LMAOO
Response to additionalramen's commentary
I definitely interpret it as that he only gets the book if Natsume loses his life in the process (and there may not be a book left by the time Natsume dies). In general I don’t necessarily take Madara’s comments at face-value, and I think in some ways his motivations occasional mirror Reiko’s: this is a good way of killing time. He does also genuinely sound a bit regretful about what happened with Reiko, and he obviously knows a lot about her despite everything. So I think he has more attachment than he lets on. I also don’t think that he could actually use it, since I’m pretty sure only a blood relative can use it/release the contracts. The risk is more to the youkai whose names are in the book, because of what happens if it gets damaged. So I think that’s why this deal happens without too much fuss.
I feel like some of what I was writing about in my own notes was already discussed, but!
Misc grammar notes
人の手に負えるものか！わかっただろ私におくれ
At first I was wondering about the lack of negation in this sentence, but that was because I hadn’t encountered ものか before. I found a good explanation of it here.
I guess one other small thing there in case people haven’t encountered it was that the おくれ was just another form of てくれる.
唯一血縁のおれくらいはその名を憶えていたり、遺品を大切に預かってたり．．．．．．
Here, I was just fumbling over くらい. I feel like sometimes it clicks for me and sometimes it doesn’t; I feel like I have the easiest time with the くらい that’s similar to 程. Very roughly understanding it as: “As her only blood relative, at least I can remember her name, and take care of her inheritance…” re: くらい: this page is really useful for looking at different usages of くらい (with the second definition being the one here).
I also didn’t look up the difference between 覚える and 憶える here, but I’d assume the usage here focuses much more on memory because of the 憶.
ある意味祖母がお世話になった妖怪達だ
I hadn’t encountered ある意味 before, but it seems like it’s mostly about… considering something from another perspective? So something like: “If you look at it another way, my grandmother owed the youkai.” (This sentence also tripped me up because of the usage of お世話になる when previously I’ve only really thought of it as looking after someone.)
EDIT: Actually wait when reading this over again I realized this is actually dead simple to understand now that I’m just trying to read it literally. If I just look at ある意味 as “one meaning/another meaning” then it’s: “Another meaning of this is, my grandmother owed the youkai.” I like thinking of it this way better at least to internalize what’s happening with ある意味 so that I don’t feel like I’m always translating to English in my head!! (Although obviously if I were translating this properly I would still choose the smoother translation. This is just better for parsing in Japanese.)
ようかろう
Madara’s usage of ようかろう was something I was curious about. I looked it up on Weblio where it mainly explains the following:
| 方言 | 意味・解説 |
|---|---|
| よか・ろう【良か・ろう】 | 良いだろう。〔推量・念押し〕 |
Madara’s 甘くみん is 甘く見る, which is to take something lightly (+negative). So, “Naturally! The Ayakashi aren’t to be taken lightly!”
Both だって and もの were things I was struggling with, but I feel like I’ve gotten a better handle on them lately. ChristopherFritz did a really excellent write-up of both of these concepts in this post here. The だって is a follow-up to what Hishigaki was saying, but it’s also contrasting. So I understood this response from Reiko as: “Yeah. You say that, but, the thing is: I’m really strong.”
I was looking up the difference between 逢う and 会う, which is disambiguated here.
…Other than that, the only small thing was just looking up to confirm what exactly was happening with てやる, which I saw used sometimes. I found out it was just another form of てあげる.
I hope this helps!!