風立ちぬ 😷 👩‍❤️‍👨 Book Club: starting February 8th!

Join the Advanced Book Club Here!
View this book on Natively!

Welcome to the 風立ちぬ Book Club!

View the nomination post here!

Where to purchase

Check the links on the Natively page for the book for both digital and physical options.

Schedule

Credit to @Magyarapointe for the schedule!

Title Week (up to) Start date
序曲 - up to 春, second *** section Week 1 : 15 pages 8th Feb
春, second *** section up to 風立ちぬ, fourth *** section Week 2 : 17 pages 15th Feb
風立ちぬ, fourth to ninth *** section Week 3 : 18 pages 22nd Feb
風立ちぬ, ninth *** section up to 冬, 十一月二十日 Week 4 : 16 pages 1st Mar
冬, 十一月二十日 up to 死のかげの谷, 十二月五日 Week 5 : 17 pages 8th Mar
死のかげの谷, 十二月五日 to the end Week 6 : 14 pages 15th Mar

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

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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!

Membership

Will you be reading with us?
  • Yes
  • Yes, but I might start late
  • Maybe
  • No
0 voters
Which version will you be reading?
  • eBook
  • Paperback
  • Hardcover
0 voters

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

4 Likes

Thanks for the thread! :blush:

I had already taken a peek at the schedule a few days ago (because I was worried nobody would volunteer for the book club :sweat_smile:) and had started to draft a reading schedule.

First of all, I will read a different version (this one: 風立ちぬ・美しい村 | L30?? because it contains more short stories) but I just compared it to the first page in the Amazon preview, and it is identical (my version has slightly more furigana though).

Calculating back from Bookwalker I’ve come to the conclusion that the story has ~110 pages; can somebody confirm this?
I scanned the story and found that it contains a few chapters and also lots of breaks within the chapters; some of these breaks are marked with three asterisks, and so far I’ve only focused on those. Here is a table with the rough page count for each of these chapters and sections, with a first breakdown suggestion:

Length (pages) Chapter/Section Breakdown
7 序曲
6 Week 1: 13 pages
4 ***
4 ***
1 ***
4 風立ちぬ
2 ***
1 *** Week 2: 17 pages
6 ***
4 ***
4 ***
3 *** Week 3: 18 pages
4 ***
5 ***
7 *** Week 4: 16 pages
25 Week 5: 25 pages (or split)
21 死のかげの谷 Week 6 or 7: 21 pages

What do you think? If we want to split week 5, we need to find a suitable break in that chapter (there are quite a few, but none are marked with asterisks).

5 Likes

Are there any breaks in the last chapter? I’m wondering if we could split 冬 in a way that we read 2/3 in week 5, followed by the remaining + beginning of 死のかげの谷 in week 6, and the rest in week 7. With ~46 pages, that would be around 15 pages per week.

As alternatives, we could also either have just split 冬 in 2 (and then last week, 死のかげの谷, would be longer) or just pick up the pace and go for 6 weeks. I’m thinking it could be a good idea to poll after week 3 to check how people are finding the pace and then decide it. What do you think?

2 Likes

My paper copy is the Kadokawa edition (ISBN 978-4-7584-3655-7), and in that the story proper is 101 pages (covering pages 6 to 106).

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The free Kindle version is listed as having quality issues… wonder what that means.

Also, how are historical kana spellings handled in the book? Have they been updated to the post-reform spellings?

2 Likes

The Kadokawa edition has had the usual modernisations (new kana spellings, new kanji forms, particles and grammar words written with kana instead of kanji, standardisation of okurigana) plus a fairly generous level of furigana (eg furigana on 一瞬, お父様, 黙る, 狭い).

Aozora seems to also have a new kana spelling text, but with fewer furigana. My guess is the free kindle edition is a lazy conversion of the Aozora text; if so it will be new spellings too.

3 Likes

I only flipped through it but I think there are plenty of breaks in both of the last chapters, just none with three asterisks. But it shouldn’t be a problem to break them up in various ways.

I would prefer one of those two options because I always find it a bit disruptive to read across chapters, and given we have a free week afterwards, the larger chapter at the end should not be too much of a problem.

The thing is, technically we have this rule that for short reads of 6 weeks or less, we would read the second winner directly afterwards (without running a new poll). Which makes sense as we usually have a 6 week gap between the poll and the book club start :sweat_smile:

So I’m thinking it would be good to decide up-front, but I also understand it’s difficult to decide. @pm215 According to your page count, the story is even shorter than I had envisioned - could you do me the favor and count the pages for the last two chapters? 冬 and 死のかげの谷, that is. Maybe if they are much shorter than what I calculated, that might give better insight. Thanks!

4 Likes

I have this version and only looked briefly at the pages, but see no issues so far (dictionary works, quality looks fine, mostly no furigana but still a couple of harder kanjis do have it). Only thing I’ve noticed is that there is no table of contents.

Ah, clear! I forgot about that one.

2 Likes

I assumed it could mean typos, but who knows. Thanks for checking.

2 Likes

I have the same edition. In the paperback, the story goes from page 141 (title page is 139) to 237.

Starting from 冬, the text change to a diary (序曲, 春, and 風立ちぬ are narration), so it’s actually pretty easy to divide. There are 11 entries in 冬, ranging from a paragraph to 3 pages or so, and 11 in 死のかげの谷

序曲 is 6 pages (and is part of the story), 春 is 14, 風立ちぬ is 36 pages, 冬 is 22, 死のかげの谷 is 20.

So for a 6 week schedule:

Title Week (up to)
序曲 - up to 春, second *** section Week 1 : 15 pages
春, second *** section up to 風立ちぬ, fourth *** section Week 2 : 17 pages
風立ちぬ, fourth to ninth *** section Week 3 : 18 pages
風立ちぬ, ninth *** section up to 冬, 十一月二十日 Week 4 : 16 pages
冬, 十一月二十日 up to 死のかげの谷, 十二月五日 Week 5 : 17 pages
死のかげの谷, 十二月五日 to the end Week 6 : 14 pages

or,

Shorter schedule, less chapter breaks :

Title schedule
序曲+ 春 Week 1 : 20 pages
風立ちぬ - up to the sixth *** section Week 2 : 19 pages
sixth *** section to the end of 風立ちぬ Week 3 - 16 pages
Week 4: 22 pages
死のかげの谷 Week 5 : 20 pages

What do you think ?

4 Likes

The 6-week schedule looks amazing to me! Of course I’m a bit sad that we have breaks across chapters, but hey! The breakdown is just too nice. :blush:
For the 5-week breakdown, not sure whether this is not too fast for our newer club members, so I’m more in favor of the 6-week one, but what do the others think?

3 Likes

I’ve never read any kind of historical novel, so I definitely prefer the more leisurely schedule. I’m likely to read these over several days, so extra breaks (e.g. chapter break then *** break) may actually help.

3 Likes

Ah that’s an interesting point, thanks!

1 Like

Agree with the 6 weeks suggestion! Looking nicely balanced

3 Likes

Perfect, then let’s run with it :blush:

This means, if I haven’t miscalculated, that our first week will start on Feb 8th while the last week will start on March 15th, and the club will be over on March 21st. I’ll let people know in the ABC thread!

5 Likes

Perfect, that will mean we finish before my Japan trip :slight_smile:

6 Likes

And during mine! :smile: Good thing I’m going with the ebook for this one so it doesn’t matter.

3 Likes

Is this the novel that eventually got turned into miyazaki’s film?

The title sounds familiar.

1 Like

It’s the novel that Miyazaki cribbed occasional ideas from, yeah. Including the title. But it’s not the book of the film of the book, no.

3 Likes

To anyone who has the version including 美しい村, can you confirm if the story is unrelated to 風立ちぬ? Also, do you plan on reading that with a group (assuming people want to) or just on your own?

2 Likes