Thoughts from Episode 9: fellas,

Until now, there have been more than a few moments to make readers wonder who exactly Tsuwabuki is infatuated with, and in this chapter, the penny finally drops for him too. Following on from last time, Suiren has realised somebody is watching her from behind the blinds. As Tsuwabuki tries to woo her, she stalls for time by making him explain what he means by “love”. Suiren then wonders why his description aligns so well with her own feelings towards Togu – while Tsuwabuki wonders why he isn’t more excited to be meeting his supposed “ideal woman”. He gets impatient with Suiren and himself and tries to rush in (as is his wont) but Suiren fights back and he runs off with his tail between his legs.

Later, the Emperor sees the plum blossoms in Umetsubo’s quarters and immediately throws a party! Sara learns that Tsuwabuki has been moping, Umetsubo briefly stirs the pot, and Sara then goes to speak to Tsuwabuki while everyone is chasing after a butterfly. After a moment of panic when he finds out that Tsuwabuki tried it on with Suiren, Sara attempts to reassure his colleague that he’s still cool and manly even after being rejected. Tsuwabuki then lets slip that he finds Sara more attractive that Suiren (!) and when the butterfly lands on Sara’s cap shortly afterwards, the young guys’ hands touch (!!) and Tsuwabuki blushes (!!!). In the end, Tsuwabuki is left questioning whether his feelings are really for Suiren or for Sara.

Something that Saito does a lot in Torikae baya is setting up parallels between different characters or situations: for example, Episode 7 compares Sara’s first meeting with Shi no Hime and Suiren’s first meeting with Togu, and ends with both siblings nervously thinking about “sleeping in the same bed” (同じ御帳台に寝る). And then in the current chapter, Suiren wonders “Am I… in love with Togu-sama!?” (東宮さまに恋していたのか⁉私は) while Tsuwabuki asks himself “Am I not in love… with this woman?” (恋してない―のか？自分は).

Along those lines, I’ll talk a little bit today about a couple of techniques where one thing is mapped onto another – one of these uses furigana and the other is in the art itself.

First, when Suiren realises that the mystery man behind the blinds is Tsuwabuki, she has a brief flashback to when Sara was telling her about him, and then this happens:

In the present, TSUWABUKI can still be seen through the blinds, one hand raised.

SUIREN                              [thinking] The man who desires me…

SUIREN pictures the TENGU caressing a scared young SUIREN’s face.

SUIREN                              [thinking] A man.

Looking across the room, SUIREN shouts out in fear.

SUIREN                              [thinking] The tengu!!

Suiren’s second line here is originally 男, with おとこ written to the side as furigana – straightforward so far. The third line is 天狗…!! but rather than being written with the furigana てんぐ, this is also glossed as おとこ. Techniques like this are used pretty often in manga, allowing the writer to do things like providing quick translations/explanations of unusual or strangely written words, or suggesting multiple meanings at once, like Saito does here. Mapping the sound of “otoko” onto the kanji for “tengu” lets her convey both ideas at the same time.

In this case, all we need is a one-word line and an image of the tengu from Episode 1 to understand that Suiren’s worries about men are closely linked to her and Sara’s childhood experience of being kidnapped. For her, any man could potentially be a tengu, and therefore a serious threat.

Panel from volume 2, page 142.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

The other example of mapping one thing onto another comes later in the chapter. Tsuwabuki has just admitted that he thinks his work buddy is prettier than his work buddy’s famously beautiful sister and then tellingly asked himself “Was that a weird thing to say?” (おれ今 変なこと言わなかったか？). He says he used to imagine Suiren’s appearance when looking at Sara, and then looks at Sara while picturing Suiren’s face alongside.

On the one hand, this highlights how similar Sara and Suiren are in appearance. On the other, it gives us a sense of what Tsuwabuki has been seeing all along, and how, now that he’s seen Suiren too, this has taken on new meaning for him. The moment where we see Sara and Suiren as if they were one person acts as a turning point in this plotline. It’s right after this that Tsuwabuki begins to question the true nature of his own feelings.

Maybe all those times he told his colleague “your sister must be smoking hot if she looks just like you”, it wasn’t reeeeeally about the sister…

Thoughts from Episode 3: The Eclipse

After Episode 2 showed Sara starting his exciting new job working for the Emperor and meeting his new best friend (whether he likes it or not) Tsuwabuki, this chapter gets a bit more dramatic. Tsuwabuki shows up uninvited at Sara’s home with two of his friends, and gets terribly upset that Sara won’t introduce him to Suiren. As it turns out, everybody has heard about Suiren, even the Emperor! This causes Sara to have (apparently for the first time in a while) a nightmare about the tengu from Episode 1. The tengu tells Sara that he and Suiren are cursed, and that the curse will be lifted when the tengu devours the Emperor.

Three important men then show up from the on’yoryo (for now at least, I have this as the Bureau of Yin and Yang – this is where they practised divination, astrology, etc) to reveal that an annular eclipse is coming, and the Emperor immediately falls ill. While everyone in the palace prepares to hide him away from the ominous effects of the eclipse, the Emperor gives his younger brother (Togu, the crown prince) a crystal ball containing an image of Kundali, one of the Five Wisdom Kings. Sara, inspired by another vision of the tengu, decides to risk being cursed by the eclipse in order to break his own curse, and is soon joined by Tsuwabuki and Togu. They go to the roof of a high building, where Togu holds out the crystal ball and prays for rain. Clouds come and obscure the eclipse, and the Emperor recovers.

Title page of Episode 3 from volume 1, page 83. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

There are plenty of things to think about in this chapter! There’s new information about the tengu’s curse and how that ties into other aspects of the story, as well as plenty of details about the belief system at the court. Today, though, I’ll just take a look at the chapter’s title – which is quite enough to handle!

Episode 3 is titled 「金の輪の君」 (kin no wa no kimi). This is quite a bit more abstract than previous titles, which were just characters’ names. The meaning of “kin no wa” becomes clear when characters begin talking about the eclipse. The astrologers talk about a 金の環の日食 (kin no wa no nisshoku), referring to the annular eclipse. Usually this is written without the のs, as 金環日食 (kinkan nisshoku), but it’s same in practice, qualifying the eclipse (nisshoku) as one where a golden ring (kin no wa) is visible.

You might notice – not that I did at first! – that the spelling in the dialogue uses the kanji 環 where the title uses 輪. I was trying to figure out what difference this would make and why it would be worth writing it two ways, but I think it’s most likely for practical reasons. In the title, it’s standing alone, and as 輪 is more commonly used for “ring” as a noun, it makes a bit more sense in that context. On the other hand, when it appears again later, it’s in the full “annular eclipse” phrase. It uses the same words, and with the same meaning, but “kinkan nisshoku”, the usual term for an annular eclipse, uses the more abstract 環 and can’t be written with a 輪. Perhaps there is more to it, but that’s the only reason I can see for writing it two different ways.

Another side point here is about the word for eclipse itself: 日食, meaning that the sun is eaten. There are old Chinese myths about monsters eating the sun during an eclipse, including a black dog called the tiangou. This is written as 天狗, the same spelling as “tengu”, which in Japan came to be seen as birdlike monsters such as the ones we see pretty regularly in Torikae baya. So when the dream-tengu tells Sara it’s going to devour the Emperor – whom the people at the court handily point out is symbolised by the sun – it connects closely with old myths about eclipses.

Anyway, what about that title? How should it be translated? As we have the “kin no wa” but not the “nisshoku”, it doesn’t really seem right to translate this as “eclipse”. That would be providing information that the Japanese readers aren’t getting at this point. “Annulus” could make sense as that’s the part that is mentioned, but the fact it’s written as 金の輪 and not 金環 puts me off that too. And there’s a later line that makes me feel that it could be intended to evoke the idea of a halo as well, which then gels with the imagery of the title page. This all makes me lean towards a fairly literal answer, so that I’m not saying more than I should, and so that it remains mysterious. In the end, I came up with “He of the Golden Ring” – interpreting the “kimi” in the same way as it gets used as a term of respect in people’s (usually men’s) names.

I’m just glad not every translation choice is as complicated as this!