Science Fiction writer James Blish once wrote crossly about the habit some writers had of showing an animal that looked like a rabbit, acted like a rabbit, in all important respects was a rabbit -- and calling it a "smeerp."
I can't think off-hand of a culture other than Japan that gets so much of this. Seems everyone that writes about it has to make sure you use ocha instead of tea, hashi for chopsticks...all the way out to using the Japanese spelling and pronunciation of English loan-words.
And, sure, I get it. The delights of language. More, it is easy to see why "katana" and "kimono" because whereas the literal meaning of the latter is "clothes" and the former is just a kind of sword it is worth making note of the distinctive kind of clothing and sword.
And for someone like me, well, it is fun that ocha is actually o-cha, that is, "Honorable tea" (honorifics are hard to translate directly into English) and the latter is derived from "bridge."
I guess I'm reacting to the way it just seems to be done so much that it has become cliche. Since I'm writing books full of cliche anyhow, I would like to skip some of them when I can!
***
The other problem is a problem for me and a worse problem for the reader. This is more fish-out-of-water stuff, but more specifically, the early chapters are all about Penny showing that she can confidently navigate a place where she doesn't know any of the language.
The kinds of situations I've set up, it seems too awkward to leave out all the actual speech, as in, "They spoke Japanese to me. I thought I caught the word for 'run', so I ran." The scenes scan better if I put the actual thing being said.
So first problem is that my Japanese is rusty, and was never that good to begin with. And to make the problem vastly worse, there is a huge gulf between technically correct -- whether phrasebook Japanese or Google Translate Japanese -- and correct idiomatic usage. A difference which would be instantly obvious to any reader who knows even as little as I know about Japanese.
(I'm reminded for some reason of a cute gag in Urusei Yatsura where foreign reporters are commenting on a race. The French one is yelling things like "Ou est le pencil! C'est sur la table!")
And of course in the end I muck up my perfectly good idiomatic phrases because I need them to be just at the edge of understandable; that certain words and forms are re-appearing.
Well, there's always editing. I can always cut more of the Japanese out when I'm in revisions.
***
I got the opening to work and then I stopped for two or three days to work out Part I in more detail. Yeah, I'm stuck with it now. Each Athena Fox story starts with a prologue (in italics) which is Penny's show as broadcast. Then five parts, each with an amusing name of some sort, with part IV starting at the final pinch point of the third act in a three-act structure. I've sort of given up on amusing names for this one and the part names are word/concepts; Ryokan, Ganbatte, Kitsune, Makoto. (Or they might end up as Sumimasen, Yatta, Magatama, Honne. Nothing is drawn in ink, not yet.)
Part I is basically being a tourist in (mostly) the traditional parts of Kyoto, plus ninja. I looked at a bunch of stuff for Toei Eigamura. It took typing not just the Japanese name but the kanji into YouTube to pull up some videos from inside the activities. So the stuff there just got bigger and bigger and now I've got a long chapter where she not only looks at the Edo Village standing set of Toei Studio, but dresses up as a "Young Man"** from their costume options and is interacted with by the cast of the chambara exhibition, but also visits the "Ninja Maze" with a hall of mirrors like something out of a Bruce Lee movie (no, some Western tourists made that comment on their video). The only thing this bit lacks is "real" fake ninjas.
Instead the first ninja attack of the novel takes place at Kamogawa...err, bridge over the Kamo river in the East of Kyoto, not far from her ryokan, where a music major at Kyogei (err...Kyoto University) is sort-of busking on shakuhachi. In fact she's playing "Round Midnight." This is the weirdness research will lead you to. I had a question about busking in Kyoto and that led me to a blog where a first experience of shakuhachi was described as being similar to the thrill of hearing Coltrane, and I figured of course you could play that Dexter Gordon standard. Flipped on to YouTube and found someone doing just that and it sounded even cooler than I'd imagined.
Ooh. And I just realized there's a pun lurking in all this. The people who famously wandered around playing shakuhachi are of course Zen monks. Well, Gordon didn't write that song. Of course not. Monk did. (Brother Thelonious, that is. And it's a pretty good beer, too.)
To finish off my research of the last few days, I already knew there was a crazy mall under Kyoto Station. They have some appropriate clothing shops and a health and beauty supply called Hikari and there was going to be a scene already -- originally at the massive Takashiyama depato...department store...getting clothes and makeup -- and the name is also perfect for her room at the ryokan (it looks nice in kanji) and it means "light," not "bright" but the connection is there if I want to use that, too.
And it is plot-advancing. They have Genki stuff there, too; the healing bracelets and special creams made by one of the tendrils of Healthy Spirit. And yes I caught a "how to pack for Kyoto" on YouTube that at one moment was talking about recommended make-up supplies you could get locally and without the slightest break was going on about pain-reducing magnet stick-ons.
And of course there's ninja. Which means Penny needs a clever way to not get stabbed, again. Although there are at least two very good and reputable places to buy decent swords in Kyoto, and cheaper stuff is even easier to find, the maps of the Kyoto Porta don't show an appropriate shop there. There are, however, a pair of shops that are rather intriguing; one sells chopsticks. The other sells fans. Hrm. This requires more thought.
(The trouble with writing action scenes with Penny is that she's not supposed to be trained. Even Athena Fox isn't supposed to be a fighter. She's supposed to be able to talk her way out of trouble. The sword fight in the last book had some really big hand waves to make it possible to happen at all. Having her fight off ninja is even more problematic...in so many ways. Even if they are really poor ninja.)
** So there's a ridiculous bit to unpack here. I got lucky and the official site of the Toei Eigamura park has a list and pictures of all the costumes available to rent for an hour and stroll around the village set in. They are, naturally, gender-segregated. Guys have the choice of basically samurai or cops; shinsengumi, ronin, etc. Girls have the popular choices of geisha/maiko (make-up and wig available for an extra charge) and married or unmarried woman, all in typical kimono et al. Except. Down at the end is a woman with pink cherry-blossom pattern hakama and she has the two swords of a samurai stuck in her sash. She is identified in English as "Young Person" and that's not...wrong...but the Japanese word is also on the picture and that word is Wakashu.
Wakashu were boys. Boys of the samurai class who often dressed as women and who formed, err, friendships with older samurai. (And were also apparently much lusted after by women as well). Some academic papers describe this as 'The Third Gender of Edo."
So one wonders how much of this is understood, tacitly or not, among the people who rent the costumes, and how much it is made clear to people who aren't aware of that cultural tidbit. It looks like it is aimed at just being a way for the female tourist (Japanese or not) to get to wear a costume with swords included, and the chambara I watched (sorry, sorry, sword fight) the hero character was played by and was obviously meant to be seen as a female samurai.
But there is some really interesting gender role stuff going on here and for a novel that's going to include a dip into the famously cross-dressing Takarasuka Revue, quite the thing.
This is why we research.
No comments:
Post a Comment