Volume 1: Amir (20), a beautiful girl, marries a 12-year-old boy named Karruk. Will the nomad and the settler, overcoming an age difference of eight years, be able to get married? Kaoru Mori, who depicted late 19th century England in “Emma,” depicts the culture of life on the Silk Road in her latest work. Riding on the back of a horse and holding a bow, this is a story of characters living in the land of eternity!
Reading Schedule
My current plan is to strart with one chapter in the first week and then possibly increase. We will use a single thread for all weeks.
Spoilers should always be hidden using spoiler blur.
When discussing a specific section, please mention where you are in the book, ideally by chapter so people reading different versions have a clear point of reference.
Feel free to read ahead if it’s exciting, but please refrain from spoiling ahead of the appropriate week.
If you have a question about grammar, vocab, cultural things, etc - ask! That’s a welcome part of the discussion too, and other readers will be happy to help.
Will you be reading along when the club starts?
Yes
No
Maybe
I’ll be reading, but at my own pace
I’m just here for the discussion
0voters
What type of media will you be consuming the book as?
I own physically and have read volumes 1 to 13 in German and volumes 9, 14, 15 in Japanese. (It’s one of four series I own in German, not in Japanese)
When I nominated this series I had not yet read the Japanese volumes and I saw it as an opportunity to get to know the vocabulary, character names etc in Japanese. I’ve since read the Japanese volumes, so my interest in this BC is a bit lowered.
I sometimes think about selling the German volumes and rebuying it in Japanese. But for this BC I’ll just buy the first volume digitally. It’s very pretty, though. So you might want to buy it physically.
Sure, make me start another book club why don’t you… Which is to say: I already own some of the volumes, and have been interested in reading. So I guess I’ll join
Is there an intended schedule pacing, or are you waiting till now people have signed up to determine?
Btw the Korean title is 신부 이야기 and Spanish is Otoyomegatari
I like 1 chapter per week for its simplicity. But I’m happy with whatever. My plan was to start with one chapter at first. And then people can see how fast they can read a chapter and we will probably have a vote.
I pre-prepped for this chapter a few weeks ago by reading ahead to make my vocab sheet, and at first I was intimidated because it was my first time reading something without furigana in earnest, but if I learned anything from the experience it was that reading without furigana isn’t actually that scary lol. Since then I’ve read more furigana-less (is there a word for that?) manga. Woo, learning progress!
The scene where they were all talking about their wishlist for the market was really a doozy. It took me forever to figure out what this word was. But the toughest part for me was the scene with the evil plotting at the end. If I hadn’t read this in English a few years ago I probably wouldn’t have been able to follow it.
Excited to continue reading this! This is probably the most beautiful manga in my collection right now.
The art work and cultural details are always so delightful in this story. I love the part where it shows Amir hunting and how everyone is surprised at not only her hunting, but the taste of the food she prepared with the wild rabbit - it clearly shows the cultural difference between her people and her new family (especially considering that hunting is probably a gendered activity, so I doubt women in her new village partake in it). It’s also pleasant how everyone is accepting, instead of trying to discourage her to make her fit into their own habits and world views.
Thx for sharing! I read with minimal lookups (mix of laziness & tail end of being sick). It’s interesting to see a handful of words where I understood the meaning, but got the reading wrong… I should probably add those to my SRS
Besides the fact that it’s an arranged marriage and knowing vaguely what to expect from the art, I didn’t know anything about this going in! So I was surprised and delighted to find out what a badass Amiru is! I love her already.
My biggest question this week was actually … on the last page, the third panel. Am I supposed to understand what is being depicted?
「欄間」 but not 早乙女 乱馬 however… Apparently 早乙女 means “young female rice planter” or young girl (yes this is completely irrelevant). There is a gag in Ranma where Akane has amnesia and tries to guess his name, and pulls out every alternate spelling of Ranma imaginable (this included)
Anyway there’s was more to comment on, but I’m tired out today, so that’s all I got
All of the very specific architecture vocab this week completely took me out - after I finished reading about the 欄間 and 肘木 and 梁 and 根太 (and Googling what all those words mean in English…) I had to put this down for a few days. Glad I picked it up again because I love the social dynamics of this village - the collective parenting and seeing all the kids hanging out and playing together is great (do they not go to school though?). I loved that Amir made a request of the craftsman too, such good characterization. And I like how good she is with the kids. I guess it makes sense since she’s just a big kid herself.
Spoiler for later: I forgot that Smith’s whole deal doesn’t get explained right away. It’s so funny that he’s just hanging around and at this point the reader doesn’t know what this random white guy is doing here. It’s nice that this village generally seems to take outsiders in stride.
The detailing in the clothes is incredible, I hope they’re doing this digitally with a little copy paste and custom brushes Looks amazing of course.
All the katakana names are throwing me off, I am bad with it at the best of times but now I am also trying to figure out if there are any familiar names to me as someone from Turkey, and had to study turkic tribes a bit in school. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about this period or anything just what I remember from history class which I was never any good at.
But so far I only got
Eyhun = エイホン/Eihon. This is a name that is pretty close to other common names that are still used (ceyhun/seyhun) here. I found a few instances of just Eyhun on google but not as common.
Karluk = literally name of a tribe
Anyway, just a bit of scene setting for the first chapter I guess? Amir seems cool but I wish we saw a bit more internality of her. She just seems like a really cool and endlessly nice girl right now. I want to know how she feels about leaving her people to come here, was it a shock that his groom is 12 or is it considered normal? I’m sure it will all come with time, but 1st chapter it felt like she is a bit too perfect and we are just observing her form the outside.
I am also curious about why there is a white(?) guy here. I guess a scholar of some kind bc not sure who else would be travelling around in this time period. Or he could be mixed but he also has glasses which I assume is rare.
It’s interesting that amir’s tribe and karluk’s are so different about hunting and food, I would assume this is one of the things that would be more or less same for people in the general area. I think the older people said it has fallen out of favor with time (or maybe I misunderstood). In that case I wonder how the tribe generally provides. Also looks like they trade so maybe their lifestyle is more based on trading than hunting at this point.
I didn’t find the mom’s action too overbearing I guess - she’s probably just learning herself how to take care of her own kid, and I’d also be concerned if my young child was disappearing for hours everyday, lol. But I think she learnt a bit of her lesson at the end of the chapter.
The carvings were really beautiful, btw. Did feel a bit bad for the old man for having to make something for all the kids.
Chapter 3
The scene of Amir chasing the fox who was chasing the rabbits is really nicely drawn. I also like the small details, such as the fact that she loves eating pomegranates. But what I really enjoy in general are the details in clothing and also in housing of the tribes; it’s amazing how you can see there’s a small difference between each of the different people.
I do like it how the age difference was also addressed in this chapter - it makes sense that this is a natural concern. The sudden nudity scene did jump scare me (I was in the metro lol), even though I’ve read this series up to the latest chapter and know that there’ll be more nudity in the future
I think you may be overestimating the ability of some of us to keep track I thought “last Saturday” meant the 9th for a minute, and was really confused
Natively page: 乙嫁語り 1 | L24
A bride’s story
A young bride’s story
신부 이야기
Otoyomegatari
Looks amazing of course.
