紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 👘 Book Club (Intermediate Manga Club)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Welcome to the 紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 Book Club!

This is the main thread for reading the manga 紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 1 together with the Intermediate Manga Club.

We’ll be reading together according to a weekly schedule, ask and answer questions in weekly threads, and we have a vocabulary sheet we’re building together to make this easier for everyone.

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View this book on Natively

Story summary

Japanese

令和から、大正の女学校へ転入!?ある日地震で気を失ってしまい、目覚めた時には大正十年の銀座に倒れていた女子高生・紡。行くあてもなく大ピンチなところを公爵令嬢・唯月に助けられ、彼女とともに女学校生活を送ることに。遠く離れた時代に流れ着いた少女の未来はどうなってしまうのか…?きららキャラットで大人気連載中の大正タイムスリップストーリー、待望の第1巻!

English

Transferring from Reiwa to a Taisho era girls’ school! One day, a high school girl, Tsumugu, is knocked unconscious by an earthquake, and when she wakes up, she finds herself in Ginza, Tokyo in the 10th year of the Taisho era. With nowhere to go, she is rescued by the duchess Itsuki, and together with her, she is sent to a girls’ school. What will happen to the future of a girl who has drifted to a faraway time…? The long-awaited first volume of the popular Taisho time-slip story serialized in KIRARARA CARAT!

Schedule & Discussion Thread Links

  • Start date: April 20th, 2024
  • Schedule:
Week Start Date Chapter Pages
Week 1 8 June 2024 Intro + Ch.1 Start-16
Week 2 15 June 2024 Ch.2 17-26
Week 3 22 June 2024 Ch.3 27-36
Week 4 29 June 2024 Ch.4+5 37-56
Week 5 6 July 2024 Ch.6+7 57-76
Week 6 13 July 2024 Ch.8+9 77-96
Week 7 20 July 2024 Ch.10+11 97-119

NB.: I’m using the numbering written on the page which differs from the numbering used on the digital version. So the first page of the first chapter is page 7 even though BookWalker says it’s page 9.

Where to buy

Physical:
Amazon JP / CD Japan / Amazon US / Honto / Rakuten
Ebook:
Bookwalker / Ebook Japan / Kindle JP

Vocabulary Sheet

Courtesy of @ChristopherFritz:

Discussion Guidelines

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Will you be reading with us?

  • Yeah!
  • Yeah, but I’ll start late
  • I’m not sure yet
  • I’m skipping this one
  • I’ve read this before, but will join in the discussion
0 voters

How will you be reading?

  • Physical
  • Digital
  • With my eyes
  • I’m not sure yet
0 voters

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

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Haha nice options, I hesitated between two of them

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Machine translation sure is bad at names. :joy:

唯月 is いつき.

By the way, there’s rarely furigana given for names beyond the first time (if even then), so a table of characters and readings for their names is probably a good idea. I’ve seen other clubs do that, but I don’t know how it’s normally done.

Thanks for taking care of running the club!

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Actually I fixed it here in the post but it may be worth correcting the LearnNatively blurb too if you feel like it. I don’t want to mess with it not having read the material yet…

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Yeah that’s fine, I’ll do that. I’m always reluctant to edit the blurbs because it makes me want to improve the whole summary, but I’m not good enough at translation to do so. :sweat_smile: But I’ll at least fix the name.

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Oh, I just realized that there’s another mistake. The other character’s name is Tsumugu. I have no idea how it got “Boh” from 紡…

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I should probably have looked more closely at the examples, but I didn’t realise this was a 4koma. Should be interesting to go back to, the last one I really tried was Bocchi (arguably Komi-san is also a 4koma or something quite like it, while Ki na Naru is more like a 4-pager).

It will also be interesting reading this after absorbing a heap of history of japan podcasts

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I tried looking into it but I still don’t fully understand what a 4koma is or how it differs from other types of comics…

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It just means that the page is organized into a set of 4 vertically arranged panels, usually two sets per page. They tend to be more dense per page than “standard” manga.

@Jintor Is it the density that has you concerned or just the style in general?

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That part I get but are there other implications in terms of style besides the layout? I feel like it must be more significant than that in order for people to mention it. What makes it significant?

I guess I’ll see for myself when we start reading it…

Traditionally, yonkoma follow a structure known as kishōtenketsu. This word is a compound formed from the following Japanese kanji characters:

  • Ki (起): The first panel forms the basis of the story; it sets the scene.
  • Shō (承): The second panel develops upon the foundation of the story laid down in the first panel.
  • Ten (転): The third panel is the climax, in which an unforeseen development occurs.
  • Ketsu (結): The fourth panel is the conclusion, in which the effects of the third panel are seen.

Oh so it’s like a newspaper comic strip sort of?

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Yeah I’ve tended to find 4koma markedly more dense in word terms than other comics (probably because every comic is some form of setup-punchline and it doesn’t always leave room for eg pages of mainly action or art). It’s been a while since I tackled one though.

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Today I learned I’ve read one book in 4koma before! Though I guess since it was meant to be a bunch of short jokes, it wasn’t about trying to weave a coherent storyline together…for reference, スキネズミ

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Yes that’s the typical style. Often the chapter has an overarching story while each strip of four panels has a mini story or scene, usually ending in some punch line or other conclusion.

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Newspaper comics tend to fall into one of two categories: those where each day is a completely self-contained comic, and those that have an overarching story/plot throughout the week.

4koma are closer to the latter as they have overarching storylines per chapter, as seanblue said.

Here is an example of a very simple 4koma, second strip into a chapter.

Background: In strip one, the girl enters a cafe called “Rabbit House”.

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And much like US newspaper comics such as Cathy, some 4koma can be dense in dialogue.

verb
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Although I haven’t read much in the way of 4koma, I find the density has become much less an issue as I’ve gotten better at reading stamina. (Lack of kanji knowledge, on the other hand…)

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Just bumping this to remind everyone that we’re starting in one week. Don’t forget to source your copies!

If there’s no objection I’ll be posting the threads around this time (that is, 15~17h UTC) on Fridays, which is fair bit earlier than what @Akashelia did for Atelier but I’m often out on Friday evenings so it’s more convenient that way for me (and I’m less likely to forget too…). Let me know if it’s a problem.

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Sounds good to me, I don’t really care when it is personally, I just like that it’s already up whenever I start reading on Saturdays:)

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Yeah that was my intuition as well. Especially since I tend to sleep in very late on the weekends (on weekdays too but let’s not talk about that), so the thread wouldn’t be up until like 12 UTC most weeks…

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Sounds like on Friday nights @simias likes to party like it’s 1929! (Or whenever this manga is set, haven’t read it yet…)

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Wikipedia:

The Taishō era … was a period in the history of Japan dating from 30 July 1912 to 25 December 1926, coinciding with the reign of Emperor Taishō.

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Disclaimer: I had no idea the date range of the Taisho era without looking it up.

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Spoiler on the year

Just before 1923 Great Kantō earthquake - Wikipedia, I think.

There is also a political event in a latter volume.

Anyway, about 100 years earlier. I remembered that Taisho is about the years of World War I, which had little effect in Asia.

1929 was the year of the Great Depression, after Taisho.

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