Hello all! A small group of us have decided we’re going to tackle 孤島の鬼 | L38 by Edogawa Ranpo in Japanese, and since the book has been translated into a few other languages, I wanted to see if we couldn’t tempt some other Natively readers to join us!
(Note: Don’t be intimidated by the JP level! I have been assured by People Who Have Read Ranpo that a lot of his book difficulty lies in his fancy kanji usage, which readers of translations will not have to worry about. Check a preview to see if the level looks reasonable for you!)
I unfortunately have not been able to find a German version; please let me know if one exists and I can add it to the table!
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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.
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I likely won’t start til later this week / on the weekend cause most of my physical books are on moving truck, but I’m sure I’ll be able to catch up as needed.
Hello! On @Zakarius ’ recommandation, I will be joining this informal book club
I use Natively for Japanese study but I’m not at a level yet where I can read Ranpo (one day!). So I’ll be reading along in French, my second language.
I went out and bought the book today. I have another book I’ll be finishing up this week, so I’ll probably start it this weekend.
I read the first chapter today, and it amused me that it made a reference to the Ranpo book I’ve just read: 白髪鬼.
(though looking it up he’s actually referencing the translated version, but I still found it to be an amusing coincidence)
Ranpo World, and some book editions, have a little additional commentary about the work from Ranpo himself so thought I’d share it here, as it gives a little insight into his thoughts:
English translation put through translate because I am too lazy to do it myself
Commentary on the work by the author (Ranpo) (cited from Kawade Bunko)
This work was serialized for just over a year, starting with the inaugural January issue of Asahi —a mass-market magazine with a large circulation launched in 1929 by Umuson Morishita (who had become the editor-in-chief at Hakubunkan) to compete with Kodansha’s King.The plot of this novel was inspired by an account found in the essays within the Complete Works of Ōgai, which described the practice in China of deliberately maiming people to create sideshow attractions.Subsequently, I wrote numerous serialized novels for popular entertainment magazines, and The Demon of the Lonely Island could well be described as the first work of that kind.Someone remarked that, among my full-length novels, this one is the most cohesive.The reason homosexuality is incorporated into this novel is likely that, at the time, I was avidly scouring literature on the subject with a friend named Jun’ichi Iwata, and that interest naturally found its way into the story.This work was included in the Selected Works of Edogawa Rampo published by Shinchosha around 1938–39; however, as the Sino-Japanese Conflict was already underway at the time, censorship of fiction was strict, and I was ordered to make deletions in several places. Some of these cuts inadvertently remained in post-war editions, so I have now restored the text to its original form by cross-referencing it with my Complete Works published by Heibonsha around 1917–18.I also noticed an error in the Higuchi family timeline near the end, so I corrected that as well.
Just finished the はしがき/Preface myself; this opening at least was a pretty smooth read; a few things I took note as I read, both in terms of language and story content so far:
Writing 幸せ as 仕合せ
Writing また as both 又 and 亦 on separate occasions. The former I’m of course familiar with, but 亦 is new for me. (Thank you to my edition for providing furigana so I don’t have to spend too much time hunting it down.)
I’ve hit my first “really long Ranpo sentence” already, I see; at least one of those paragraphs was a single sentence. Wasn’t too bad to follow along; I could at least understand the pieces of the sentences, if not necessarily the sentence’s overall structure.
I was a bit surprised to see admission that we’ll be talking about a 同性恋愛/same-sex relationship (though I noticed he modified it with 的/-like, which is interesting) incident right off the bat. I had heard that this book may or may not have gay elements of some kind in it, but I was expecting more indirect references or something that might depend on the interpretation of the reader, not just plainly stating stuff right off the bat.
Overall a very solid beginning. I still have some other book club reads I need to catch up on , so I’ll pause here briefly, but if at all possible I’m hoping to also read chapter 1 later today. (Though speaking of which, I don’t believe my edition explicitly numbers my chapters, so I’ll probably just be referring to them by their chapter titles instead.)
Ranpo’s 白髪鬼 is his own interpretation of another work.
Vendetta! (1886) is a novel by Marie Corelli, which was translated into Japanese by Kuroiwa Ruiko in 1893 which he titled 白髪鬼.
Ranpo seemed to have really enjoyed this novel and wanted to do his own interpretation of it and got permission from the Kuroiwa family to do his own version in the early 1930s while still using the name 白髪鬼.
There’s a few changes in the beginning of Ranpo’s but after about the halfway point he seems to ditch everything entirely and go all out Ranpo on the plot.
I’ve read through Chapter 3, and am having a hard time putting it down!
The French version was only published in March of this year, translated by Sophie Bescond, who has been doing the French-speaking public a great service by translating works by early 20th c. Japanese authors like Ranpo. When I picked up my copy at the bookstore it was next to a pile of new copies of 少女地獄, translated as L’Enfer des jeunes filles, by Kyūsaku Yumeno, which I might go back and buy.
I wonder if this censorship pertained primarily to the book’s homosexual elements?
Very cool, that is a great service indeed! 少女地獄 is an interesting choice for a translation. It also has a horror aesthetic to Ranpo. Let us know if you end up picking it up!
思出の一夜/A Night of Memories: (Note: whatever English I pull out for this club isn’t taken from the official English release, it’s just my sloppy translations used for convenience’s sake.) God, it took me way too long to realize her first name was 初代/Shodai and wasn’t some kind of strange title she had. Not much I want to comment on for this chapter, other than my surprise when he brought up his gay friend and then dropped him out of nowhere. Really pulling at your readership’s interest, huh, 江戸川.
that a lot of his book difficulty lies in his fancy kanji usage, which readers of translations will not have to worry about. Check a preview to see if the level looks reasonable for you!)
Wasn’t too bad to follow along; I could at least understand the pieces of the sentences, if not necessarily the sentence’s overall structure.
I still have some other book club reads I need to catch up on 
, so I’ll pause here briefly, but if at all possible I’m hoping to also read chapter 1 later today. (Though speaking of which, I don’t believe my edition explicitly numbers my chapters, so I’ll probably just be referring to them by their chapter titles instead.)
sorry
