Torikae baya as… yuri?

After explaining what makes Torikae baya a shōjo manga and suggesting some benefits of looking at it as a gakushū manga, I want to discuss Torikae baya in terms of genre just a little bit more. First, I should admit that while Saito Chiho’s manga career and available information about Flowers magazine definitely point towards the shōjo category and there are at least some people vouching for Torikae baya as gakushū manga, the basis for categorising it as yuri (百合) is more dubious. Basically, this idea comes from a fairly throwaway remark Saito made in a joint interview with Revolutionary Girl Utena director Ikuhara Kunihiko, saying that there might be “relatively yuri-esque” (割と百合っぽい) aspects in Torikae baya. As such, I’m not being entirely serious about defining it in this way, but let’s see where this takes us!

This might remind you of something.

Cropped panel from volume 2, page 88. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

What is yuri? I’m quite happy with this definition: it is “any anime or manga series [etc]… that shows intense emotional connection, romantic love or physical desire between women” as determined “by the *perception* of the audience.” It has its roots in early shōjo magazines, which featured serialised novels depicting “S” relationships (エス関係 – also called “Class S”), that is, very strong friendship and romantic (?) admiration between girls. Associated tropes like all-girls schools and sad endings form part of the background for yuri as a genre.

The relationship between Suiren and Togu fits this mould pretty well. Suiren admires Togu from the moment they first meet, and when Tsuwabuki tries it on with Suiren, it occurs to her that his definition of “love” matches her feelings for Togu. Their connection then develops through awkward moments and Togu’s jealousy when she believes that Suiren is to become one of the Emperor’s women. They aren’t in a school, but their workplace of the Nashitsubo is basically a girls-only environment. Whether they have the same kind of senpai/kohai dynamic of some “S” relationships is complicated a bit by the fact that, as first in line to the throne, Togu is obviously in a senior position, but Suiren is probably a few years older – but with yuri being in the eye of the beholder, isn’t that extra tension just a bit more fun for the beholder? ;) Another point that might be a coincidence is the possibility of some bilingual wordplay: although “suiren” (睡蓮) is literally something like “sleeping lotus” in Japanese, its English name is water lily, and the Japanese name for lily is, of course, yuri (百合).

Obviously, Suiren and Togu’s relationship looks a lot less like yuri once Suiren is known to the world as “General Sarasoju”. This point makes me think of another aspect of older narratives: those relationships weren’t supposed to last. Either the girls were expected to grow out of it and later find husbands, or – as became common for a time in yuri stories – it ended in disaster. If we think of Suiren/Togu as an example of an “S” relationship, then its obligatory ending comes when, just as things are getting serious, Suiren vanishes and returns in a form that makes the relationship no longer one between two girls.

One more benefit of thinking about Torikae baya in relation to yuri is that it makes us question which relationships would count. Depending on how you interpret Suiren and Sara’s respective situations, you might argue that Suiren/Togu was never a lesbian relationship. But if that were the case, then Sara’s marriage to Shi no Hime would have to count instead! Similar issues apply to other romantic situations too: if Tsuwabuki is attracted to Sara, Suiren and Shi no Hime, those can’t all be heterosexual at the same time.

Ultimately, with all the other stuff going on in the story, maybe yuri isn’t really the best way to categorise Torikae baya. But still, just considering that possibility raises questions that make it clear that no matter how you look at it, some aspect of the story (most aspects, let’s be honest!) is undeniably queer.

Torikae baya as gakushu manga

Last week, I wrote about the importance of the shōjo genre/format as context for Torikae baya, and in the process, I spent a bit of time justifying my decision to define Torikae baya as a shōjo manga at all. This time, I don’t exactly throw all that in the bin, but I do want to say a bit about how else we might categorise this series.

As I mentioned before, there are four main categories for manga based on what kind of magazine it is first published in: shōjo (girls), shōnen (boys), josei (women) and seinen (men). Besides these, there are some other magazine categories, like ones aimed at little kids – sometimes gendered and sometimes not – and ones decidedly not aimed at kids. Others concentrate on particular themes or styles, like BL or 4-koma. Or manga might not appear in specialist magazines at all. Miyazaki Hayao, for example, has written several manga over his career, but not one in any of the big four categories: instead, they were published in places like an anime magazine, a scale model hobbyist magazine and a Communist Party newspaper for children.

One other category is gakushū manga – basically, educational manga – which is often published in book form rather than in magazines. When I worked in Japanese primary schools, I remember classroom bookshelves full of manga biographies of famous historical figures. Gakushū manga can cover any school subject, and they’re not even necessarily targeted at children – manga can teach you about boring grown-up subjects like statistics and economics too.

A poem from the Kokin wakashu, with a modern Japanese translation and a footnote citation.

Panels from volume 4, page 12. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

A broader definition of gakushū manga is also possible, as we can see in the Nippon Foundation’s “Manga Edutainment” project: this site explicitly uses the label of gakushū manga not in the sense I just spoke about, but as an umbrella term for a variety of manga in all sorts of genres with educational value, handpicked by manga writers, academics, etc. And in the “literature” section is – you guessed it! – Torikae baya, selected by shōjo manga scholar Fujimoto Yukari.

What’s helpful about thinking about Torikae baya as a gakushū manga? For one, it aligns with my idea that aside from things like entertainment and a “positive” outlook, one of Saito’s motivations in adapting Torikaebaya monogatari is education. In our interview, she talked about the amount of background research involved in the adaptation and how she wanted to put it to good use. This comes across in elements like the volume afterwords and the inclusion of a range of Heian court events.

It also helps to answer the question of how to adapt a work like Torikaebaya monogatari in the medium of shōjo manga. Classic shōjo conventions allow for techniques like organising panels and pages in ways that are more complicated than was the norm in early serialised manga, which is handy for depicting the Heian court as full of life. When it comes to textual aspects, word balloons contain speech, while outside of balloons there are (broadly defined) sound effects and plenty of internal monologue, treated a bit like a voiceover. This is all well and good for showing readers what’s happening and how characters feel, but it doesn’t offer an easy solution for teaching them about the setting. To do that, Saito adds things like chunks of third-person explicatory narration, footnotes and modern Japanese translations of poetry alongside the original – features one might expect to encounter in gakushū manga adaptations of Heian period literature.

Of course, the point of this isn’t to say that the boundaries of shōjo manga are so strict that a single footnote changes the genre! If anything, I want to stress the opposite: there is such variety in possible modes of expression in manga that even if a writer is working within a particular genre, they can pull from a much wider toolbox depending on what they want to do. To some extent, just about any manga adaptation of a lesser-known 800-year-old text is going to have at least some educational motive – even if it’s only to the extent of “hey check this out!” – so it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that in Torikae baya, Saito supplements her usual shōjo style with elements common in more overtly educational material.

Torikae baya as shojo manga

This post looks a bit at genre/publishing format and why this information might be useful when thinking about Torikae baya. I’ve referred to this series as “shōjo manga” in a few places – conferences, the about page of this site – but this isn’t necessarily a straightforward assertion, and it also carries some implications with it.

If you’ve made your way here, chances are you already have an idea of what shōjo manga is. Manga is traditionally categorised according to the broad target demographic of the magazine it was originally published in (with exceptions such as manga that isn’t in a magazine in the first place), with the main such categories being shōjo (girls), shōnen (boys), josei (women) and seinen (men). Not all readers of each magazine fit the supposed target demographic based on age/gender; in fact, I think it’s fair to say many don’t, especially among the fan communities for individual series, where you find fans who identify as, for example, fujoshi or otaku. Even so, the categories matter because as a result of their historical development – especially in the case of shōjo and shōnen – certain aesthetic and narrative tendencies dominate in each one. They are therefore often described as genres rather than just publishing formats.

An example of shōjo-style page layout in Torikae baya.

From volume 5, page 100. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

So, Torikae baya must be a shōjo manga, right? Well… that isn’t quite so clear. I’ve seen it described as both shōjo and josei, and not always with an acknowledged point of reference. What about Flowers, the magazine where it was published? Also ambiguous. Sites for reading manga online like cmoa and Renta! sort magazines under the traditional categories, but they’re inconsistent on whether Flowers is a shōjo or josei magazine, and confusingly they sometimes don’t label Torikae baya the same as the magazine itself. Fascinatingly, the English and Japanese Wikipedia pages for Flowers cite the very same source for the magazine’s category… and somehow reach opposite conclusions.

If we look at that source, a page where Shogakukan promotes the magazine to potential advertisers, we can see how this has come about. It refers to the target readers as “thirty-plus female manga lovers” (30代以上の漫画好き女性), which seems to align with the josei category, but also portrays the featured manga writers as “legends” who were involved with shōjo manga specifically since the formative years of the genre. But even though this does open up the potential for confusion, it does suggest at least that there is a distinct vision for the magazine. And elsewhere, this vision becomes clearer: another Shogakukan page for the magazine again emphasises the involvement of “veteran” authors, while describing its content as “an evolved form of shōjo manga” (少女まんが進化形) with the “soul” of shōjo; the Flowers Twitter account, meanwhile, straightforwardly calls it a shōjo manga magazine.

In the same way, Saito’s emphasis is always on shōjo manga, regardless of how the magazine might be categorised. For example, in the final afterword, she mentions wanting to make the story work as shōjo manga. After all, that’s the environment she’s always worked in – she is the kind of “veteran” writer that Flowers revolves around.

This means that the original readers of Torikae baya are people who picked up Flowers and decided to read a Saito Chiho manga, and this affects their expectations. The series is therefore situated in the context of classic shōjo manga conventions. Common aesthetic elements include floral decoration and enlarged eyes, originating in the illustrations common in shōjo magazines before manga became a significant part of what they published. Some argue that this style, with regular closeups on characters’ faces and text outside of speech balloons acting as a kind of inner monologue or voiceover, evokes empathy in readers, drawing them into the fictional character’s interior world. Shōjo manga also originated elaborate page layouts with techniques like overlapping panels and full-body views of characters taking up most of the page, which later expanded into other manga categories.

Why does it matter that Torikae baya is shōjo manga? In terms of its thematic content, it continues a long shōjo tradition of portraying gender non-conforming characters going back to influential 1970s series like The Rose of Versailles (Versailles no bara) and continuing through the decades, including several of Saito’s own works. Maybe you know one of them! Shōjo series based on Heian period literature are also not uncommon.

We can recognise plenty of aesthetic features of shōjo manga in Torikae baya too, sometimes employed in quite clever ways. With the simplified style of shōjo manga, it’s common for characters’ faces to be difficult to differentiate, with details like hair (style and colour) and clothes doing that job instead. You might have heard of this phenomenon by light-hearted, somewhat pejorative terms like “same face syndrome”, but in this context at least, it can also be seen as an aspect of an “aesthetic of sameness” where matching is preferred over contrast. In Torikae baya, this preference is arguably an advantage: rather than emphasising Sara and Suiren’s differences, Saito can lean on genre conventions and draw them pretty much identically, making it believable that their secret can go undetected and highlighting their special connection.

There are of course other ways in which Torikae baya operates within shōjo conventions, but there are also times when the challenges of adaptation require solutions from outside of those established methods. But that’s a topic I’ll save for another day!

Afterword: The Afterwords

Now that I’ve got through talking about each chapter of Torikae baya one by one, this seems like a good time to say a bit more about the afterwords that appear in every volume! I’ve previously mentioned these “Atogaki baya” sections in passing, but what exactly are they?

At the end of each published volume, where most manga would have some kind of short bonus material (you may know this as omake), there is a 2-4 page section, generally still in manga form, where Saito directly addresses the reader and provides some additional context that you wouldn’t get from reading the monthly chapters in Flowers magazine. And naturally, when it comes to translating and studying the series, the information they provide can be very useful! Here’s a rundown of what each afterword covers:

• Volume 1 – A brief explanation of how Saito ended up adapting Torikaebaya monogatari.

• Volume 2 – An overview of the daily lives of Heian government officials.

• Volume 3 – The connections between Heian court events and some modern-day public holidays in Japan.

• Volume 4 – An explanation of court positions and ranks, and how these apply to major characters in the story. I referred to this in this post and this one.

• Volume 5 – How working on Torikae baya helped Saito understand what the different dolls in a Hina matsuri display represent.

• Volume 6 – Types of marriage in the Heian period. I referred to this in this post.

• Volume 7 – An explanation of Heian women’s clothing, specifically the junihitoe (twelve-layered robes).

• Volume 8 – An explanation of male court officials’ clothing, noting the great detail of variation based on rank and position.

• Volume 9 – A map of the Kinai region at the time of the story. I referred to this in this post and used it as a basis for my map.

• Volume 10 – An explanation of the duties of the naishi no kami. I referred to this in this post.

• Volume 11 – Plans of the greater palace area (daidairi), the palace complex (dairi) and the Seiryoden. I referred to this in this post.

• Volume 12 – Details of the emperor’s harem and the ranks available for his women.

• Volume 13 – A discussion of some of the alterations made to the source text throughout the manga.

Saito in Heian period clothes with her cat in the final afterword.

Panel from volume 13, page 131. ©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

For readers, these afterwords offer clarity on aspects of the story and its setting that may be hard for non-specialists to imagine, and especially in the first and last volumes, they provide insight into Saito’s process. And this last point is important because there just aren’t that many places where Saito speaks about how she approached the adaptation. Apart from these, there are a handful of magazine/online interviews where Torikae baya comes up (these two for example), and a small artbook sold as part of the volume 13 limited edition.

Details in the afterwords have helped me understand the world of the story and given me a sense of Saito’s intentions* for the adaptation. For example, the volume 1 afterword uses the intriguing term “melancholic moe” (メランコリックな萌え) to describe elements of the source material that might speak to today’s readers; and the volume 13 afterword mentions writing the manga to emphasise the story’s “positive entertainment value” (かなーり前向きなエンタテイメント性) and work specifically as shojo manga.

But the afterwords aren’t perfect. As I’ve already mentioned, they’re short, there’s only thirteen of them, and yet they represent the lion’s share of sources that reveal Saito’s thoughts on the adaptation. Also, even though some of them deal with quite specialist topics, they’re not really meant to be academic writing, and as such, they usually don’t cite specific sources. And so, they are very useful for me, but limited.

This all means that it was extremely valuable to get the chance to speak to Saito myself last summer. I found out where some of this information came from, saw what books Saito used as reference for Heian period clothing, architecture, etc, and found out more about what inspired her to write Torikae baya in the first place and in the specific way that she did. One particular takeaway was that writing the series required all sorts of background research and, rather than let that go to waste, she wanted to share with the readers as much as possible of what she herself had learnt. We can see this in the afterwords themselves: most of them feature an illustration of Saito (and/or her cat) explaining or showing off the matter at hand, like a teacher. This all leads me to add education to the list of motivating factors behind Saito’s adaptation – and that’s something I’ll say more about another day!

As for what I’ll do with the afterwords… I’ve obviously used them for reference, and I have written rudimentary translations for a few of them, but they’re supplemental paratexts rather than fundamental parts of the manga. That means they probably won’t make it into the thesis itself, but I may include at least some translated afterwords in an appendix. We’ll see!

*I don’t want to hype up the idea of “authorial intent” too much – especially when we consider that writing a serialised manga involves delegating tasks to assistants and not necessarily knowing how long it’ll go on for – so to be clear, when I say “intention”, I don’t mean a perfectly articulated manifesto by The Author that must be taken at face value. What I mean is something less concrete, a loose set of principles guiding decision-making (perhaps not consciously) during the process of adaptation.

Thoughts from Episode 8: Exit, pursued by a tengu

Episode 8 picks up right where we left off, with Sara and Shi no Hime in bed together... just lying there awkwardly. Sara recalls a drinking party where Tsuwabuki taught him about the birds and the bees, but sees no way to put that into practice, so instead, he holds Shi no Hime’s hand the whole night. In the morning, we see some signs that the newlyweds might actually get along.

In the Nashitsubo pavilion, Togu reads until she falls asleep, and Suiren ends up having to also lie awkwardly next to her. When Togu wakes up, Suiren leaves, deeply embarrassed. Later on, Suiren and another attendant are told that Togu won’t be needed for the day’s activities, even though she’s been working hard to prepare. Suiren overhears some sneering officials mocking Togu, but chooses not to reveal the whole truth to her. As it turns out, though, Togu is well aware of the men’s attitudes and has quite complex thoughts about her position in the palace. She appreciates that Suiren avoided making a scene, inspiring Suiren to do all she can to help her.

Finally, Tsuwabuki is in a bad mood. We hear from his buddies that he’s been struggling ever since his best friend married the woman he’d been lusting after. Suddenly, wanting to deal with his confused feelings, Tsuwabuki goes to pay Suiren an uninvited visit – and that’s where the chapter ends.

Today, I’d like to talk a bit about one of the practical aspects of my translation. For a few reasons, I’m formatting it like a script: in the margin is an indication of the speaker, and that’s followed by their lines of dialogue, one speech balloon at a time. I fit the various other text in too, like titles, narration and sound (or not sound) effects.

But that’s not necessarily enough to give the reader a sense of which translated line corresponds to which bit of text. And it’s definitely not enough for a reader who can’t constantly cross-reference with the manga page. My solution for this is image descriptions! In between the dialogue and other text are brief descriptions of what’s going on visually, a bit like stage directions, to provide context.

This is something I’ve been doing since the very start, but I wanted to bring it up now because there are a couple of good examples. I’ll share a humorous one, from when Sara remembers hanging out with Tsuwabuki and his friends:

Panels from volume 2, page 82.

©Chiho Saito／Shogakukan

TSUWABUKI smiles confidently.

TSUWABUKI                 It's all about having your way with her.

SARA remains confused, while TSUWABUKI smugly continues.

SARA                                    What do you mean, "having my way"?

TSUWABUKI                 Well, you see...

We see TSUWABUKI provide SARA with an unspecified explanation. They are surrounded by pairs of anthropomorphic rabbit silhouettes in various suggestive positions and upper- and lower-case “A”s. SARA looks scandalised; the tails on his cap are sticking up like rabbit ears, and arrows poke out from his back in random directions.

This was a fun bit to try and describe! I think it’s also a good example of why the descriptions are useful to have. Without some sense of what’s going on visually, the scene would be A) confusing and B) not funny.

At the end of the chapter, there’s also a more serious example, where Tsuwabuki’s visit to Suiren is shown in a two-page spread with no dialogue. That means that the description is the only indication that anything is even happening on those pages. And in other chapters, there have been details in panels that I might have overlooked if I hadn’t been thinking about how to describe them – like flowers associated with particular characters, for example.

Manga is a visual medium. Just like the narration in a novel, the visuals in manga are a fundamental part of how it conveys meaning. Images don’t really need to be translated, so dialogue and other text is always going to be the focus in a translation (I’ve never had to write image descriptions for a manga translation before!) but in one way or another, the visuals do have an impact on the translation. And these odd little stage directions are one way I’ve chosen to reflect that!