香君 上 西から来た少女 | Week 1

香君 上 西から来た少女 | Week 1

Week 1 31 May 2025
Chapters Prologue, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
End page 46
Pages 36
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Home Thread 香君 上 西から来た少女 Advanced Book Club : Starting May 31st!

Discussion Guidelines

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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.
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4 Likes

Finished! This part felt much shorter than I’d expected it to be. On the first few pages, the amount of names and unknown kanji was overwhelming, but I managed to get used to it surprisingly quickly. Oh, and I love the archaic writing style.

And about the story

I’m looking forward to getting to know the mentalities of the different nations. For now, the Empire seems to be the good guy, but I bet we’ll learn some of its dark secrets too.

The main character(s) died pretty quickly. :smiley: I wonder if it’s just stasis, or will there be some straightforward magic?

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We did manage to pick a dramatic stopping point for this week – if I wasn’t reading on a schedule I would definitely have kept reading :slight_smile:

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Indeed ! How …. suspicious ….
My money is one some herb/poison that closely mimics death but can be identified by its subtle-but-obvious-to-a-trained-nose smell.

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Finished this week just in time for next week. Really enjoying it so far. It’s refreshingly less text-dense than 六人, too.

The cliffhanger

I‘d bet on that, too. Aisha seemed to know exactly what was in store for her before she drank it.

Btw, does anyone know what リタラン is? When I googled it, everything that come up was about this book. So is it some in-world thing that hasn’t been explained yet or did it get explained and I missed it?

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I’m behind as always, but I’m finding it a bit challenging so far. Lots of lookups and people/worldbuilding to learn. I’m only partway through chapter 1.1, but I should be able to finish this week’s reading by tomorrow.

6 Likes

I think that’s just a name, nothing more. Whenever there’s some meaning behind a word, we get kanji+furigana, like with 凍草(ヒリン or 幽谷ノ民(マキシ.

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Reply

Makes sense, but if it’s a name, it’s still mysterious that she identified him by scent.

1 Like

I assumed it was the name of a tribe or nation or similar. She says it’s because he smells of some kind of grass, so my guess was that’s a plant that grows in a particular area. So her thought process would be “smells of this thing that only grows in one place” → “comes from that area” → “maybe a member of the tribe/ethnic group/nation of that area”.

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Hooey!! So many lookups!
It’s Saturday June 7 (officially Week 2), and I’m finally up to 1.2… But I’m hoping the reading will go more smoothly now that I’ve forced my way through…

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Finally finished this week’s reading. I like the main character a lot already, but haven’t seen enough to form an opinion on anyone else yet.

Question

どこかで王家の血筋と関わっているらしい、というくらいの傍系の出ながら、独特の戦の勘をもつ男で、有事には帝国の防壁として戦うことを条件に皇帝から兵を借り、ケルアーン王が追われた後、王位に就きながら、氏族同士の小競り合いを治めきれなかった前王を倒して、この西カンタル藩王国の藩王となった。

This paragraph is in regards to ヂュークチ and I’m a little confused by it. So ヂュークチ has royal lineage and because of his intuition for battle is given permission to borrow soldiers to protect the empire in an emergency. But after that I’m getting confused by who is referred to in 王位に就きながら and ケルアーン王 and 前王を倒して. The first is confusing because I thought these 藩王 weren’t technically 王, so is it referring to ヂュークチ or not. The second is I assume the main character’s grandfather. For the third is that just referring to the grandfather again or someone else?

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Not quite – he borrows the soldiers to take control of 西カンタル, and the condition (~を条件に) under which he’s allowed to borrow them is that he (with his soldiers and the country he now controls) will act to defend the empire in case of war. Essentially he has agreed to conquer an independent country for the empire, turn it into an imperial province/satrapy, and become its new 藩王. (Looking on the map, 西カンタル is effectively now a frontier province; control of it gives the empire a buffer against possible invasions.)

Before ヂュークチ took over, 西カンタル was an independent country; its ruler was a real 王, not a 藩王. The ケルアーン王 who got 追われた was the main character’s grandfather. After he fell, somebody else took the throne (王位に就きながら) (and was also a real 王), but couldn’t control the squabbles between clans; that’s the 前王. The 前王 is who ヂュークチ defeated in order to take control of the country, turn it into a province and become 藩王.

9 Likes

OMG, I’m so glad you asked this

I also was confused and did a handwaving shrug, because, although I kept flipping back to the map, I didn’t understand the relationships between geographical areas and all of the senior statesmen and clans. I’m on 1.3 now, but my impression of 1.2 is that I really want to like and respect this military guy (blanking on the name Edit: マシュウ?) who hangs out with the dude with the 犬. LoL “deep cut”, I know, but I’m ちょっと “out of my depth” at the moment. Collins jisho on “out of my depth” meaning:sweat_smile:

pm 答えてありがとうm(_ _)m

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Thanks for the explanation. Sentences like this are frustrating to me. I know Japanese has different rules, but in English it would be a run on sentence. :laughing: Breaking this into two sentences would have helped so much.

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It is a bit overlong; for instance all this is just modifying 前王:

ケルアーン王が追われた後、王位に就きながら、氏族同士の小競り合いを治めきれなかった

and there’s no grammatical reason that ケルアーン王が追われた後、王位に就きながら have to be modifying 前王 rather than the head verb of the sentence so you have to figure that out from the meaning as you hit the verb. I wonder whether a native speaker would think it a little awkward or if they’d just read it without thinking particularly about it. (OTOH I just read it without thinking about it when I was reading the chapter, so :person_shrugging: )

You probably would split it in two in an English translation, because I think English is a bit less keen on having long modifiers of noun clauses in the middle of a sentence.

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Word. I just gave up on the whole politics exposition part and hoped that it would be brought up again later and explained in clearer, shorter sentences at some point :sweat_smile:.

Wow, I would never have guessed this. The thought that someone else but Aisha’s grandfather was the 前王 never even crossed my mind. Maybe because the crisis seemed so fresh with Aisha and her brother still on the run.

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It’s not really “still”; they were left alone for a long time til ヂュークチ suddenly decided he needed to do something about them. (one of the characters asks なんで今更, p15).

The timeline becomes a bit clearer in the week two reading: it has been nine years since their grandfather was overthrown.

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I’m with Shannon, that you seanblue for the question! I got only half of this passage and decided to reread it later.

That is me as well :joy:

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I hope the political parts of the story are coherent and becomes easier to understand. I love the ecological aspects of this author’s stories, but the political aspects have always been hit or miss to me.

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