Discussion thread for 乙女の港 (informal, Class-S Club) - Now Reading

Welcome to the Class-S (and Related) club’s reading of 乙女の港 (実業之日本社文庫 - 少女の友コレクション)

日本語のあらすじ

時代を超えて読み継がれる少女小説の傑作 舞台は昭和初期、横浜のミッションスクール。新入生の三千子に、ふたりの上級生から手紙が届く。 品よく儚げな洋子と、負けず嫌いで勝気な克子。ふたりの間で揺れ動く三千子だが―― 昭和12年、伝説の雑誌「少女の友」に連載された本作は、中原淳一の優美な挿絵もあいまって 一大ブームを巻き起こした。少女時代特有の愛と夢、憧れとときめきに満ち満ちた、永遠の名作。 [特別寄稿・瀬戸内寂聴]

English summary (DeepL)

[DeepL Translation - needs review] A masterpiece of girls’ fiction that has been read throughout the ages The setting is a mission school in Yokohama in the early Showa period. A new student, Michiko, receives letters from two upperclassmen. Yoko is a graceful and fragile girl, and Katsuko is a competitive and competitive woman. Michiko is torn between the two, but… In 1937, this story was serialized in the legendary “Shojo no tomo” magazine, and together with the graceful illustrations by Junichi Nakahara The love and dreams unique to the age of girls, and the love and dreams of the young women in their childhood, were all the rage in the world. It is an eternal masterpiece, filled with the love, dreams, longing, and crush characteristic of girlhood. [Special contribution by Jakucho Setouchi].

Content warnings

No clue

Author, illustrator, and related figures (from intro)
  • Author: 川端康成(かわばた やすなり)
  • Illustrator: 中原淳一(なかはら じゅんいち)- replaced 深谷美保子(ふかや みほこ) as illustrator for 少女の友 magazine
  • Compiler: 瀬戸内寂聴 (せとうち じゃくちょう) - Wrote intro, glossary in back (corresponding to footnotes in each story)
  • Commentator: 内田静江(うちだ しずえ?) - curator of 弥生美術館 (やよい びじゅつかん)- wrote commentary in back. There’s a number of Amazon titles by her, including 100th anniversary commemoration edition of 少女の友, the magazine that 乙女の港 and other works (like 花物語) were published in
登場人物 (Cast - names & years only)

For more details see 乙女の港 - Wikipedia

Name Year Age
大河原三千子(おおがわら みちこ) 1st 12/13
八木洋子(やぎ ようこ) 5th 16/17
克子(かつこ) 4th 15/16
経子(つねこ)classmate 1st 12/13
昌三 しょうぞう (older brother) 中学3[1]
  1. Boys school uses a different number system, and is more advanced than the girls school (yay historical sexism :upside_down_face: ). There’s a footnote about it, but I was tired and skimmed. I’m guessing he’s 2 or so years older than Michiko
Illustrations (work-in-progress, currently no spoilers)

Chapter 1



Chapter 2




No set schedule

Feel free to ask questions, share thoughts, etc, just post chapter or pg numbers, and keep things under [details] or [spoiler] tags, unless they’re general enough that they wouldn’t be a spoiler even for ppl just starting out.

Looking forward to reading/discussing this with everyone!!

Will you be reading with us?
  • Yes
  • Just following the discussion
  • I came along later
0 voters
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Looking forward to reading this. I’ll probably start on it in a couple days after I finish the current book I’m reading.

I came across this book when reading Kara no Shoujo, one of the characters in that mentioned they liked this book. Outside of that, I don’t know too much about the book so it’ll be fun to see what its like.

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I was thinking of waiting a bit, since I just started おにいさまへ... 2 | L25 and マリア様がみてる 18 特別でないただの一日 | L29 … but I have no impulse control, so I’ve started already (I’ll post some notes & questions on the intro in my next comment)

Is this what you’re referring to - 殻ノ少女 ?

I found the book when I was specifically looking up Class-S and/or 少女小説. I love when stuff contains older references like that though! I’m curious to see how the writing here (1938) compares to vs 花物語 (1916-24), in both difficulty and style. I flipped through slightly, and like the illustrations in chapter 1 :slight_smile:

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Yes, one of the characters mentions it in the first game. It’s a good VN, although I still need to read the other two in the series.

This will be my first time reading anything old so I’ll be curious to see how difficult it is in general for me compared to modern stuff.

I’ll be reading it digitally, I flipped through it real quick and noticed there is no illustrations in the version I have :thinking: The cover art is really pretty though.

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Where did you find a digital copy?!?! Plz share!! I can take pictures of the illustrations as I get to them

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I’ll send a DM since I’m not sure if I can post the link here.

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p20/38, impressions so far:

Difficulty: The overall writing style is way more straightforward than both マリア様がみてる | L29 and 花物語 | L39 . If it weren’t for the antiquated grammar, and occasionally odd kanji, I’d tentatively say it’s maybe a bit easier than マリみて - besides for this one poetry portion that was utterly incomprehensible to me… but I’ll wait till a bit further in to see if that judgement stays the same. It also helps that the print in the physical version is a size or two larger than the other books

Editions: Regarding the different editions, so far they’re mostly the same. The physical edition has a helpful glossary, plus an analytical essay at the end, and also has pictures. I’ll try to add the illustrations to the OP, and also photos of the glossary pages, as I come across them. Otherwise they sometimes have furigana in different places, or minor differences. The digital edition was published in 1954, while the physical one that I have is the 5th printing (2022, first printing in 2011). I’m reading them side-by-side, since they’re not quite identical.

Ages & school years: Since this is early-Shouwa era, I’m unsure what ages 1-5年生 correspond to here. My guess is 15-19, but if anyone knows how education levels were divided in a Yokohama Catholic school in the late 1930s, I’d be curious to know. (Our perspective character is a 1st year, and has interest from 4th & 5th years).

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Found out the answer:
三千子は満12~13歳
4年生の克子は15~16歳
5年生の洋子は16~17歳の見当である。

From footnotes 3-4

text via Google lens (have not proofread)

1.3 本科 日本の教育制度が小学校6年、中学校3年、高校3年に統一されたのは昭和22~23年。 それ以前は修業年限の異なる各種の学校が並立し、学校制度もしばしば改変されてきた。本作連載の昭和12~13年当時は、尋常小学校の6年間のみが義務教育で、その後は中等教育機関として中学校、高等女学校、高等小学校、実業学校等があった。このうち中学校と高等女学校は入学試験が難しく、選抜された男女が入学を許された。

本作に登場する学校は実在のものではないが、モデルと思われる私立校はある。その学校では高等女学校へ上がる前段階に「予科」を設け、高等女学校の課程を「本科」と呼んでいた。この場合の「予科」とは尋常小学校5~6年生に相当し、「本科1年」は高等女学校の 1年生を意味する。

1.4 女学校 義務教育である尋常小学校を卒業した女子のための中等教育機関。正式には高等女学校。4年前と5年制があり、おおよそ12歳~17歳の少女が学んだ。当時の高等女学校学率は約2割で、良家の子女が通った。国公立校と私立校とに大別できるが、なかでも国立校は「官立」と呼ばれて高いレベルを誇った。概して官立校には秀才タイプが集い、私立校では各学校ごとに特色のある教育方針のもと学園生活が謳歌された。本作の舞台とされる横浜には、外国人宣教師による女子教育機関を母体としたミッションスクールがあった。 なお、女学校1年生である三千子は満12~13歳、4年生の克子は15~16歳、5年生の洋子は16~17歳の見当である。

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Ch1 thoughts

So far this doesn’t seem too bad language wise. The poetry part I didn’t really understand at all either, I looked it up and I guess those are famous poems. There was a blog that talked about them a little bit, completely unrelated to this book though. I also didn’t really understand the conversation regarding 脂肪取り but everything else seemed okay.

I like the characters we’ve met. The マアフリイ病 part was funny. I wasn’t expecting to see English in this. Outside of that, not too much to say about the opening chapter but it seems promising so far.

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Interesting I’ll have to look up the poems then. I’m only just at the part where エス has been name dropped for the first time

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Scattered chapter 1 thoughts

Seemed like girls excited over makeup. Some are obsessed, and think you have to do it to be fashionable. Others are wary or disinterested, and it’s against school rules for. Maybe I missed something tho?

In general the language is not as hard as I was worried, but harder than is comfortable for me. My 2 points of comparison are 花物語 and マリみて. 花物語 is much harder - the language is much more literary and advanced. It also has pre-standardized kana & kanji. Despite マリみて’s more ornate writing style, and higher amount of internal monologue so far, I’m finding 乙女の港 is harder due to:

  • More unknown vocab
  • older kanji conventions 目を円く or 彌(いや)だ - if I’m getting that 2nd kanji right
  • A lot of archaic speech patterns that are just different enough from anything I’ve read

To be fair I’m on book 19 of マリみて, and when I started book 1 it felt a lot harder to comprehend than it does now.

I can’t help thinking the character names are superficially similar (tho the characters they’re attached to are totally different). I also get the impression that Michiko will be a bit less bushy-eyed than say Yumi, or the MC from おにいさまへ. Youko seems pretty sociable, and surprisingly forward so far. Hard to get much of a sense of what things will be like, given how short the chapter was, but I’m looking forward to the next chapter. Hoping it starts to feel easier as I get a bit further in.

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Reply

That makes sense. I’ve never seen 脂肪取り used before like that when talking about makeup so wasn’t too sure when reading it.

I was surprised at how forward Youko is so far too but she seems nice.

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脂肪取り - It’s a little cut off, but if you can see footnote 2 in the image I posted b4, it explains it

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Ch2 thoughts

This chapter felt a little harder than the previous one. Feels like some of the scenes move quickly from one to the next but that might just be because I’m more used to VNs. Still a fun read though.

It was nice seeing some of Michiko’s family here. I had a bad first impression of her mom from the first chapter but she seemed better here.

Michiko feels very genki. Her relationship with Youko feels like its developed pretty fast too? Seems like they’re really close to each other after only two chapters. I guess Youko was attracted to Michiko at first sight anyways. Haven’t seen too much Katsuko yet but she feels like trouble from the little bit we got with her.

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What do these words mean?
縁先き
手廻し

I’m probably like 40% through ch2, and so far finding it a lot easier (maybe I’m just feeling better today?). Still reading side by side. Been running into some words I know, but am used to seeing with furigana (ex 蕾), and plenty of new words too. Enjoying the rural setting - very different than anything I’m used to reading

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I think they’re slightly older/nonstandard ways of writing:
縁先
手回し
(which is the way EDICT has them listed).

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Ch3 thoughts

The start of this chapter was pretty intense. I don’t think I like Tsuneko too much. Based on this chapter and the last one, she just doesn’t seem like a good person so far.

Michiko hiding from Youko was kind of cute. I did feel a little bad for Youoko since she seemed genuinely worried for a second there but at the same time, it was sort of funny with how serious Youko is.
I looked up the 薔薇は生きてる book they talked about in this chapter and it seems pretty interesting. No digital version exists from what I can find though.

I was glad to see Youko open up even more in this chapter. This felt like a very dialogue heavy chapter but it was nice to get some more information about her mom and learn more about the ranch. Sounds like it is a mess at the ranch.

I think this was my favorite chapter so far. I’m liking Michiko and Youko a lot. I wonder if Katsuko will show up in a bigger role in the next chapter or two. Her role has been pretty minor so far but with the little bits of her we’ve seen so far, I feel like something big will happen with her later.

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Finished ch 2 finally!! I gave in, and I’m looking primarily at the digital version now - but still check physical here and there. In general I found chapter 2 a lot easier to read (less lookups, less ???, etc). I’m not sure I had the best comprehension for some of the later parts, but I think that had more to do with focus issues, and not the writing

ch 2 thoughts

They’re sisters already!! They seem like a great pair. I’m not used to rural settings, so seeing them get all excited over cows and naming them was cute & novel. Katsuko seems like she’s gonna be trouble (also like she’s maybe the source of the rumors?), and Tsuneko seems like a not so great person.

I wasn’t expecting to see Greek mythology make an appearance. 懐かしい

I appreciate how quickly things move in the story so far. It feels light, but without feeling too shallow. I keep reading 洋子 as さちこ since they’re spelled the same. Thankfully ようこ is much more pleasant than さちこ so far

Chapter 3 is quite a bit longer, but hopefully I can get through it with less pausing

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I intended to post my thoughts for each chapter but ch4 was incredibly short so I didn’t have anything to say and then I forgot to come back for the other chapters :sweat_smile: I’ll post my thoughts up to where I am now.

ch4-8 thoughts

The summer vacation stuff was nice. It was a little sad to be separated from Youko for so long. I was surprised that Michiko didn’t know how to ride a bike? Feels like it’d be rare to find someone that age that doesn’t know how to ride a bike.

I’m glad we got a bigger focus on Katsuko for some of these chapters. I don’t particularly think she’s a good person but as a fictional character I like her. In some of the scene’s she comes off as so arrogant its kind of funny. I think she’s a good rival-type character although Michiko would never choose her over Youko of course.

There were some good jokes sprinkled in throughout too. The thing about countries and her aunt’s age was funny.

I think it was near the end of ch8 they had a line about how sisters would know everything about each other, even their sock length etc. I wonder how much of that was hyperbole or if most of those relationships were really that obsessively close. Guess it depends a lot on the couple, I think there was that one girl back in ch4 where it said her relationship with her sister was mainly to like gossip about Youko and Michiko or something like that? I’m guessing a couple like them aren’t that close to know everything about each other.

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How are you finding the difficulty? Consistent? Easier/harder as you get further in?