Forum - View topicNEWS: Shōgo Imamura's Historical Firefighter Novel Hikuidori Get TV Anime, Manga
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malvarez1
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The premise sounds cool, but that studio is a red flag.
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MFrontier
Posts: 15098 |
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Edo firefighters! Neat!
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vgiannell5
Posts: 102 |
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So they're like the Fire Force of the Edo era?
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shosakukan
Posts: 346 |
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Ms Cayanan has romanised the name of the novel series 「羽州ぼろ鳶組」 as 'Ushūboro Tobigumi', and she has put a space between 'Ushūboro' and 'Tobigumi'. It indicates that she thought, if she put a space in the romanised series name, the string of characters 'Ushūborotobigumi (羽州ぼろ鳶組)' should be divided into 'Ushūboro (羽州ぼろ)' and 'Tobigumi (鳶組)' and that she also thought the 'boro' part should be connected to the 'Ushū' part. She may have also seen the English Wikipedia say, 'Ushūboro Tobigumi' regarding the novel series. But, as a Japanese expression, Ms Cayanan's 'Ushūboro' seems to be very odd to the eyes of people who are fluent in Japanese. Actually, if someone puts one space in the romanised series name/string of characters 'Ushūborotobigumi', it should be 'Ushū Borotobigumi'. The novelist Imamura Shōgo wrote:
(彦弥 Hikoya is a member of the fire brigade.) In the story world of the novel series, the protagonist Matsunaga Gengo leads the fire brigade which belongs to the Shinjō Domain. 'Ushū' is a way to call the province in which the Shinjō Domain is. Usually, when a daimyō had a fire brigade, the firefighters of the brigade wore fine attire. However, in the story world, since the government of the Shinjō Domain has provided only a small budget to the fire brigade, the firefighters of the brigade wear rags ('boro'). Therefore, the brigade got the nickname of 'Borotobigumi (a fire brigade in rags)'. (Roughly speaking, 'tobi' are construction workers, but they also worked as firefighters in the Edo period. Since the context, including the contents of the novel series, is about fire fighting, I have translated 'tobigumi' as a 'fire brigade' here. According to Professor Ikegami Akihiko, a scholar who specialised in early modern Japanese history, in the late 18th century, machi bikeshi (the fire brigades under the jurisdiction of the magistrate of Edo) got to mostly consisit of tobi.) Those old-fashioned firefighters sometimes appeared in traditional Japanese arts and entertainment, for example, in the 'Kami no Megumi Wagō no Torikumi' kabuki play and the 'Kaji Musuko' rakugo story. Edo-period firefighters also appeared in Ōtomo Katsuhiro's 'Hi no Yōjin' manga and anime. In the ANN article, Ms Cayanan has mentioned the Hikuidori Project's official website and a Comic Natalie article about Hikuidori as the sources. In the first place, the Comic Natalie article and the 'Outline' page of the official site clearly say that the brigade in question is called Borotobigumi (or Borotobi). Also, the copyright credit line of the picture in the ANN article says, 'ぼろ鳶組一同.' If she had carefully read the article and the official website, she would have not divided 'Ushūborotobigumi' into 'Ushūboro' and 'Tobigumi'. It is better for you to attentively read sources when you write articles, Ms Cayanan. Also, if you work as a writer-editor for a company which is supposed to specialise in Japanese stuff and want to produce high-quality results, probably it is better for you to study Japanological skills and knowledge harder. |
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FishLion
 Posts: 368 |
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Somewhere, Galo is extremely hype about this.
My impression was it was always written that way in the ANN Encyclopedia and they probably referred to that or Wikipedia. Regardless, we don't need anime reporters to be Japanese experts just to satisfy the linguistic quibbles of English fans who are fluent, if two very reliable English sources list the space in the wrong place then it is an understandable mistake and we should correct the sources themselves before more people get it wrong and not scold reporters for not being fluent in Japanese and scouring Japanese language sources like Comic Natalie. They mention them as sources but as the sources are in Japanese they can't be expected to identify specific Japanese words in the article and related them to the title. We can bring that language discrepancy to ANN's attention and I appreciate you pointing it out overall, but it's kind of weird to scold someone for not investigating the site enough when they used preexisting references that repeat the same mistake, especially because I like learning about the minutia of translating but scolding an anime writer for no knowing Japanese leaves a bad taste in my mouth. |
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