Join us! 地縛少年花子くん・Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun 🚽 (Beginner Book Club)

[Radish8]

Welcome to 地縛少年花子くん

We’re reading this as the Beginner Book Club!

If you want to take part… just buy the book and join in the discussion! We also recommend setting this thread to ‘watching’ so that you get notified when the discussion threads are posted.

Not sure if this is for you? Check out the Nomination Post and read the first chapter for free on comic.pixiv - remember that your fellow book club members and the vocab sheet will be here to help you out though

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Buy the Book

Physical | CDJapan | Amazon JP

eBook | BookWalker | Kobo | Kindle

If you haven’t used Amazon JP before, note that you will need a separate account.
CDJapan has (slow) economy shipping options available so is usually cheaper.

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Reading Schedule

Week	Start Date	Chapter	Page Numbers	Page Count
Week 1	July 10th	1: トイレの花子さん	3 - 23	21
Week 2	July 17th	1: トイレの花子さん	24 - 55	32
Week 3	July 24th	2: ようせいさん	56 - 90	35
Week 4	July 31st	3: 祓い屋の少年	91 - 122	32
Week 5	August 7th	4: ミサキ階段 其の一	123 - 148	26
Week 6	August 14th	5: ミサキ階段 其の二	149 - 176	28

Unscheduled Discussion Threads

Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6

This club elected to continue the series in an unscheduled format. Feel free to check out the threads to discuss or ask questions as you read! Follow-on volumes will be posted as people indicate their completion status.

Vocabulary List

Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun Vocab

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

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Members

Are you planning to read 地縛少年花子くん with us?

• Yes!
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If you’ve read it before but will join in the discussion, please select ‘yes’!

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[Radish8]

Okay, first question: what the heck is the first kanji of chapter 3’s name?

[NicoleRauch]

Do you have a screenshot or the like?

[chemifox]

https://jisho.org/word/祓い

Here is the word! The radicals in Jisho don’t make sense to me. I found it by selecting the 一 radical and looking under what I thought was the stroke count (although it definitely has 10 strokes as far as I can tell? but it’s listed under 9 for some reason).

[Aislin]

I managed to draw it in google translate! But you were quicker with the reply

[chemifox]

[Aislin]

Huh? I see it correctly

[NicoleRauch]

@chemifox

although it definitely has 10 strokes as far as I can tell? but it’s listed under 9 for some reason

Seems like the left part can be in either shape?

[Aislin]

Anyway, in manga they are using this shape.

[rodan]

unihan at it again!
祓 ← Japanese style
祓 ← Chinese style

< ruby lang = ‘ja-JP’ >祓< /ruby>
< ruby lang = ‘zh’ >祓< /ruby>

See this thread if you want to see it in the consistently Japanese format:

直 Doesn't have the "L radical" when I type it outside of wanikani!

WHY??? Is it a 国 or 國 kind of situation? The “Ice radical” looks completely different outside of wanikani but it’s pretty obvious why, what’s going on here?

(but to summarize it’s because variants with the same meaning and stroke count etc. are stored in the same place, adding Japanese to your list of preferred languages in your browser will correct the display)

(at least I remember seeing stroke count was supposed to be one of the criteria… It does seem like it’s 10 in other sources for 祓 - not sure why Jisho says 9, but maybe it has something to do with the variant as well)

[chemifox]

Thank you! I’ve just gotten used to certain characters being different, but not that different, haha. The fix in that thread is very quick and worked like a charm!

It’s weird that the stroke count and radicals in Jisho point to the Chinese version of the kanji, though.

Edit: Both the English language and Chinese language version of Wiktionary claim 10 strokes for the Chinese variation. On the other hand, all of the stroke-order diagrams I can find for the Chinese character show 9 strokes. Well, either way, the original problem is solved, and I am going to stop going down this rabbit hole since this is not a kanji thread lol.

[Radish8]

Thank you very much! I spent ages squinting at the radicals in Jisho and couldn’t make it out for the life of me glad it’s not a kanji I ‘know’…

[Kevycat]

There’s definitely something I’m not getting. If I put 地縛 into Jisho, it only comes up with “creeping lettuce,” which would make the title “Creeping Lettuce-Boy Hanako-Kun”. What am I missing here (or does the original Japanese actually just refer to an odd plant in the title)?

[rodan]

The definition for 地縛霊 is the more relevant one I think.

ghost bound to a specific physical location (usu. where death occurred)​

So 地縛少年 is like that but with a 少年.

The original title emphasizes the hook that the ghost 花子 in this version is a boy, and I guess for the English title since a ghost named Hanako haunting a bathroom isn’t a common legend outside of Japan, they chose to emphasize the toilet aspect instead.

[z3aabi]

if you think about it another way, the individual kanji can give you a clue too. 地 means earth and 縛 means a binding or tie so 地縛 is earth-bound as in bound to earth unable to move on.

[Kevycat]

That would explain it - I think that word even popped up in Jisho, but I’m just not used to thinking about things that way.

[rodan]

As a total tangent, I played a ton of a ghost-management PC game called Ghost Master as a kid, and in that game’s lingo, to place ghosts you had to attach them to “fetters” in the environment, and different types of ghosts could only attach to different kinds of fetters. Like some could only be fettered to human remains, some to electrical appliances, some to thoroughfares, bodies of water, etc. So there was strategy to placing ghosts so that the humans you were trying to scare would always be confronted by something scary no matter where they ran…
So that can’t help but spring to my mind with this title!

The word “fetter” (and “thoroughfare” for that matter) is permanently burned into my brain because of that game…
Perhaps the manga will do the same for words like 地縛霊 and 祓い

[VikingSchism]

Been in the ABBC reading through Teasing Master Takagi-san and just took a look at some pages in the first chapter here and it seems fairly doable so I think I’ll join in when this starts - no harm in trying I guess

[Vanessa-san]

From ABBC too, and I’m gonna join since 花子 seems adorable and I’d love to challenge myself ☆彡

[annanonymous]

hey~ I’ve never joined a book club before but I took a look at the first chapter and I think I can keep up? we’ll see lol