We are reading at the pace of one page per day. If a sentence crosses two pages it is read as part of the first page.
Daily reading schedule
Page turns at midnight JST.
Date
Page
Last Line of Page
Feb 27
123
Chapter title page
Feb 28
124
絵を かくのが 大好きで、
Mar 1
125
おしょうさんの いかりが はくはつ。
Mar 2
126
本どうに もどろと……。
Mar 3
127
ねずみが いるでは ありませんか。
Mar 4
128
雪舟が、ゆかに おちた 自分の
Mar 5
129
絵の 勉強をする ためです。
Mar 6
130
けれども、まん足できませんでした。
Mar 7
131
雪舟を のせた 船は、中国の ある みなとへ。
Mar 8
132
けしきの れんぞくでした。
Mar 9
133
学ぶ ことは なかったです。 (also asterisked footnote)
Mar 10
134
答えを、日本中を たびして 絵を
Mar 11
135
水ぼく画と なりました。
Mar 12
136
End of chapter
Resources
These spreadsheets are put together by the bookclub to help other readers. Feel free to contribute but do read the vocab sheet guidance on the first page before adding any words.
When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked
If posting a complete translation of a sentence we generally blur / hide this, as seeing the translation may be a spoiler for those who haven’t read that part yet and wanted to translate for themselves. The easiest way to do this is select the text, click on the cog icon, and select “Blur Spoiler”, or you can type it like this: [spoiler]texthere[/spoiler]
It’s the second person (after Seton) in this book that I didn’t know.
雪舟’s paintings are amazing and I too am looking forward to learning something about his life and art.
Never heard of him either. Finally caught up with you guys today. Been doing quite a bit of sporadic reading elsewhere as I ordered some manga and stuff from Japan. But back now and it’s good to be in sync
あなたは、「水墨画」を知っていますか。
Do you know “ink wash painting”?
墨だけで景色などを描く絵で昔中国から伝わりました。
Drawing pictures of scenery and the like only with ink was introduced from China long ago.
雪舟は、五百年以上前に活躍し、日本の水墨画を完成させた画家です。
Sesshū was a painter who was active more than 500 years ago and who perfected Japanese ink painting.
また、お坊さんでもありました。
He was also a Buddhist priest.
子どもの頃の雪舟について、こんな話があります。
There is this story about Sesshū as a child.
十二歳頃、生まれ故郷の岡山のお寺に預けられた雪舟。
When he was about twelve, Sesshū was entrusted to a temple in his birthtown Okayama.
絵を描くのが大好きで、お寺の修行に、ちっとも身が入りません。
He loved painting pictures, but was not at all making his best efforts in the temple’s practices.
What do the black dots indicate here? Are they just 墨 stains?
I think these are two main clauses and I would translate it as:
They are pictures of things like scenery only drawn with ink and they were introduced from China a long time ago.
I’m never sure with expressions like this but I think I remember talking to some Japanese people who explained to me that this doesn’t mean that he was around the age of six. ころ is used when talking about time spans, here being six. But it doesn’t imply that he could be five or seven. But as I said, I’m not 100% sure.
Here’s an example from the last Absolute Beginners Book Club, レンタルおにいちゃん. The emphasis here drew your attention to the deliberate use of hiragana rather than kanji in this character’s name.
My explanation (tentative):
The ink painting was perfected thanks to him, so:
He was the cause for the perfection of ink painting.
Wouldn’t that be a causative tense?
I’m sorry for the boring technical explanation, but the thing is here that 完成する is an intransitive verb, and to turn it into a transitive verb you need to use させる with it.
Here is some more information:
(just have a look at the example sentences in the first reply, where you can see the usage in transitive and intransitive form)
That’s interesting thank you. I hadn’t thought about suru verbs being transitive or intransitive. I wonder how you know which one is which? Jisho lists two meanings for 完成: completion and perfection, but doesn’t define either as transitive or intransitive in their suru form. Although I can see from the example sentences that the “completion” meaning appears to be transitive in its suru form.
But as I said, I’m not 100% sure.
Yes, of course! 