funny” in both the comical and the eccentric sense. It runs the gambit from “amusing” to “strange” to “wrong.” It gave me a slight headache trying to translate Lan Jingyi’s 「あいつは本当におかしい！」 “aitsu wa hontou ni okashii!” in Aggression part 1. I almost went with “What a weirdo!” but decided against it because I wanted the double entendre. I am being overly literal above to demonstrate ambiguity.
Note 2: The green highlight is a two part subjunctive. I am highlighting this because it’s the strongest “if” in the entire info dump. Everything up until this point is a “based on evidence, WWX concludes that” sort of subjunctive. Japanese can get pedantic with subjunctives.
Note 3: 気が触れる ki ga fureru = to go mad; to go crazy; to lose one’s mind. Also see 気が狂う ki ga kuruu (via Jisho.org)
Preliminary conclusion: Despite the commonality of polygamy at this time, there are clear political advantages that he does not have due to his lack of blood relation to either the legal or favorite wife in either the Jin or Mo clans, combined with his discontinued apprenticeship. Anything Mo Xuanyu does is going to be an uphill battle. Untreated trauma is definitely involved. Do I trust a normal teenager to tell me they’re insane? No. Would I trust a fictional one? Even less. Sanity is relative.
(I don’t think anyone in this readership cares if I spoil Trails of Cold Steel IV. There’s a boss rush segment right before the final dungeon where one of your parties is about to take on a massive beast of a thing, and one of the mages says “um how about we not? Maybe let’s go get the giant robots and circle back?” and everyone else, including one woman whose only goal left in life is to fight GOD, like any good JRPG hero, is like “nah, we can take it as is.” This lady–who can wield a Zweihänder single-handedly if she wants to–honestly could have taken down the beast by herself. She’s one of the most powerful characters in the franchise, so desperate for a challenge that her moniker includes reference to a Buddhist man-eating demon, an all-but-confirmed war criminal, and you cannot tell me she’s sane. Sane people do not nip at the ankles of a dragon with a big fucking sword and call it a mild workout.)
Now what does everyone else say about him?
I genuinely don’t know what the original text has to say. I cannot read Mandarin. Nor do I have access or the skill to listen to the Chinese audio drama. CQL is off the table as there is no accessible JP dub as far as I am aware. Between Death of the Author and the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis,I’m already too many layers removed from “original intention” for it to matter. Japanese novel!Mo Xuanyu is effectively a different character from every other instance of Mo Xuanyu in every other medium and every foreign language translation.
In rewatching the first episode of the donghua, the term used appears to be 瘋子 feng1zi5. Lin Yutang’s Chinese-English dictionary of Modern Usage defines 瘋子 as madman, half-crazy person, a “nut.” This is not a Japanese word. In fact, the only word I can find that uses the same character is 瘋癲 fuuten, which can be either insanity, or a vagabond/wanderer (Jisho.org). The Green Goddess offers 1) 狂気 lunacy, mental derangement, madness, insanity 2) 家出した若者 delinquent youth, a youth vagrant.
If I shove 瘋子 into the Weblio’s Chinese-Japanese dictionary, I get the definitions 気違い kichigai = madman, enthusiastic (derogatory) and 狂人 kyoujin = crazy person,lunatic. I’m going to add this additional note from WaniKani. Image transcription in alt text.
Based on this, I can conclude that Donghua!Mo Xuanyu is mentally ill, and being described in a highly derogatory manner.
I have NOT watched the Japanese dub anime so we’re going to put that on back burner for now. I’ll probably get to it later, when I can finally get my hands on it.
The Japanese dub audio drama I only went in to double check what Mo Ziyuan and Madam Mo call Mo Xuanyu in the first 12 minutes. I did NOT bother listening to the whole episode. Transcriptions and translations below. Bold is OP’s emphasis.
Male Baku household servant A: Hurry up, let’s go, or we’ll get infected Female Baku household servant A: That bastard nutcase got out again?
Jisho.org defines いかれる ikareru as: 1) to break down, to become broken; 2) to be crazy, to be nuts; 3) to be infatuated with; 4) to be outdone by someone; to be beaten in a contest. 野郎 yarouBastard in the above instances is simply for its derogatory meaning, and has no implications of linage. So you see how I ended up with イカレ野郎 = bastard nutcase? Japanese audio drama!Baku Gen'u (=Mo Xuanyu) is also mentally ill, and it is being described in a derogatory manner.
Back to the novel! Over these past 40 pages, I’ve seen several different words come up in addition to what was written above.
痴れ者shiremono fool; dunce; idiot (via Jisho.org). This is the most common one, and what the Manorial lords and their servants all call Mo Xuanyu. Even Lan Jingyi calls him this once in frustration. I’m not going to to the full nine yards on this one. I did quite a bit in the Aggression part 2. But just for completeness’ sake, I give you a couple more.
「俺を蹴ったな！この痴れ者め、殺す気？」 (FW pg. 46) (Lan Jingyi speaking) “He kicked me! Damn idiot, you got a death wish?”
From The Digital Denjisen via Kotobank
１ 愚かな者。ばか者。A foolish person. A stupid person. ２ 手に負えない者。乱暴なもてあまし者。An incorrigible person. A violently unmanageable person. ３ その道に打ち込んでいる者。その道のしたたか者。Someone dead set in their ways. A strong-willed person. 「我がものならば着せてやりたい好みのあるにと―が随分頼まれもせぬ詮議を蔭では為べきに」〈露伴・五重塔〉 [類語]（1）愚人・愚物・痴人・愚か者・愚者／（3）マニアック・病的・クレージー・いかれる・神経質・凝り性・モノマニア・モノマニアック・偏執狂・執念深い・アブノーマル・異常・異様・狂的・ディレッタント・物好き・酔狂・好事家・虫・おたく・狂・狂い・気違い・マニア・通・こだわり・こだわる・道楽・凝り屋・執拗・しつこい・サブカルチャー
ばか者、おろか者 a stupid person, a foolish person 一つのことに心を打ちこんで夢中になっている人 a person who has devoted their heart to a singular thing and becomes obsessed.
I am genuinely unsure if there are any unspoken connotations of this word, and thus far I have not been able to dig any up. I need to watch more period J-dramas.
バカbaka idiot; moron; fool (we’ve watched enough anime. I don’t need to provide all 14 definitions listed on Jisho.org)
このバカ、こんな時まで笑うなんて！虚け者なのだから (FW pg. 44) What a moron, laughing at a time like this! Cause he’s an airhead…
虚け者utsukemonofool; blockhead; idiot; dunce (see example above). The more common spelling of this word is 空け者. I like “airhead” for this one because 虚 “void” 空 and “sky” both also mean “empty.” Let’s take a look at a couple more dictionaries.
うっかりしている人。中身のしっかりしていない人。単に「うつけ」とも言う。(Weblio) An absentminded person. Someone who does not take proper hold of their substance. Also said utsuke.
For utsuke because I didn’t get a result for utsukemono 1) 中のうつろなこと。から。からっぽ。2) 愚かなこと。ぼんやりしていること。また、そのような者。まぬけ。(Digital Denjisen) 1) To hollow out the inside of something. Empty. Vacant. 2) Foolishness. To be absentminded/careless. Or someone who is thus. Half-wit.
恥知らずhaji shirazushameless
(Madam Mo in response to Wei Wuxian’s allegation of theft against Mo Ziyuan) 「この恥知らずが、皆さんの前でなんてことを！阿淵はあなたの従弟なのに！」 (FW pg. 28) “What a thing to say in front of everyone, you shameless person! Even though A-Yuan is your cousin!”
阿保 ahofool; idiot; simpleton
(Lan Jingyi speaking) 「え？あの阿保を捜してどうするんだよ？俺に殴られるのが怖くて、どこかに逃げたんじゃないかな」 (FW pg. 52) “Eh? What’re you gonna do if you go searching for that dimwit? He probably ran off somewhere cause he was scared I was gonna punch him.”
変人 henjineccentric. Truth be told, I’m not sure why this is in my notes. Past me didn’t leave a page number.
There is a specific word for madness I was looking for, something containing this character: 狂. And there is only one instance I found where it shows up (not counting the chapter title).
With nails that multiplied in length, foam gathering at the corners of her mouth, and shrieks that were enough to uplift the ceiling, she [the animated corpse of Madam Mo] looked extremely insane. (ExR)
bt. The nails on the five fingers of her long hand extended by several times, white foam spewed from her mouth, her screeching roar had the force to blow a roof clean off, and she was already in a state of madness.
TLDR: Japanese novel!Mo Xuanyu is generally described by other people as a dunce, not necessarily a lunatic. The only “insanity” to be had is a dead person’s fighting style.
A little thought experiment I keep finding myself in, as I’m sure a lot of people do who are reading literature in a language they are learning, is “if I were to translate this into my first language, how would I say X?” I would need a word that
encompasses “stupid”;
does NOT encompass “clinically insanity”;
is derogatory;
and most importantly, destroys all credibility.
“Oh, don’t listen to him. He’s just ___.”
“Idiot” is the clear choice, as it is the most common denominator of all of the above, but I feel it’s not strong enough to devalue all of MXY’s credibility. “Simpleton”, “airhead,” “dimwit,” “halfwit,” “moron,” “blockhead” again, not mean enough. “Dunce” or “fool” might be on the right track, but they’re not really in the modern vernacular, so still not strong enough on their own without going out of my way to make the rest of the setting and everyone else’s speech patterns artificially archaic. “Maniac” doesn’t seem accurate to the characterization. “Deluded” perhaps? “Deranged” feels too close to “raving mad”. “Beyond help” or “lost cause” or “unreasonable” would work in the above instance, but not necessarily in other instances, like “He kicked me! Damn ___!”
…and this is how I found myself up the creek without a paddle, and asking whether I have to start looking at yesteryear’s terms for the disabled to find a label mean enough to destroy credibility. FOR EXAMPLE, I would not be opposed to an autistic reading of the character based on the above amalgam of terminology, but endorsing such a reading would be going into head canon territory and straying too far from the original text. I don’t know what’s going on deeper in the fandom. I see a lot of arguing I don’t want to deal with, and the less I know, the better I feel.
All I can and will say about Japanese Novel!Mo Xuanyu is that no matter how he is labeled by his relatives and household servants, the kid is caught between a rock and a hard place on multiple fronts. Being homosexual in a homophobic world isn’t helping, nor is whatever enduring trauma he experienced right before his return home from cultivation training. His anger and frustration before his untimely demise were likely justified. It is highly unfortunate he found catharsis in death, but without it, this story would have no protagonist.
Translation discourse online always leaves me a little nervous because anyone can and usually does say anything, and it’s nigh impossible to check credentials. I keep thinking back to this article from 2016.
I also did follow up with Jay Rubin sensei about the introductory quote in this article. (Rubin sensei is an American Japanologist and translator most noted for bringing the works of Haruki Murakami 村上春樹 into English. Also if you’ve never has the opportunity to try translating Murakami, let me attest that it ranked #3 on my college struggle bus after Genji monogatari and the kanbun bits of my capstone project.) The closest he was able to track down was a passage from a “Critic’s Notebook” piece he did for the magazine AMERICAN THEATRE in February 2006 (p. 36). Sensei attests the 99% figure comes from someone at the theater, not himself.
Sitting in the darkened hall and listening to the lines of Steppenwolf Theater Company’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short-story collection after the quake, I had a thrill unavailable to anyone else in the audience–even to Murakami himself, had he been there (which may never happen)–because I was the one who wrote those very lines the actors were speaking. True, Murakami was author of the original work I had translated, but those were my words. When, in the well-attended post-performance discussion, a member of the staff assured the audience of the fidelity of the adaptation by noting that “99% of the words you heard were Murakami’s,” I sat in the back of the theatre, violently shaking my head. Okay, translator’s tantrum aside, it really was a thrill to hear those familiar words being spoken by a live cast, to rediscover the dramatic force of the original, and to see the audience’s openly emotional response to one of Murakami’s most affecting works. It was a wonderful night of theater.
