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I’m excited for this book!! Although a little nervous, it’s my first advanced club book! I feel like recently, with more difficult stuff, I can fall into the bad tendency of just moving past things that I don’t understand. So I’m making it a goal for this book to put in the effort to understand!!
I just finished week 1. I must say, perhaps because I’m used to light novels, but it felt twice as long as what I usually read - definitely longer than 15 pages! In terms of grammar and vocabulary, it’s quite different from what I’m used to, but I see there tends to be repetitions and trends on the choice of words (或いは, which I have learnt before, has appeared maybe 3 or 4 times - which is interesting, consider I haven’t really seen it ‘in the wild’ yet). The most challenging is certainly the poetic descriptions - I keep feeling like they are hiding nuances which I’m missing due to my lack of complete understanding of the language.
I had a couple of grammar/understanding questions:
春
「そうしていただけたら、一番いいのだが、――しかしあなたにはえろう済まんな……」
I’m having a hard time with the part in bold; what type of word is えろう?
そんなことは知らず識らず
Is there a reason why these 2 kanjis are not the same? Is it just a stylistic choice to not use 知らず知らず?
Also, before the first break in this part, the narrator is describing his dream:
お前みたいな可哀らしい娘と二人きりの生活をしに行くことを夢みていたことがあったのだ
At first I thought it was weird - お前みたいな可哀らしい娘? Is he… somehow picking on her (or just being downright mean)? Could it be maybe meant in an ironic kind of way - you are pitiable for having to live with me? Curious to see how others interpret it.
I liked that this slow schedule gives me enough time to reread the section for the week rather than just running through it once. My thoughts:
Somehow I jumped to the conclusion that the first section was a flashforward despite it being clearly labelled 序曲, and didn’t get the order of events straightened out until I reread everything…
The endnote in my copy for the line 風立ちぬ、いざ生きめやも reads
(where *1 is the reference to the line in French). This seems to me like an awful lot of work for one single syllable 助動詞 to be doing
The narrator, Setsuko, and her father are all engaging in the stereotypically Japanese behaviour of not being at all clear or straightforward about how they feel or what they want, and relying on the other person figuring it out anyway.
I noticed the kanji choice on 知らず識らず too.
Referring to your own daughter as あれ was a new one on me.
Historical note: this book was written in 1936, and Japan had been suffering from widespread tuberculosis since at least the beginning of the century (due to increased factory work and especially the textile industry resulting in a lot more people living in crowded and bad conditions). A cure isn’t going to arrive until the 1940s with antibiotics, and TB remained the leading cause of death in Japan until 1950.
My dictionary says かわいらしい basically means cute (with overtones of innocent, childlike, etc) i.e. it’s the same as かわいい, not かわいそう. (The dictionary uses a different set of kanji, though: 可愛らしい.) Certainly when I was reading I didn’t look that up but it’s what I assumed.
Skipping the part in the middle that I don’t quite get, it’s just saying (to paraphrase) “seeing you immediately try to get up and go (to the painting that fell over), I forcibly stopped you and didn’t let you leave my side”.
Where I’m getting lost is 何物をも失うまいとするかのように. I think I get some of the pieces, but I can’t put it together.
何物をも失う = “to (even?) lose ???” (I’m not really sure if that’s the right way to account for the も or and I’m not sure what 何物 means here)
失うまいとする = this is the volitional + する, just for the negative volitional, right? Is it the “about to” meaning in this case?
かのように = “as if”
I don’t really understand how that all comes together though.
I probably shouldn’t have procrastinated starting this so much. Shouldn’t be surprised I already had a question like this in the second paragraph.
This is the Kadokawa Haruki Bunko edition (ISBN 9784758436557). Sorry about the photo quality but it’s good enough for judging the furigana density I think
cover image from Amazon and photos of first three pages
Wow, that’s way more. The free version only has furigana very sparsely. Plus I forgot that the version you have includes explanatory notes. That exact version doesn’t exist in digital form, but I’ll get the one that includes the two other stories and see.
And the conclusion after buying is that it has way more furigana than the free version, but not quite as many as yours. And it also has explanatory notes, but not at the same spots. For example, rather than an explanatory note on 風立ちぬ、いざ生きめやも, it has one on the French at the beginning. It explains how the Japanese version is a mistranslation, but doesn’t actually explain the Japanese.
Haha don’t worry, I totally feel the same way Hopefully after the first week it’ll only be up from here!
Attempting to Answer
If I understood it more deeply I might be able to give you a more concise answer. But here’s what I’ve got after a little grammar research
As far as the overall sentence understanding, I read it the same way
But as for the middle part:
何者 - Is in the dictionary as “Anything (Else)/Nothing (But)”
をも - I think is maybe easy to overthink. It’s just using both of the particles and their meaning in one spot, no extra meaning I believe. I think a lot of time the を gets omitted and leaves just も in some sentences. Does that make sense? Is it maybe easier to think of the sentence simplified as like 「なにも失うまい」? But since you could also say 「なにを失う」, the original sentence uses both particles and meanings in the same place. (Also, dictionary examples show 何者 as often being used with the も particle. So maybe it also has the nuance of not losing something more/losing anything else)
失うまい - Grammar sites have まい shown as “Intend not to/Will not” right? So 失うまいとする would be something like “Acting/doing so you won’t lose~” or “intending not to lose”
So to the best of my translation ability, putting that all together would be:
“As if trying not to lose anything (else) in this moment”
From: 「いもの一瞬の何物をも失うまいとするかのように」
Does that help at all? Let me know if I made any jumps in explanation or anything
I’m almost done with 序曲 (hoping to read a lot more tonight haha) and I’m enjoying it so far, but I am definitely having to do intense reading with it! We got this
You’re basically treating 何物をも失うまい as 何も失うまい. Is that based on any old grammar rules or some grammar/vocab modernization shifts that you know of or just a gut feel for the meaning? Specifically the 何物 part, because that’s what was giving me the most trouble.
Mmm, I mainly did it as a gut instinct of how it would sound more modern/less poetic. And mainly just to simplify in an attempt to make it easier to understand
Here is a screenshot of the English definition of 何物, specifically the b definition and grammar example after it
I could be wrong, but the use of 何物 just feels more advanced and poetic. But as far as nuance, it has the specific automatic meaning of “nothing”, especially when used with particle も it seems. Here are some example sentences from jisho.org that might help a little? Again, I noticed how whenever 「何物も」is used it automatically takes on the meaning “nothing”
My feeling on 何物(を)も vs なにも is that maybe it’s a bit like the difference between “don’t want to miss anything” and “don’t want to miss a thing” (not that I could confidently explain the difference between those two either!). It just feels like there’s a bit more emphasis there and a little bit more focus on the metaphorical things being lost rather than on the verb. But I’m probably overanalyzing this
