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Spoiler Courtesy
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Proper Nouns
Name
Hiragana reading
Notes
Kindle location first mentioned
赤川次郎
あかがわじろう
the author
cover
尾田医師
おだいし
Doctor Oda
24
目高組
めだかぐみ
Medaka clan
86
星泉
ほしいずみ
main character, Izumi
170
酒井好子
さかいよしこ
aunt Yoshiko
172
星貴志
ほしたかし
main character’s father, Takashi
179
酒井呈一
さかいていいち
Uncle (Yoshiko’s husband)
201
知子
ともこ
Tomoko (?Izumi’s mother)
211
奥沢哲夫
おくざわてつお
Classmate of Izumi, Tetsuo (son of an executive, smart dresser, family expect him home for dinner on time)
251
渡辺周平
わたなべしゅうへい
Classmate of Izumi, Shuhei (stocky, bowlegged, loves Judo)
251
竹内智生
たけうちともお
Classmate of Izumi, Tomo. (Smart, heading for Tokyo university, wears glasses)
261
マユミ
-
mysterious woman in Izumi’s apartment
348
三浦久子
みうらひさこ
Miss Miura, teacher
357
保科校長
ほしなこうちょう
Headteacher Hoshina
368
和子
かずこ
classmate,
433
健次
けんじ
Kenji, Medaka gang member, short, unbalanced (brought the doctor in the car in the prologue), chews gum
555
英樹
ひでき
Hideki, Medaka gang member, skinny and unhealthy looking, wears thick glasses
556
武
たけし
Takeshi, Medaka gang member, stocky and overweight
558
佐久間
さくま
Sakuma, Medaka second in command, unusually tall (‘beanpole’), in 50s
558
黒木
くろき
detective, head of the S section
870
浜口物産
はまぐちぶっさん
Hamaguchi trading company
936
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1.The telephone is ringing and Izumi (not feeling well) says
やんなっちゃうなあ
The overall sense is clear from the context, but any help with parsing/unpacking this?
2. Izumi is worrying about the correct Yakuza protocols
She doesn’t think that
お控えなすって
is in fashion any more
Anyone have any context or explanation for this greeting (my dictionary describes it as “formal initial greeting between yakuza, street vendors, gamblers, etc.
archaic”
3. デカさん
When I read this, and spotted that it was slang for a detective, I wondered if somehow it was a reference to the character in Bladerunner (“Deckard”), but found this interesting wiki page that suggests it is an old term - much older than the film or the preceding novel (I’m guessing it is a coincidence, unless PK Dick knew Japanese…
4. A curious expression
ペコンと頭を下げる。相手は狐につままれたような顔をして
The first part of this is a curious onomapoteia for a quick bobbing of the head, or the boing: “sound of thin metal or plastic surface caving in and springing back” - it’s a cool mental image!
The second expression - “bewitched by a fox” - I found this long articleShutterstock.com-,「狐につままれる」とは、何が起こっ,と表現できるでしょう%25E3%2580%2582) in a Japanese magazine that talks about it. (I used google translate, but actually this article is pretty accessible, and worth having a go at reading…)
いやになる is a fixed phrase meaning “to be fed up / sick / disgusted”. So やんなっちゃうなあ is something like “Now I’m starting to feel disgusted”, “I can’t help being sick”.
Izumi is worrying about the correct Yakuza protocols
From what I’ve gathered from a google search and the meaning of 控える (to refrain, be moderate, etc.), this is a standardized way of saying “please wait” as in, “please refrain from attacking me, because I’m about to introduce myself”. I take this to be sort of like, yeah I look shady but I’m here to have a polite interaction.
Found this yahoo japan question/answer where the answerer gives an in depth explanation of the expression’s origin which I found interesting. No idea how true it is, though!
Can anyone help me parse this sentence? When I run it through deepl, the result makes perfect sense, but the sentence has so many parts I’m unsure about that it’s still confusing. I bolded the parts I’m the most unsure about.
一般の方 (かた) is a polite equivalent to 一般の人. なさる is keigo, equivalent to する here. なんて is the “things like ~” particle that here says the rest of the sentence is defining/describing what a 刑事部長 is. 上も上 is one of those annoying unlookupable patterns, but my guess is that here it means something like “the highest of the high”, i.e. this isn’t just a high ranking officer but somebody right up at the top of the hierarchy.
Your guess is right! This pattern is lookupable in my copy of 日本語文型辞典 as NもN: “Repeats the same noun so as to emphasize that the degree talked about is not usual”
That was my impression, too. Not so much because I actually understood the sentence, but because he didn’t seem like the type to brag. Speaking of which…I wanted to wait until I’d reached the end of the chapter before commenting on the contents, but I already love this guy. The moment he said he didn’t want to compare himself to Columbo, I started comparing him to Columbo . I wonder if he’s also going to solve this case with deductings coming out of left field and if so, what Izumi is going to do about it.
I’m not so sure that he is a real policeman at all. I think that his behavior and his questions are rather suspicious (and those who have read the previous IBC book know that not every policeman is really on the good side).
He’s basically explaining the same thing your Wikipedia quote does – he introduced himself as 部長刑事の黒木 on the previous page, but Izumi just incorrectly called him 刑事部長 (turnabout for him calling her 泉星?), so this line of dialogue is him correcting her and explaining that there’s a big difference between an ordinary 部長刑事 like him and the super top brass 刑事部長 title she used by mistake.
Yeah, he’s definitely sus. And you’re right that fake policemen seem to be a bit of a recurring theme. I wonder what that thing about a missing package is all about.
I think (having read the back cover blurb) that they suspect Izumi’s dad of having been engaged in smuggling of some description under the cover of these frequent foreign business trips, and possibly that his death was related to that - so they’re trying to find out if he brought back the goods to the apartment or might have had the opportunity to drop them off somewhere else.
I sure hope so. Though it would be quite the plot twist if the rest of the book consisted of poor Izumi getting led from waiting room to waiting room, getting ever more hungry.
. I wonder if he’s also going to solve this case with deductings coming out of left field and if so, what Izumi is going to do about it.
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