I was in an extremely crappy mood, no thanks to a truly dreadful romance novella comic I had to edit a translation last few hours, but snarky reviews by Japanese readers had me laughing so much that I don’t mind any more.
To begin with, here are two examples of the comic’s dialogue (note: all are still largely unedited so excuse grammatical errors and such):
Suzuki’s mother: You’d better stop taking your job so seriously and take a good long look at your marriage prospects. You’re already 24, Rumi. Shouldn’t you start worry about your future?”
and
Fujimoto (hero): You shouldn’t be complaining he won the promotion. You should congratulate him with grace. Men don’t like envious women, you know.
Suzuki (heroine): But I’m more experienced and qualified than him! He’s made so many mistakes, Branch Manager, and he steals credit of other people’s hard work!
Fujimoto: Do you know why women aren’t taken seriously in corporate world, Suzuki? They all want marriage and babies. Isn’t that what you want, too? Truthfully?
Suzuki: I-I-I don’t know what you’re talking about, Branch Manager. M-m-my career matters a lot to me!
Fujimoto: How long for? One year? Two years? Five years?
Suzuki: For as long as possible!
Fujimoto: We sincerely invested our time, expenses and resources, but they left anyway. You won’t be any different.
Suzuki: I’ll prove you all wrong.
Employee: Excuse me, Branch Manager. It’s time.
Fujimoto: Thank you.
Fujimoto: Suzuki… You know Aoi Ishikawa from Sales Division?
Suzuki: Yes! My greatest inspiration in this company. So admirable!
Fujimoto: Ishikawa is 33 and still single. She’s left it too late to marry, and there will be no more job promotions for her because the elite prefers to deal with their own kind. Is that what you want for yourself? You shouldn’t. You’re too pretty to be a dried-up, useless hag like her.
Suzuki: Ishikawa is not a dried-up, useless hag!
Fujimoto: But that’s how everybody sees her, Suzuki. You, too.
Suzuki: I-I-I don’t!
Fujimoto: Not only you’re dumb and naive, you’re dishonest.
Narration: I just can’t tell Fujimoto that I, truthfully, do pity Ishikawa.
And what’s more, Fujimoto the so-called hero is 35 and still single. /sarcasm *spitting fire* Thankfully, reviewers of this comic back me up, but they did it with so much snarkiness that I was taken back in surprise. Usually, reviews are fragmented, polite, fangirling or bland. So when I read some reviews of this comic, their claws were really all out and done in a such style that I ended up laughing.
Here are three of my favourites:
1. “It’s kinda old fashioned. One can regard this as a silly fun retro ride if this were a reissue of a work from the Showa era or earlier, but this is an original work from 2011. Perhaps editors and comic-writer are time travellers from the past? Someone should give them a crash course in map-reading because they landed in the wrong era. Although a bit unnecessary to state after all what I just said, I cannot recommend this book.
P.S. I can offer a consolation prize to the author, for making such an effort to write this book. Your book cover is aesthetically pleasing. It’s the kind my great-grandmother loved. If she were still alive, she would enjoy gazing at your pretty book cover while using torn pages from your book to swipe her bum. That’s at least something, isn’t it?”
2. “I’m going to a local shrine today to burn thousands of incense sticks as an apology to gods for wasting some of their precious trees on this story.”
3. “Kaoru Fujimoto is a sexist, misogynistic fat-faced octopus!!! Throw him back into the Pacific Ocean!!! We don’t need assholes like him! I’m sorry to inform you, [comic writer]–there’s a shameful gap in all of your elementary, junior, middle, high and university school education! You should know from Human Biology we already have assholes of our own! What in hell made you think we needed another asshole?!”
Ouch. 
With recent clashes between reviewers and authors over how should one compose reviews in mind, I had a look around to find similar discussions among Japanese reviewers and authors to see what they have to say.
Discussions exist, but it’s completely different. This is the usual response from authors:
We do apologise, but please have the courtesy to be more patient with our sincere efforts. We will keep working hard to provide good stories that might stop all these harsh reviews.
I didn’t find that a surprise because the ranking in Japan is different from the one in the west. Here’s what I think how it’s all laid out (I may be wrong, though):
THE WEST
Wholesalers
Distributors
Publishers
Editors
Authors
Readers
JAPAN
Readers
Wholesalers
Distributors
Authors
Publishers
Editors
Readers (or customers, rather) carry massive weight and influence. Wholesalers, distributors and publishers tend to make an all-out effort to soothe unhappy readers. That’s how it seems to me, anyway.
Well, really, it’s split into three overlapping circles (each row in ranking order):
a) Readers >> bookshop sellers >> distributors
b) Readers >> authors >> editors >> publishers
c) Wholesalers >> distributors >> publishers
I wonder how readers are ranked in other countries? The UK is same as the US, I think. But how about elsewhere? Like South America, India, China, Europe and so on?
The structure of Japanese publishing industry is quite interesting, actually. I mean, like, publishers rarely interact with wholesalers directly. Distributors are usually the go-between of wholesalers and publishers, and they usually deal with all kinds of publishers, no matter how big or small those publishers are.
However, this is the key issue: each bookshop tends to stick with just one distributor that delivers any books, photo books and magazines from all and any publishing houses, which makes it a very competitive field for distributors across the country. I don’t know if this is the case in the west, though.
One time, I was in a major bookshop with a colleague for a Saturday browse after a work meeting elsewhere. He suggested we should check out his former employer’s section. Bookshelves in some bookshops are categorised by publisher. Very similar to the shelving system in Foyle’s in London. So we went over and had a look. His former employer usually publishes business-oriented books, so the section under his publisher’s name was huge.
Colleague made a beeline to one shelf consisting a series of books based on a television series that chronicled the origins and rise of world-famous companies and inventors. Like Sony, Apple, Hewlett-Packard and more. He was the editor of this series during his time at that publisher’s house, hence his “good times, good times” interest.
He noticed there weren’t any copies of volume four left and called over a shop assistant, and pointed out this oversight. She apologised profusely and called in a manager, who also apologised. The manager then made a phone call to the bookshop’s distributor. After the phone call ended, the manager assured my colleague that copies of volume four would be delivered within an hour. Friend, now satisfied, turned to me and suggested we should go for a coffee, so we left.
I was so curious to see if those volumes were indeed delivered within that hour that I wanted to return to the bookshop. I mean, this was on a Saturday. Colleague, amused by my scepticism, gaily took me back to the bookshop a little over an hour later. And there they were: three copies of volume four. My jaw was truly on floor.
He explained this was what a major bookshop seller would expect from their distributor. An ability to deliver fast and without hassle. I asked about out-of-print and out-of-stock books. What could a distributor do if there aren’t any copies left on a day like Saturday?
He explained that, firstly, there is a difference between out-of-stock and out-of-print. Understandable if out of print, but not so understandable if out of stock for too long when there’s still a customer demand. For situations like this, a distributor would do all it can to track down surviving copies to fulfil a bookshop’s order. In extreme cases, this would involve buying copies from the bookshop’s ‘rival’ bookshops. The fuck? Colleague explained this only happened in rare cases. Like when a distributor believes it’s in danger of losing the contract from, say, a national chain of bookshops. Wow.
Anyway but yeah, most publishers and editors in Japan work for authors who work for readers, which does make sense to me. A lot more sense than the west’s structure of publishers working for wholesalers and distributors while authors work for editors and publishers, with readers left almost as an afterthought. Probably because publishers make more money from trade sales? I’m not sure if this is the case for Japan, actually.
On the other hand, the education textbook industry is massive! And it’s structured in a way I still don’t understand, but it was obvious to me at the time that it was seriously lucrative and competitive. Not surprising, really, when I think about it. Considering the sheer number of evening cram schools, summer cram schools, secondary schools, foreign conversation schools, colleges, universities and all other fuck-knows-what-else schools. Th business book publishing is equally popular.
I think in order of demand and popularity: business books, education textbooks, comics, literature (domestic), literature (translated/foreign), photo books, children’s books and craft books. That’s how it was between late 2009 and early 2011, anyway.
Oh, there was another thing that surprised me: pre-orders weren’t recognised. It just didn’t exist. As a customer, you can only buy when it’s released. For bookshop sellers, distributors supply whatever they think will sell well. They really had to be absolutely sure because a) bookshop sellers did not like dealing with high numbers of unsold books that needed to be returned and b) bookshop sellers can, and will, return books within six months if they think those won’t sell, which could deprive potential sales for publishers. As far as I understand, anyway. (I’m sorry for being so thick-headed.)
There’s one area of publishing that most outside Japan don’t seem to pay attention to: translation. It’s a massive field. Almost all my journalist, scriptwriter and reviewer friends made a sideline living from translating foreign books for various publishers.
In fact, my sister-in-law makes a “hobby living” from translating cookery books and food-oriented non-fiction books from French to Japanese for a publisher. It was through her I landed my first freelance job with that publisher years ago. (I still can’t bring myself to look at that effort. It’s truly awful. I was too faithful to text, which was a massive mistake as it’d made English rather stilted, but anyway, let’s move on.)
Actually, I think Japan’s solid relationships in publishing are with France, Germany and Poland. Almost every best-selling work from those countries gets translated and published in Japan. It’s same the other way round. Many titles from Japan are translated and published in those countries. Many of those were never published in the UK/US. I think, most times, by the time the UK and the US publish a Japanese title, it was already published in France, Germany and Poland. One time I was desperate to get my mitts on an out-of-print Japanese novel, but could only find the French edition. So I bought that and hired a freelance translator to translate it to English. Crazy, but I needed it for work.
Anyway, I was inexplicably thrilled when I learnt that almost all popular British novels are usually translated into Japanese. How I gawked when I spotted Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting* and – my favourite sighting – Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments. I don’t know why, but foreign editions of British novels really do thrill me. Silly, really.
It’s a shame that British publishing doesn’t do the same with Japanese novels and non-fiction books, though. Translated novels doesn’t seem to be that popular in Britain. Most available ones are those from Spain, France, Russia, Mexico, South America and Germany. The rest? Not much. Not unless it’s heavily reviewed in British media or a crime fiction series. I really don’t know why Asian novels aren’t that popular. Not even novels from India and Pakistani, which still blows my mind. I mean, there are many communities of India, Pakistani and similar countries in this country, so why aren’t there more translated novels from those countries? Odd.
In my ideal world, all novels of each country would be translated and readily available. Perhaps, considering this digital age, that day will come. Let’s hope it’ll happen during my lifetime.
I just realised that, once again, I’ve digressed from talking about snarky reviewers. Heh. Sorry about that.
*This is the Japanese edition [Amazon JP] of Trainspotting I spotted in a Birmingham second-hand bookshop.
Downside, though? The translation itself was a bit jarring. Translator Makiko Ikeda explained, in her note at the end of the book, that she had tried to make the Scots language work in Japanese, but it was a complete failure. So her solution was to use a north-east dialect because of the similarities between this dialect and the Scots language.
And it actually worked. I was truly surprised at how similar this dialect and Scots slang were. I had heard for years before this that Scotland’s languages (Scots and Gaelic) and some of Japan’s dialects have a lot in common, even my dad supported that claim, but I couldn’t see how until I read this edition of Trainspotting . It really was a bit like having a group of Japanese junky kids in Edinburgh!
I wonder how Trainspotting fared in other languages like French, German, Portuguese and so on? Is there even a Chinese edition? Shame that I don’t know those languages because I’d love to read to compare.
It still kills me I bitched for ages that I couldn’t even finish Trainspotting (English) until a kind soul politely informed me there was a glossary at the end of the book. Oh. Right. I see. *headdesk*
Anyway, I won’t be able to join Will and the mites in their day out today. I’m chained to this desk until I finish this horrible job. *sob* First world problem and all, I know, but THEY ARE GOING TO SNAKES AND LADDERS! Will actually said he’s glad I’m not joining because he knows I’ll embarrass the mites by trying to worm through a tube myself. Rude. I wouldn’t try the tube, Will. I’d rather try a slide.
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