Translator’s Corner

Thank you for reading Volume 2 of Holmes in Kyoto! Since the challenges of translating this series remain basically the same as in Volume 1, this time I’ll spare you the repetition and elaborate on some interesting cultural tidbits that came up in the book instead. The first two are also examples of things that I added brief explanations to in the text that weren’t in the original book.

In Chapter 1, Aoi goes to a party for the owner’s 77^th birthday, which I noted is “considered a special age in Japanese culture.” The 77^th birthday is actually so special that it has its own name in Japanese: kiju. It’s a celebration of long life that likely originated in the Muromachi period (1336-1573). Since it’s an old tradition, it’s also based on the old aging system, where you’re one year old when you’re born and, regardless of what day you were born on, get one year older on New Year’s Day. This system has been phased out now, but it still remains in traditions such as kiju.

In Chapter 3, there’s a brief explanation of temple naming when Holmes brings up that Zuiryu is Nanzen-ji Temple’s mountain name. Japanese Buddhist temples usually have three names: the mountain name, the cloister name (optional), and the main name. Only the main name is commonly used, but even the main name can be much longer than what the temple is usually called. For example, Nanzen-ji Temple’s full name is “Taihei Kokoku Nanzen Zen-ji.” And of course, there are also nicknames for temples, such as Suzumushi Temple in Chapter 5.

In case you’re curious about Hanshan and Shide from Chapter 3 who were said to have “quite an eccentric story”: Hanshan and Shide (called Kanzan and Jittoku in Japanese) were Chinese Buddhist monks from the Tang Dynasty. Hanshan was an eccentric poet of noble birth who lived as a fugitive in a mountain cave. Shide was a kitchen cleaner at the nearby temple who was abandoned as a child. The two of them became close friends and Shide would sneak food scraps to Hanshan. They’re always depicted looking disheveled and laughing. Shide wrote poems too, and stories tell of his great wisdom, showing that you shouldn’t look down on people in lower positions.

In Chapter 5, Holmes brings up the Zen priest Soseki Muso, and Aoi comments (in her head) that the name sounds cool. “Muso” is written with the characters for “dream” and “window”—a fitting name for a Zen master. Aside from the dream associations, it’s also homonymous with the words for “peerless” and “blank mind.”