Is anyone else amused with how hard Kuwabara-sensei seems to be pushing for Kenshin x Kagetora? How else do you explain the fact that Takaya keeps likening Naoe/Kaizaki at their tenderest to affection from a father--with one of these comparisons happening pretty much right after Yoshiyori explicitly states he believes Kenshin was sleeping with Kagetora?
...No? Just me? Okay then. XD
By the way, if you're confused by all the Yoshis, I don't blame you. It's a bit unfortunate Sensei chose two clans that used it in their given names for this arc. On the other hand, 'Yoshi' (義)--"righteous, honorable, just, moral"--is one of those auspicious characters that's very popular among the Sengoku crowd.
You know what else is weird? Satomi Yoshiyori was 44 when he died, while Miura Yoshioki was 20. Yet Yoshiyori acts like a petulant teenager while Yoshioki acts (and speaks) like an old man. Those teenage hormones, huh?
Hm, I confess I never paid attention to the various Yoshis. You make a good point about teenage hormones. It's interesting how much kanshousha/hyoui rei are affected by the bodies they inhabit. I guess in addition to physicality it's inflected by Japanese emphasis on (ostensible) seniority relationships.
My reply to re. Kagetora and father figures, I fear, is not as light hearted as your post (but I agree, there may be a touch of fun in the juxtaposition of the "fathers" talk and mentioning whether Kagetora slept with Kenshin). I think that Kagetora's core psychological need is, in many ways, the unconditional love of a father figure. One of his deepest core wounds (maybe the deepest) is continual abandonment, as he sees it, by literal fathers or other elder men: Ujiyasu gave him away, then didn't even personally take him back, sending him to live with Genan, who gave him away to Kenshin, who is awfully squirrely about actually being there for Kagetora and, as far as I know, never directly answered Kagetora's question about whether he really chose him or Kagekatsu. Then, of course, there are the men who raped him. Takaya's father also sucks. So, yes, Naoe/Kaizaki does fill a father-protector role in many respects. That may read as incestuous, but there you have it.
At some point I feel like I have to be light-hearted, or I'll throw up my hands in despair and be like, "All these people need to bashed about the head with fricken' foam bats and force-marched to the therapist's."
I mean, realistically there is NO way the Kagetora-Naoe relationship can survive under the weight of expectation they've placed on it, even aside from all the trauma.
I once complained about how immature Takaya was in his response to the chatting girls at the Atomic Bomb Museum. Later I thought of one logical-though-unsatisfying-to-me reason for why a 400-year-old man might react like a teenager (aside from *cough* misogyny), which is that he never lives much past 25 in any of his lives. I don't know if that's contradicted by the story, though.
I totally agree one of the things that makes Mirage bearable is being able to laugh at it. Some years ago, Petronia remarked that she had to leave Mirage fandom because it was too emotionally taxing. I totally get that, though I miss her presence in the fandom, including her humorous summaries, and I hope we don't lose you to the same emotional overwhelm. :-)
Sorry to lightly spoil that Kagetora does make it well past 25 in at least a couple of lives, though it's true the math says that a lot of them were brief. (I think Takaya is number 11? Could be off.)
I don't know if Kuwabara-sensei necessarily sees your critiques about the girls at the A-Bomb Dome and such, but if it helps, I do think, broadly speaking, the inability of our heroes to "grow up" (for a long time) is part of the point. Who knows what 400 years of life would actually do a person, but this rings true to me on a more literal plane. I did things at around 40 that were very teenagerly--and lots of teenagerly things in my 30s, because I hadn't gone through some developmental milestones at the same time most did, because I was stuck in some kinds of trauma I didn't recognize or know how to address. I think life is like that for many. Sorry, I'm being overly serious again. Believe it or not, I do actually laugh at Mirage quite a lot!
Hm, I confess I never paid attention to the various Yoshis
The poor Yoshis, dismissed before they got a chance to make their case. And after all the angst about being second-rate, too. XD
Your steadfast love for Mirage is such an inspiration. <3 I think translating Mirage necessitates a certain distance because I have to think critically about everything I'm putting down. That critical analysis then spreads to everything else. If I have to write Kaizaki having sex with a drugged Takaya, which is noncon on one side and dubcon on the other, I'm going to be furious about it. "Helloooo, there are three people in this room!" It helps to be able to let out steam and be in a fandom where people are chill enough that nobody's like "Well, if you hate it so much, why don't you just drop it?" If I hated it I wouldn't put so much damned effort into it.
We definitely have different ideas about people's progression after 400 years, lol. For me, the general feeling is: these people have seen with their own eyes how much better life has gotten for the vast majority under democracy. We human beings often lament our short-sightedness and lack of historical perspective because it leads us to repeat past mistakes and fail to make adequate provisions for the future. In which case, shouldn't these 400-year-olds do better? Shouldn't they fight like hell to preserve the institutions that have transformed the short, brutish lives of the Sengoku into the comparatively long and peaceful lives of Japanese people today?
But then I realize Sensei wrote the books I'm translating now in her twenties and sigh. There is no "death of the author."
Given the setting of this arc at the seashore, Sensei said she was musing that 'the Sengoku really reached everywhere'. Also that the Houjou bloodline seemed a long-lived one--Souun lived to 80, his son Gen'an 96 in an era when the average lifespan was 50 years. There are so many historical figures she would never have known if not for this work.
Apparently there's an association of Yama-worship with the Kamakura area. There is a legend of E Island's blowing cave connecting to Fujinomiya's. The wind blowing from the grotto is now man-made (from a dragon curio?) which she finds strangely fascinating.
She has a friend who lives in Fujinomiya whose name is Ayako (same kanji as the fictional character). This friend acted as chauffeur and tour guide around Fujinomiya while she was conducting her research. She drove a new black Integra. Speaking of cars, it was pointed out to Sensei that she didn't write a model for Kotarou's car in the previous volume--she found it difficult to decide, but finally settled on a GTO. She comments that apparently the Houjou like Mitsubishi, since Ujiteru drove a Pajero.
She went to the Uesugi Festival in Yonezawa again this year, where she met many Mirage fans and had a wonderful time. She thanks various people.
This two-volume arc feels kinda like Death Note after L's death, where the author tries to do a huge pivot by tearing down everything they've built so far. And just like with Death Note, I don't think it really works (which IMO has to do with how the shift undermines pretty much all our favorite characters). Certainly if you look at the number of English-speaking Mirage fans who seem to lose interest around the next few volumes or so, the verdict appears to be "not worth it."
Welp, bracing myself for the next arc...
Wow, I'm so impressed and jazzed by all the translation you're doing, even though life busy-ness has kept me pretty quiet on the forum.
Due to the aforesaid busy-ness, I haven't had time to review the end of vol. 14 and my memory is mushy about what exactly happens when, so this will be a dumb reply, but I wanted to reply.
I'm not clearly remembering what shift happens right here. Are we getting into the Takaya and Chiaki go to high school stuff? My general sense of that plot is that I found it mostly boring; in fact, I think I just didn't absorb a lot of it. (In fact, this is getting into the part of Mirage where a large part of me has given up on following the plot outside of very broad strokes and just lets all the clan names wash over me--maybe that will change when I have time to go back and read your translations.)
But there are some gems of scenes in these volumes I truly love. I love the scene in vol. 15 where Naoe holds forth to Irobe about the nature of his relationship with Kagetora for several pages. Irobe doesn't say much comparatively, but I think what he does say is vital character/arc-building for Irobe too. I love the scene where Chiaki comes back to the hotel late after partying and starts teasing Takaya and then it gets kind of serious. I hope you'll also find some gems to hold onto in the parts ahead.
Yup, it's the Takaya and Chiaki go back to high school arc. It was annoying to translate, but I like it better on re-reading. Or maybe it's because the later volumes are so oppressive that ordinary high school concerns are a relief. ^^;;
If even you are bored with the feuding of the different clans, then an official English translation has no chance, hahah. I wonder if a Japanese audience, who might be descended from some of these clans and of course live in these cities, are more invested by default? I think the problem from a story perspective is that there are Wikipedia dumps of info, but no further depth or insight. It really is like armies from the Sengoku being transplanted to fight in the streets of modern Japan. Except that some characters also use modern English loan words like "backup" in sentences with "thees" and "thous". At which point I throw up my hands.