Senkaku Island Notes

I've been going through a huge time line of the Senkaku Islands conflict which I found online in order to prepare for (maybe) having to write an essay for a grad school application. (We'll find out about that part soon enough.)

But I was reading through the time line and through some essays and newspaper articles and was thinking back to conversations I was having with Ikumi about it and what she was saying about extremely patriotic-- and sometimes just very extreme essays-- Japanese people were writing about the crisis on websites like mixi. I also happened to see a photo album on the Globe and Mail's website with a wide variety of far-right racist douchebags.

With all this swimming in my head I started reading a 40 year old essay by famous Japanologist Donald Keene and just-as-famous Mishima Yukio buddy talking about the cultural effects the Sino-Japanese War had on Japan, and he started off the whole essay talking about how before the war Japan still had a definite image of China as being culturally and militaristically absolutely superior to the still-東夷 Japan, with huge Chinese ironclad warships visiting Japanese ports and Japanese diplomats still being given "the treatment" in China while trying everything to impress Chinese diplomats in Tokyo. As the extremely popular war progressed there was a wide-scale propaganda campaign put on by newspapers and book and woodblock print publishers to glorify Japanese soldiers while depicting the Chinese as weak and cowardly and wholly undeserving of their now-perhaps-mythologized glorious past. This view of China seems to have continued on to this day amongst the previously stated far-right racist douchebags, some of whom are in parliament, and a lot more revealingly: it was during the same war where the image of the Chinese went 180° that China lost the Senkaku Islands to Japan. (This is only after an evenings pre- and post-StarCraft 2 reading, but) I think the economic and diplomatic conflict between Japan and China over the last two months, as well as the general attitude of nationalist groups in Japan toward China, really began during the war 115 years ago. The atrocities of World War 2 and subsequent US occupation, the communist revolution in China and sometimes forced attempts to "reunite" the country, and more than anything, the discovery of 100 billion barrels of oil in the vicinity of the islands of course have a huge role on this crisis, but I think the crux of the issue has, Japan and China are at a crossroads right now the same way they were 115 years ago in terms of regional power and influence and Japan seems to be relying too much on those old post-war stereotypes of China being a backwards, lesser country and China seems to be embracing the even older stereotypes of their own grandeur.

(How many Chinese or Japanese ultranationalists will leave long rants in the comments section now...)

Big Daddy America and His Taste for Those Oishii Japanese Hamburgers

I haven't really paid attention to Adbusters since I left Canada-- well, specifically before that, when I went from being a poor student to really poor student who couldn't afford to buy a copy, but McDonald's Japan's ongoing... uh... somewhat racially insensitive advertising campaign (involving much stereotypical gaijin boobery) and the flood of offended middle-class white people on Debito.org's forums talking about writing ineffectual letters to McDonalds asking the company to voluntarily cease what I assume is a multi-billion yen campaign got me thinking: it would be so much easier just to culture jam the hell out of it. If Japan's legal system is as "weak" with "really no protection for this type of thing" as some people claim, then maybe they should take another route. For example, if Mr. James cardboard cutouts in front of McDonalds stores across the country are so offensive, how about covertly decapitating his cardboard cutout next time you're there for your America Burger? You could even slash his corrugated belly as to make it appear to be seppuku if you want to get really theatrical (you then should make a cardboard tanto and leave at the scene of the crime). I'm pretty sure the actor that plays Mr. James might be considering seppuku that already anyway. At any rate, there are some excellent comments on the forums though, so I do recommend taking a look. [And, no, I'm not going to explain here what the big deal or what my own opinions are.]

Strangely though, this all led me to revisit Adbusters, which has an article on their front page called "The Soul of Japan". This article surmises that Japan's current socio-economic crisis is a psychological reaction to the country's subservience to America since the end of WW2. This article, written by a Japanese-American university professor runs the gauntlets of articles about Japan appearing in English media-- ie. mentions bullet trains and anime and kawaiiness. He also very curiously mentions Mishima Yukiyo, who back in the 70's famously tried to inspire a group of Japanese soldiers to overthrow the democratically elected government and reinstate the emperor by giving a rousing ultra-nationalist speech from a window high above. But the window he chose was so high up that the soldiers could hardly hear a word he was saying, and those that could started laughing at him. Realizing what a total ass he'd made of himself, he committed seppuku and had his teenage male lover cut off his head. Another dead hero dying for the motherland.

(Kelts, the author, does have some pure gold quotes from Murakami Haruki though, who says in horror of the mid-20th century influx of Americana: "It was everywhere. And we’re not French, you know. We liked it." But I digress.)

The author repeatedly sympathizes with nut-cases like Mishima and fascists like the colourfully racist Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro (pictured together to the right -- the far right), and claims that the emasculation of Japanese men is the result of the younger brother relationship the Japan apparently has with the US -- along with being kawaii. He quotes visual artist Murakami Takashi, claiming,

"Evolution teaches us that cuteness is a symptom of dependence, urging adults to care for infants, puppies and kittens who are, after all, entirely helpless. A Japan shaped by its reliance upon big brother/big daddy America would naturally perfect this form of expression. Murakami’s theory goes: Be cute, and Daddy might be good to you, however much you hate 
it – and him."

I heard this sort of thing before before in Western media, but have never heard any Japanese people talk about it outside of that medium. It strikes me as bullshit and fits snugly on Western stereotypes of Japan, that somehow Japan and her citizens are over-saturated sickly sweet bunny-soft sakura-pink cuteness. Ugh. Was the grown who I saw hork into the sink in the staff room this morning just expressing his inner-kawaii? What about the pock-marked teenagers that laugh at me at the grocery store? It's very hard to maintain these cartoonish stereotypes while actually living in Japan.

Parallel to Japan, Canada has a similar ambivalent sentiment about the US. Back in the mid 20th century, like everywhere, there was sudden a massive flood of American pop culture and media. Most Canadians consume this media loyally and sometimes forgetting it's from a foreign country, but we also have politicians who do things like stomp on George W. Bush dolls on camera and say little quips like, "I hate those bastards!" [read: fired] (and we also publish magazines like Adbusters for that matter). And then we have Canadians who totally buy into anything Hollywood and talk about American foreign policy using the disturbingly and shockingly ignorant self-inclusive phrase "we". Canadians too have spent the last 50 or 60 years wrestling with this relationship, and how our own country's identity and culture fit in, and no one would say that we, for instance, like hockey because it appeases the Americans with the innocent ever-winter lumberjack image. Or produce maple syrup because it is associated with warm childhood memories of eating pancakes. Catch my drift?

The article ends with a sense that Japan is picking up the pieces, working out the baggage from World War 2 and overcoming the present pseudo-Western materialism, and finally starting to build self-confidence for a future where the article literally says Japan may even culturally eclipse America. (This is where my BS-alarm goes off again.) I do think Japan has a major self-confidence problem, but I don't think that comes from having post-war diplomatic or cultural links to the US. I think it comes from not having enough links to the outside world if anything. I think a lot of Japanese people are very insecure about their country's place in the world as an active member of the global society.

With all that being said, I do think that the article is correct that Japanese youth are now more than ever very strongly invested in the world around them and are not just interested in American pop culture, but their immediate mainland Asian neighbours and beyond. Kelts is also right, of course, that the not-so-liberal and only vaguely democratic Liberal Democratic Party's goose is cooked and Japan's future is wide open. That goes without saying.

However, this article and that recent Time Magazine article both seem to take a very ethnocentric view of Japan, with the former largely interviewing Japanese writers and artists who have extensive international experience but paying no attention to the millions of Japanese people that have never even left the country, or even their own respective islands. I love all those Murakamis, but what would a person who thinks Japan is it's own continent distinct from Asia say about globalization? But this overwhelming notion that Japan's future somehow rests in the hands of America, or "the West", is something that Westerners think about a lot, but isn't a big domestic issue here. I think the assumption of Japanese subservience to the West is by and large a Western one.

Where does this all links up to Mr. James gaijin circus campaign, itself sponsored by McDonald's (an Adbusters-targeted multinational that is a global champion of equal opportunity employment)? I apologize: it really doesn't directly, but I think both the stereotypes as Westerners as super-cool clowns and Japanese as extremely prone to cute pop culture and ritual suicide are damaging to international relations and very unbecoming for multinational corporations and the magazines that criticize them.

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (5)

Last time I believe I made some promise about writing real entries, but a man's got to do what a man's got to do. This might be another way of saying that life's been pretty swell lately but not in a write-about-it-in-my-blog sort of way. Do you want to hear about how good eel tastes? Care for the details of playing guitar, about why I chose not to watch the solar eclipse [damn evil spirits] or recording my own model versions of Martin Luther King-themed speeches for the annual prefectural speech contest? I didn't think so.

Anyway, here she goes. I transcribed the Japanese from paper while drinking-- nay, imbibing a White Russian and watching The Colbert Report (because that's how we roll), so if you notice any typos, let me know.

Original Japanese translation

例えばホール＆オーツやクイーンに、とにかく卑猥なものを･････。

マリコが自らの人生をトヨタに預けた時、彼女は、国民を洗脳するためにある日本の“和”への義理や尊敬や自己犠牲といった感覚を体験する事になる最後の世代の子供となった。

一九七五年以降に生まれた僕のような人間はどうだろう？僕らのことなんか忘れてしまっていい。僕らは繁殖し、よく食べ、際限なく増殖し、また際限なく壊れていく。それに、僕らに世代なんてものは存在しない。

マリコは僕の“シーン”について、いつもお姉さんぶった説教を始め、そんな自意識過剰で無意味なメヌエットが終わると、ＯＬとして稼いだ給料でまたバーバリー製品を買いに出かけた。彼女は一九九四年に千葉の歯医者と結婚し、僕のおいとなるはずの子を妊婦した。姉貴とは一年一度しか会わなかったが、僕が自分の人生をどれだけ無駄にしているか説教されるはめになった。

ずいぶん生意気なガキに聞こえるかもしれないけど、少しでも気休めになるなら、僕が自分に一番厳しいわけで、そんな厳しさは、僕を含めた無世代が受け継いだとしても、同時に、ダム、道路、食糧生産、人口衛星の打ち上げ、経済産業省、農業科学といった、この国の多くの遺産を維持することなどできないことを意味していた。いっそ、そんなすべてを爆破してしまった方がずっとおもしろいのかもしれないけど、自分にできないことはあまり言わない方がいいだろう。

My translation back into English

For example, on Hall & Oates or Queen. Anyway, really filthy stuff.

When Mariko handed her life over to Toyota, she became a child of the last generation that has to experience feelings of obligation and respect and self-sacrifice to the Japanese concept of "harmony", which exists to brainwash the public.

What are people like me who are born after 1975 like? You should forget about us. We multiply, we eat a lot, we breed endlessly and also break down endlessly. Besides, we don't believe in things like "generations".

Mariko would start to lecture me like a big sister about my "scene" and when she'd finish her ego driven, meaningless minuet, she'd go out again to buy Burberry products with the salary she earned as an office assistant. In 1995 she married a dentist from Chiba and became pregnant with the child that would become my nephew. I'd only see my big sis once a year but I'd always end up being lectured about how I was wasting my life.

I probably sound like quite the spoilt brat, but if it's any consolation, I'm hardest on myself and this severeness implies I cannot maintain the many inheritances from this country such as the dams, roads, food production, the launch of man-made satellites, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, agricultural science, etcetera. Really, it would probably be more interesting to blow all these things up, but I guess I shouldn't talk about things I can't do myself.

Commentary

There was a lot of odd non-JLPT vocabulary here. For my own benefit, I'll give a few examples of the curios I found.

際限なく・さいげんなく・Endlessly, without end -- there seem to be lots of ways to say this. Another one for the pile.
妊婦する・にんぷする・Basically means "to become pregnant", though as a noun this means "expectant mother", so it might be interpreted as "to become an expectant mother".
羽目になる・はめになる・To flatter, or to relax one's chi if you want to get technical -- but, the whole phrase "少しでも気休めになるなら" means "if it's any consolation", which is kind of neato.

Shout outs

Quick shout out to Kozo who posted his own translation of the last block of text in his own blog. He, I believe, can be counted as being a native speaker of both English and Japanese, so he picks up on some of the finer grammatical points that skip right over my head. And, he knows exactly what Burberry is, which is a little suspicious ;) [Disclaimer: I understood that it was a fashion company from context, but refused to acknowledge the existence of such a brand]

ザ・バーバリー

I'm still considering making a separate study blog, or maybe a half-decent multimedia job that could land me my next blog at some nerdy IT corporation. Maybe a third Japanese Studies blog that could get me into grad school somewhere half-respectable?

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (4)

I think this is it. Next time I'll go back to posting real content. Honest.

Original Japanese translation

十分にいいところだった。だって、埼玉はコンゴじゃないんだろう。彼女たちが、そんな世界とそこに暮らす人々を見捨てたことはあまりに屈辱的だった。親友のテツもまた、信じられないといった様子で、モルモン教徒について聞いた話を教えてくれた。なんて呼べばいいのか分からないが、その教区司祭か神父かが、ひと月に１回、少年たちを一室に集めて、マスターベーションの罪悪について説いたことを。全員に特殊な透明インクのペンと紙を渡し、前の月にマスターベーションした回数分だけ、コイン大の印を付けさせた。それから紙を全て回収し、壁に画鋲で留めてから明かりを消すと、部屋にたくさんの星が現れた。それは実際、とても美しそうだった。とにかく、司祭はそれを「罪の世界」とかそんな名前で呼び、翌月の若いモルモン教徒たちの使命は、その星を全て消していくこととなった。

突然、僕とテツは、これの彼女の子バージョンがどんなものなのかは、ただ想像するしかなかった。

０４

えっ、僕かい？僕は一九七五年東京の少し北で生まれた。たった一人のきょうだいは、一九七〇年生まれの姉のマリコだったが、彼女の感受性が僕とあまりにかけ離れていたため、それこそ一九五五年に生まれたんじゃないかと思えたほどだ。

自分はどういう人間と思うかを、彼女に聞いてみれば、ひとこと目からたぶん、バーバリーの全商品を所有していることを自ら話し始めるだろう。もしバーバリーがタンポンを作っていたら、マリコなら絶対に買ってるはずだ。彼女が若い時に最も熱中していたのは、八〇年代のデュラン・デュランをパックた安っぽい外国人バンドだった。未だに彼女は、月曜毎に原宿へ出かけており、体育館の外でロカビリーの衣装を着て踊っていた時代のことをよく覚えている。なんて恥ずかしいなんだろう。本当に最悪だ。僕ら姉弟の最大のケンカは、僕がフェルトペンで、彼女が大切にしていた一九八二年から一九八六年のミュージック・ライブの表紙に、オッパイや牙を描き込んだ後に起きた。

My translation back into English

It was a perfectly good place. After all, Saitama isn't exactly the Congo, right? Those girls who abandoned the world and all those that live there were extremely demeaning. My best friend Tetsu also, in a state of disbelief, told me what he heard about Mormons. I don't know what to call it, but the parish priest or the father gathers all the kids together in one room one time per month and preaches on the sin of masturbation. He gave everyone some paper and a pen with special transparent ink and makes them mark down the number of times they masturbated in a month. After that, he collected all the paper and after tacking them to the wall, he cut the lights and in the room the stars appeared. That actually must have been beautiful. Anyway, the priest called that "the world of sin" or something, and gave the young Mormons the mission for the next month of extinguishing all stars.

Suddenly, Tetsu and I could only imagine while child-versions of these girls were like.

Chapter 4

Huh? Me? I was born in 1975 a little north of Tokyo. My only sibling, Mariko, was born in 1970 but because her sensibilities are completely different from mine, I could almost think she was born in 1955.

If you ask her what kind of person she is, probably in a word, she would first say she was the owner of all of Burberry's merchandise. Supposing Burberry made tampons, Mariko would definitely be buying them. When she was young, what she was most crazy about was the cheap foreign band Duran Duran. Still, she often thinks of the days when every Friday she'd go down to Harajuku and dance outside of the gym in rockabilly clothing. How embarrassing. Really the worst. The biggest fight we had as siblings happened after I drew tits and fangs on the cover of her precious concert calender from 1982 to 1986.

Thoughts

Exhausted. I'm not sure-- I actually have no idea who or what a Burberry is. Also, it took me forever to realize that 原宿 is "Harajuku", despite being plastered on Gwen Stefani-themed perfume bottles everywhere.


Also one of those annoying instances with those mutant words where the first kanji is the Japanese-reading and the second is the Chinese-reading, for you linguistics nerds out there.

There were also quite a few words and phrases that I couldn't find in any dictionary, so some of this translation is strictly a figment of my own imagination. So if you or anyone you know has accuracy tips, please share.

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (3)

Long time no see. Last time I wrote here I was just starting to study for the JLPT, and since then I studied for pretty much two-months straight, overdosed on Japanese, jumped into the Tafuse River, drowned, was resurrected and now am sitting in front of my computer writing again.

So I continued translating Douglas Coupland's Japan-only novel "God Hates Japan", which is not an anti-Japanese religious diatribe by the Westboro Baptist Church, but rather, a look at how Japan and the Japanese people are handling the country's own modern era in a vein similar to how Coupland has tackled Canada or before that, the United States in his other novels. So here's the third instalment.

Original Japanese translation

０２

そのため僕は木曜の真夜中を待って、二人の黒い自転車に忍び寄ると、ブリキ鋏でスポークを 中央の軸から切断してしまうことで、直接復讐を果たした。僕は誰が見ていようが全く気にならなかったし、実際、最低でも一握りほどの人間が目撃していただ ろうが、その後、警察からも誰からも連絡はなかった。

でも車輪のない自転車を眺めているのはおかしなものだ。まるで彼女たちが見つけ出そうとしていた星のような、家に帰ってからもなかなか眠りにつけなかった。あまりにむかついていたからだ･･････。

と うもろこしばかり食べてるマヌケどもめ、よくも僕らの国へのこのことやって来て、自分たちでさえ理解していない錆びついた絵空事を押し付けやがって。あい つらがキミコを誘拐したんだ。あいつらが、駅に入ってきた地下鉄の前へ押し出すように、リエコとカオルを殺してしまったんだ。

０３

そ の夜は気温も高く、暖かかった。僕は受験地獄のために猛勉強していなければならないはずだったが、ほんの一吹きのモンスーンで、とても集中なんかしていら れなくなった。僕はキミコが何を見ているのか想像してみようとした。一体どこへ行ってしまったんだろう。神殿の中へか？宗教は神殿が大好きだ。それとも神 様のもとへ行ったのだろうか？それにしても神様というのはあまりに日本っぽくない考え方だった。日本では一人の神様のところに行き、欲しいものを祈って、 もしそれで叶わなければ、また次の神様に祈りに行くんだ。

他 に何があるだろう？たぶん、僕は同時に、まともな理由もないくせに、どう見たって最低な、この地上の世界を見捨てる道を選んだ彼女たちに怒りを考えてい た。僕らは比較的恵まれた地域に住んでいた。テニスコートやキャヂラックや貴族の称号なんてものとは無縁だとしても、十分にいいところだった。

My translation back into English

Chapter 2

For that reason, I waited until the middle of the night, snuck up to their black bikes and by using a pair of tin snips to cut the centre shaft of the spokes, I took direct revenge. I didn't feel uneasy at all that someone might be watching, and in reality, at worst probably only a handful of people saw me, but afterwards, I didn't get any word from the police.

But staring at a wheel-less bicycles is really strange. Like the star that the girls were searching for, when I got home I couldn't fall asleep at all. Because I felt over-irritated...

These goddamn idiots eating nothing but corn, how dare they come to our country and push this rusty pipe dream that they themselves don't understand. They kidnapped Kimiko. They killed Rieko and Kaoru, like pushing them in front of a subway train coming into the station.

Chapter 3

That night the temperature was high and it was hot. I was in exam hell and should have been studying extra-hard, but with the mere gust of the monsoon, I really couldn't focus. I imagined what Kimiko must be looking at. Where the hell did she go off too? In a temple? Religions love their temples. Or, did she go below her God? Nevertheless, "God" isn't really a Japanese way of thinking. In Japan, we go to one god, pray for the thing we wish for, and if it doesn't come true, we go and pray again at the next god.

What else is there? Probably, despite not having a good reason, and nasty now matter how you look at it, I was mad at these girls that chose a path that abandoned the world above ground. We lived in a relatively well-off area. Even if things like tennis courts and Cadillacs and the names of nobility are unrelated, it was a perfectly fine place.

Thoughts

Nothing mind-blowing here. Some of the grammar is a bit slangy, and lots of strange vocabulary which I won't bore you with. For some reason, the spell-checker doesn't like "snuck" as the past-tense of "sneak". Yup.

Just one small note, which is, it has occurred to me that posting several pages of a published novel-- published in the country from which I'm writing no less-- is morally iffy, so I should take this opportunity to say that this is really for the sake of my own studying. I'm only posting it in case anyone's interested or has comments.

And if anyone at kencho is reading this, this is how I spent my POD.

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (2)

The second page I translated wasn't neeeeeeeearly as hard as the first one. It was actually pretty readable. Anyway, if you're into this nerdy stuff, take a look and give me your opinion.

Original Japanese Translation

逆に、カナダ人に典型的なブロンド髪のスコットは、クールなスケーター風にも拘わらず、彼もまたマヌケな感じがした。彼はモルモンの教団から支給されたダサい自転車でトリックもキメられ、キミコがはじめて彼に憑依したampmコンビニの前で、それをいつも披露していた。たぶん、そんな彼の陳腐な虚勢と完璧な歯並びが、後に宗教を見つけたキミコにウケたわけで、彼女の影響下にあったリエコとカオルも取り込んでしまったのだろう。

僕には、そんな噂がクラスで飛び交い始めたことが、とても信じられなかった。どうして彼女たちでなければならないのか？でもまず頭に浮かんできたのは、モルモン教が宣教師として、マヌケな連中ばかりを先進国へ送り込みながら、優秀な人間たちをシエフ・レオネやニュー・デリーといった僻地へ流していたことによる安堵感だった。

というか、宗教って一体ナンだろう……。そもそも宗教って本当に何なんだろう？いや、マジで……。僕だって別にイヤミな人間になりたくないけど……、さすがにキミコの目を見れば分かるさ。リエコにしてって、カオルにしたってそうだ。空っぽで死んだようなその目は、道路や廊下を歩いているときでさえ、ラーメン屋の看板や近づく人や車など、近くのものにまるで焦点が合ってないかのようだった。その目は地平線を見やり、夜空に浮かんだ一番星を見つけようとでもしているようだった。

スコットは僕らの世界から3人を奪った。人としての本質を消し去ってしまい、人間消臭剤に変身させてしまったのだ。

My Translation

Conversely, Scott, the typical blonde Canadian, regardless of his kakkou-ii skater style, also had an idiotic feeling about him. He'd always announce how he met Kimiko for the first time in front of the AMPM convenience store where he was performing tricks on his clunky Mormon Church supplied bicycle. Probably, that guy's hackneyed bravado and perfect teeth were the reason Kimiko found religion, and under her influence, Rieko and Eriko were also introduced.

When the rumours started flying around class, I didn't believe it at all. Why did it have to be them? But what came to mind first was, as Mormon missionaries, while they send no one but this stupid lot to the advanced countries, there's a flow of excellent people to remote places like Sierra Leone or New Deli.

Perhaps I should say, what the hell is religion? What's religion really in the first place? No, seriously. I don't especially want to become a sarcastic person, but, as might be expected, Kimiko's eyes speak for themselves. It seems she got both Rieko and then Kaoru. Those dead, empty-looking eyes, even when walking down the street or through the halls, when looking at ramen shop signs approaching people, cars, or with close objects, didn't change focus. It was like she stared at the horizon and was searching in the night's sky for the first star to appear.

Scott stole three people from our world. He erased their essence as people and transformed them with human-deodorant.

Thoughts

I'm not sure about the last two sentences of the third paragraph. One of those awkard situations where I knew what he was trying to say, but wasn't sure how to put it.

Translation Exercise: "God Hates Japan" (1)

In 2001, Canadian author Douglas Coupland released a book in Japan strangely titled, "God Hates Japan" (神は日本を憎んでいる). I don't know that much about the book itself, but he wrote it in English, it was translated into Japanese, and published by a manga studio of some sort.

Anyway, I bought a copy off of the Japanese Amazon site a few years ago, and it ended up in one of many boxes with all my other books when I left for Japan. I'm home on vacation right now and was going through my stuff and thought I'd translate a couple of pages of this mouse-gnawed book since the Japanese Proficiency Test is coming up and I need some practice.

First here's the annotated first page of the original Japanese (for educational purposes only), then my English translation below.

Original Japanese translation

パート1

高校生活最後の年に、クラスでかわかった３人の女子が宗教を見つけた。物語を始めるには妙な場所かもしれないが、(1) それが結構そうでもなかったりする。何かの役に立つかは分からないが、そんなキミコとカオルとエリコの３人は、(2) クラスの中でも背の高い方だった。そんな彼女たちの身のこなしは見事と言うしかなく、(3) 生物教師のウエダをして、第二次世界大戦争の国民の食生活における乳製品の大量導入が、結果的に、日本人をより優れた民族にしたごとの生きた証だと言わしめたほどだった。なんて気味の悪いファシストなんだろう。とにかく、３人は現実に存在した。クラスでも有数の美人で、喩えるなら、タンポポやオヒシバの僕らと較べたら、薔薇や牡丹の３人は、正統派美人の確たる例として、僕らの前に叩きつけられた。

でも彼女たちが、偶然に宗教を発見したわけではない。それは、モルモン教宣教師のスコットとカービーが、僕の家から6軒先にあったキミコの家の隣にホームステイし始めてからのことだ。カービーのやつは、(4) いかにもアメリカのテレビドラマに登場する、カリフォルニアの砂漠の真ん中に取り残されたトレーラーを改造したクリスタル・メタアンフェタミン精製所に収入を試みそうなやつだった。(5) どこかマヌケな怠け者といった感じで、あの滑稽なモルモン教徒の定番（ユニフォーム）であるシャツとネクタイでさえ、その下品さをカモフラージュしきれなかった。しかも、教会が髪を切ってしまうまでは、きっと角刈りだったに違いない。

Notes:

(1) それが結構そうでもなかったりする
Bad way to start. I'm not sure what this is referring to exactly, which is a bit problematic. I found three hits for this phrase on Google so it is Japanese. If anyone has ideas, please let me know.
(2) の中でも
This phrase is used as "among" or "above".
(3) をして ... 言わしめた
My friend Kaori helped me with this one, and I finally found a entry in Yahoo辞典 with a translation of this phrase into standard, modern Japanese, which says something. The final verb is reflexive, stretching waaaay back to the を particle, which is used after a name to mean "make someone say".
(4) 登場する、... 収入を試みそう
Here too the final verb seems to modify the proceeding verbs. I'm also not 100% sure about this, but it seems to be "try to ... and ...".
(5) といった感じ
This phrase means "a typical ...". I don't know it's relation to the many other phrases that mean basically the same thing.

My translation back into English

Part 1

In their last year of high school life, three cute girls in my class found religion. This might be a weird place to start a story but, sometimes that doesn't seem to be enough. I don't know if this is going to help in some way, but that trio of Kimiko, Kaoru and Eriko were even the tallest in class. I won't say anything about them other than the way they carried themselves was splendid, to the point that they made the bio teacher Ueda say that they were living proof that the abundant introduction of milk products into the citizens' diet during World War 2 created a race that had surpassed the Japanese. What a creepy fascist. Anyway, these three actually existed. As the leading beauty queens in the class -- if you were to make an analogy, when you compare to us dandelions and wiregrasses, these three roses and peonies -- as definite examples of the orthodox beautiful girls -- slapped us in the face.

But these girls, they didn't just accidentally find religion. That is, the Mormon missionaries Scott and Kirby were on their first home stay trip in Kimiko's house six doors down from mine. This guy Kirby was the kind of guy that would try to make it onto an American TV drama or try to make a living in a trailer in the middle of the California desert modded into a crystal meth lab. He was a typical idiot punk and even in those funny prerequisite Mormon shirts and ties, it was impossible to camouflage that kind of vulgarity. In addition, as far as the church cutting his hair, it was no doubt a proper buzz cut.

Thoughts

So this was incredibly hard to translate. I would be surprised if my version is 70% accurate in terms of grammar, and not just because my Japanese is atrocious, but because a lot of the phrases are obscure and the sentences are really surprisingly complex. This is probably appropriate for ikyu-test takers.

If you have any comments, suggestions or translation ideas, I'm all ears, folks.

Translation Exercise: "Wolf Totem" (2)

Here's part two of my translation of Wolf Totem (狼图腾) by Jiang Rong (姜戎). This time, to make it a little bit more readable, I mixed in the source text (the English) with my Japanese translation. And like last time, please feel free to point out any errors, irregularities or suggestions.

英和翻訳：

神なるオオカミ (Wolf Totem・狼图腾)

夜に、狼が狩りに出かける時に、陳が浅く眠る。彼はガスマイに交代する時に狼が囲いに侵入したら呼ぼうと言って、動物を退却させるのを助けて、必要に応じ て真っ向から戦うと約束した。ビルギーはやぎひげをしごき、微笑し、そんなに狼に執着している中国人と会ったことがないと言った。北京の学生が表した異常 な興味の程度に満足そうだった。

At night, when the wolves came out to hunt, Chen would sleep lightly. He had told Gasmai to call him if a wolf ever broke into the pen when she was on guard duty, assuring her that he would help drive the animal away, fight it head-on if necessary. Bilgee would stroke his goatee, smile and say he'd never seen a Chinese so fixated on wolves. He seemed pleased with the unusual degree of interest displayed by the student from Beijing.

最初の冬の間、ある雪の降る夜に陳は懐中電灯を持って、狼と犬と女の接近戦を目撃した。

Late one snowy night during his first winter, Chen, flashlight in hand, witnessed at close quarters a battle between a wolf, a dog and a woman.

「チェンチェン！チェンチェン！」

"Chenchen! Chenchen!"

陳はガスマイの逆上した泣き声と犬たちの荒っぽい吠える声で目が覚めた。彼はフェルトのブーツを穿いてデールのモンゴル風のローブのボタンを掛けてから、懐中電灯と羊飼いの棒を持って外に出た。懐中電灯の光が雪を切るように進んで、詰め込んだ羊たちから力ずく離しているため狼の尻尾を握ているガスマイを見 せられた。狼が必死になってガスマイを噛んでみていた。同時に馬鹿な太っている羊は狼にぞっとしてほとんど凍死して密集し、風除けに後退りし、雪片が 蒸気になったほどぎっしり詰め込んだ。狼は前部が動けなくされた、ガスマイと綱引きをしながら地面を足で掻き、羊に噛み付くことだけできた。陳は助ける ためよろよろ歩いて行ったが何をすべきか分からなかった。ガスマイの二匹の犬は羊にがんじがらめにされた。大きいな狼に行けないから、荒っぽい無力な吠える羽目 になった。同時にビルギーの五・六匹の猟犬が隣人の犬たちと一緒に、囲いの西に他の狼を戦っていた。吠える声と遠ぼえと苦しんでいる泣き声は天地を揺さ ぶった。陳はガスマイを助けたかったのに足が動けないほど不安定だった。生きている狼を触るという監房が身がすくむような恐怖で消えた。

Chen was awakened by Gasmai's frantic cries and the wild barking of dogs. After pulling on his felt boots and buttoning up his Mongol robe, his deel, he ran out of the yurt on shaky legs, flashlight and herding club in hand. The beam of the light sliced through the snow to reveal Gasmai holding on to the tail of a wolf, trying to turn it's fangs on her. Meanwhile, the stupid, fat sheep, petrified by the wolf and nearly frozen by the wind, huddled together and kept backing up against the windbreak, packed so tightly the snowflakes between their bodies turned to steam. The front half of the wolf was immobilized; it could only paw at the ground and snap at the sheep in front of it, all the while engaged in a tug-of-war with Gasmai. Chen staggered over to help but didn't know what to do. Gasmai's two dogs were hemmed in by the huddled sheep. Unable to get to the big wolf, they were reduced to wild, impotent barking. At the same time, Bilgee's five or six hunting dogs, together with their neighbor's dogs, were fighting other wolves east of the pen. The barks, the howls and the agonizing cries of the dogs shook heaven and earth. Chen wanted to help Gasmai, but his legs were so rubbery he could barely move. His desire to touch a living wolf had vanished, replaced by paralyzing fear.

Okay! That's it for now.

My question this time is the difference between saying "何々して" and "何々し". I know the "て" form is sometimes used to show a direct connection between cause and effect, and the stem form of a verb is often used in a list of events, but here I perhaps inappropriately mixed and matched where I saw fit. Any comments about this?

I also wanted to thank Kozo, a friend of mine from university and easily one of the nicest people I know, who gave me heaps of good suggestions. He's been doing translations as well, but rather than doing them are grammar-vocabulary exercises, he's refining his already-excellent written Japanese. He also asked if he could give a shot at his own translation, and needless to say, his is a lot more accurate. But interestingly, there are a few places where mine's not necessarily wrong, or at least not completely wrong, but our choice of words is quite different. I also saw a version his parents did, which was again quite different. Maybe he'll let me post them in some sort of translation exposé.

Translation Exercise: "Wolf Totem" (1)

Classes are over and I'm starving for something to do. I've been translating pretty much anything I can get my hands on, just for the practice, but unfortunately most of the English language literature I have is itself a translation -- either from Russian or Chinese or Japanese -- or is written in post-modern vernacular and is almost impossible to render in another language.

A few weeks ago, I tried to translate a few paragraphs of "Wolf Totem", a famous modern Chinese model by Jiang Rong. Here's the broken-Japanese result:

英和翻訳：

神なるオオカミ (Wolf Totem・狼图腾)

(甚だしい誤りを見たら、教えて下さい。)

ビルギーと一緒にいるのは慰められる。陳は頭がすっきりするように目をこすり、静かにビルギーにまばたきし、そしてガゼルと狼を眺めるように望遠鏡を上げる。

陳は先の狼と遭遇してから、草地の住民―遊牧民―はいつも狼に囲まれるまでは長くないと理解するようになった。ほぼ毎晩幽霊のような狼の姿を見つける―特にひどく寒い冬に。一、二――あるいは五、六――それとも、十二もの明るい緑の目組が放牧地の周囲に動くのが見える。百里以上。ある夜には陳とビルギーの嫁のガスマイが懐中電灯で二十五匹まで数える。

ゲリラ軍のように遊牧民が簡単のために努力する。冬の間に羊小屋は防風柵として役立つ大きいなフェツトじゅうたんが付けている荷馬車によって移動垣根となった半円だ。しかし狼を防げない。広い南部の通路は犬の一群と当番の女に守られる。時折狼が羊小屋に侵入し、犬と戦う。体がユルトの壁にドサッとぶつかって、内にいる人に目を覚めさせる。陳陣に二回起こって、寝台に落ちるのを防ぐのはその壁じかなかった。しばしば遊牧民は狼から二枚のフェルトじゅうたんだけで分離する。

注： 陳陣＝チェン・ジェン

質問：

日本語の小説は一般的に現在形で書かれるながら、英語の小説はよく過去形で書かれる。日本語では、聞き伝えとかあるキャラクターの過去の経験について話すときに、過去形は適当でしょうか。

Source text: Wolf Totem (狼图腾) by Jiang Rong (姜戎)

Having Bilgee beside him was comforting. Chen rubbed his eyes to clear away the mist and blinked calmly at Bilgee, then raised his telescope again to watch the gazelles and the wolves.

Since his earlier encounter with the wolves, he had come to understand that the inhabitants of the grassland, the nomads, were never far from being surrounded by wolves. Nearly every night he spotted ghostly wolf outlines, especially during the frigid winter; two or three, perhaps five or six, and as many as many as ten pairs of glittering green eyes moving around the perimeter of the grazing land, as far as a hundred li or more distant. One night he and Bilgee’s daughter-in-law Gasmai, aided by flashlights, counted twenty-five of them.

Like guerrilla fighters, nomads strive for simplicity. During the winter, sheep pens are semicircles formed by wagons and mobile fencing, with large felt rugs that serve as a windbreak but cannot keep out the wolves. The wide southern openings are guarded by packs of dogs and women on watch shifts. From time to time, wolves break into the pens and fight the dogs. Bodies often thud into yurt walls, waking people on the other side; twice that had happened to Chen Zhen, and all that had kept a wolf from landing beside him was that wall. Frequently, nomads are separated from wolves by no more than a couple of felt rugs.

Question:

Japanese novels are generally written in present tense, while English novels are frequently written in past tense. In Japanese, when talking about hearsay or a character’s past experiences, is past tense appropriate?