Week 6: パノラマ島綺譚

Japanese Language Reading
#1

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パノラマ島綺譚 Home Thread

Week 6

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Start Date: November 27th
Previous Part: Week 5
Next Part: Week 7

Reading:

Week Start Date Chapters covered End Page Kindle LOC Kindle % Page Count
Week 6 Nov 27 16-18 95 ? ? 16

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パノラマ島綺譚 (Advanced Book Club)
Week 7: パノラマ島綺譚
#2

Not to spoil anything, but I hope everyone’s excited for three more chapters of wall-to-wall seaweed taxonomy!!!

Gallery Part 2

今お前が見たものはね、ホラ、こうして、このあたり前のガラスの所から覗いてごらん、あんなちっぽけな魚でしかありゃしない。ね、躄魚いざりうおって云うのだよ。鮟鱇あんこうの類たぐいなのだ。彼奴あいつは、ああして鰭の変形した足で以て、海の底を這うことも出来るのだよ。

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アア、あの嚢ふくろみたいなものかい。あれは見る通り海藻の一種で、 わたも って云うんだ相だ。嚢の形をしているんだね。

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海底の裸女

On second thought I think I’ll leave this one up to you…

(I’m kidding!)

This section is where I’d really start to wonder about plumbing, catering, heating, and what direction was provided to all the 裸女 in order to get them to take this extremely weird バイト seriously enough to loll around with sufficient unencumbered arcadian etherealness instead of whatever the 1920s equivalent of checking their phones would be, but I suppose to Ranpo those would probably fall under the category of questions previously responded to with the answer “MONEY,” huh.

6 Likes
#3

These detailed descriptions of the under water scenery really clash with the ‘this is too long to get into so I’ll leave it up to the readers imagination’ parts. :joy:

7 Likes
#4

Thank god you were! Still, I can’t say I’m really enjoying these long descriptions full of complicated vocab…

One thing that bugs me is that I don’t see how he could’ve achieved all of that (and more we haven’t seen yet) in under a year, even with all the MONEY in the world.

2 Likes
#5

I think there’s definitely a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief involved… maybe even magical realism.

I suppose if he’s gotten us to accept there’s a dude who looks exactly like a completely unrelated dude to the point of being able to pull off this extremely elaborate switcheroo, it’s not too much more to assume an almost supernatural logistical prowess in coordinating all this construction :sweat_smile:

2 Likes