Translator’s Corner

Thank you for reading volume 8 of Holmes of Kyoto! As usual, here’s some extra trivia on topics that came up in the book.

Chapter 1’s mystery comes down to “Kagome Kagome,” a song sung during a children’s game of the same name. The game itself consists of one person sitting with their eyes covered while everyone else joins hands and walks in a circle around them while singing the song. When the song is over, the person in the middle has to guess who is standing behind them.

For reference, here are the lyrics again:

Kagome kagome, the bird in the basket

When, oh when will it come out

In the darkness of dawn, the crane and tortoise slipped

Who’s behind you?

However, the original Japanese lyrics are quite ambiguous, so each of the lines can be interpreted in many ways. I translated them in a way that would fit the two explanations in the story, but here are some other theories:

• “Kagome” can refer to a woven basket, but it can also mean a pregnant woman, in which case the “bird in the basket” is actually the unborn child. This leads to a rather morbid interpretation where someone pushes the mother down a flight of stairs (“the crane and tortoise slipped”), causing her to miscarry, and the resentful woman wonders who was behind her.
• “Kagome” can refer to a cage or prison, making the bird the prisoner. Since cranes and tortoises represent longevity and good fortune, the prisoner experiences misfortune that causes the end of their life (i.e. the death penalty). At the end of the song, the prisoner wonders if the person behind them is the executioner or someone who has come to save them.
• The bird in a cage could be a woman forced into prostitution wondering who her next client is and when she’ll be able to escape.

These are all pretty grim, but there are also some more buried treasure theories, as well as one that claims the song is about spiritual awakening. (And then there’s the urban legend that the game was played at an orphanage in World War II where children were experimented on, but I was trying to steer this away from the creepy stuff...)

Anyway, near the end of chapter 1, after everything has been resolved, the group goes to pray at the shrine and draw Iwashimizu Hachimangu’s famous pigeon fortunes, but the story doesn’t elaborate on what these are. Iwashimizu’s paper fortune strips are actually rolled up and held by little ceramic birds that make cute souvenirs! They’re very fitting for a shrine where pigeons are considered messengers.