Here’s the first blog post proper! I’ll be going through my thoughts from translating Saito Chiho’s Torikae baya, starting at the beginning. If you happen to have access to the manga in Japanese, you can even follow along!

First, I’ll quickly introduce the story. The manga is based on Torikaebaya monogatari, a tale written by an unknown author or authors (there was originally more than one version) in probably the late Heian period – at the very least, it’s set in the Heian period. In both the original story and the manga, a court official has two wives, each of whom gives birth on the same day to almost identical babies, one a girl and one a boy. This is all very auspicious for the father, who would hope that they can grow up to fill important roles, but there’s a catch: his new “daughter” behaves like a boy and his new “son” behaves like a girl.