TRANSLATION NOTES

Shiritori is a Japanese word game in which players take turns saying words. Each word must begin with the syllable (kana) on which the previous word ended. Playing a word ending with the syllable “n” results in a loss, since no Japanese word begins with the syllabic “n,” as the author references in his afterword.

The shiritori game that played out in the second chapter of this volume of No Game No Life represented a particular challenge, given that it involved the rather constricting rules cited above. In the first printing of the English-language edition, the game retained the Japanese words that each side played, but for the second printing, the editorial team undertook the challenge of translating the action, modifying the rules to match first and last letters of the words employed, rather than syllables.

For the readers’ reference, romanizations of the original terms utilized for each turn are listed below, along with the literal translation of the term from the original Japanese edition. Their matching syllables have been italicized.

Author Afterword Shiritori