Thoughts from Episode 6: New year, new ranks!

I’m back from my break, and I’ve been making some more progress with the translation! We left off last time at the end of the first volume, so now let’s move on to Episode 6: The New Emperor.

As that title suggests, this chapter opens with a range of characters gaining new roles at court. The poorly old Emperor has stepped aside in favour of his younger brother, and there are promotions for Marumitsu, Sara and Tsuwabuki. Kakumitsu misses out on a promotion, and he’s more eager than ever to make Sara his son-in-law. Meanwhile, the former Emperor is worried about his young daughter, who has now taken over as Togu (crown prince). He suggests that Suiren become her naishi no kami (a close attendant), leaving Marumitsu with two tricky requests to handle...

At first, Sara and Suiren both refuse. But soon, Sara realises that the only way to counter Umetsubo’s suspicions about him is to agree to marry Kakumitsu’s daughter Shi no Hime. Tsuwabuki is distraught about this because of his existing feelings for Sara Shi no Hime. He calls off his and Sara’s friendship – unless Sara helps him marry Suiren. Then, to deal with this new mess, Suiren agrees to go and work for Togu.

There’s a lot going on here! With the new Emperor crowned – he remains Emperor for the rest of the story – it reframes the first volume as a bit of a preamble. It’s now that characters move into their longer-term roles, and it’s now that Sara and Suiren’s problems really start to rack up.

What I’d like to focus on today is something I talked about back at the beginning: the various ranks and titles the characters hold. This time around, several of them change ranks/titles, and that changes how people refer to them. To summarise:

·       The Emperor (帝) is now Emperor Emeritus (上皇) or Suzakuin (朱雀院)

·       The Crown Prince or Togu (東宮) is now the Emperor (帝)

·       The former Emperor’s daughter (referred to briefly as 女一の宮, “girl first-born prince”) is now Togu (東宮, also 女東宮, “girl crown prince”) and is nicknamed Nanten no Togu (南天の東宮)

·       Old man Fujiwara, the one-time Chief Advisor to the Emperor (関白) has retired and entered the priesthood

·       His son Marumitsu, formerly a Provisional Upper Councillor of Court (権大納言), is now both Chief Advisor to the Emperor (関白) and Chancellor (左大臣)

·       His son Sara, formerly a fifth-rank Chamberlain (五位の侍従), is now a third-rank colonel of the Imperial Guards (近衛府の三位の中将)

·       Tsuwabuki, already a colonel, is now also a councillor (中将)

·       and Suiren is being offered a position as the new Togu’s naishi no kami (尚侍)

Many of these have been translated in multiple ways before in Willig’s two versions of Torikaebaya monogatari. I won’t necessarily use the same translations as Willig, but I want to be internally consistent at least. The tricky part, as I mentioned in that earlier post, is knowing when to come up with an English version and when to just transliterate.

So far, Togu is still Togu – this is partly to ensure that as in the original, the same term is used whoever holds the position. In my earlier notes, I had it as “Crown Prince”, even after Suzakuin’s daughter takes on the role. I think this does chime pretty well with the manga’s themes, so there’s still the possibility I’ll go back to this later, but we’ll see.

Elsewhere, some roles are translated, but I’ve opted for a transliteration when they’re used as a term of address, such as Marumitsu’s new dual role “Kanpaku Sadaijin”. On the other hand, I’m undecided about naishi no kami. Willig – and others – translated this as “Maid of Honour”, and maybe that’s what I’ll go with too, but I’m unsure. I don’t exactly have great alternatives either, so for the time being, it’ll continue to be naishi no kami, just transliterated.

It's lucky that a lot of these characters do also have nicknames so that we don’t have to refer to them only by their job titles the way the original Torikaebaya monogatari did. Other modern versions do this too – Willig’s published version (The Changelings) sort of does it as well – and for the sake of my sanity, I’m relieved that Saito followed in their footsteps!