More on Jay Kristoff and Stormdancer

[karenhealey]

A brief follow up to my previous post, because dammit I really do have lots to do today:

From this interview:

How much research did you have to do with regards to authenticity?

Less than people seem to think. It's kinda odd - I've had people ask if I did a degree in Japanese studies, but the closest I've come is reading all six volumes of AKIRA in a week. Maybe I'd picked up a lot of detail through film and manga that I've consumed down through the years, but Wikipedia was really my go-to-guy. I have a friend who lives in Japan who I bounce ideas off too. I pay him with the promise of booze.

Good lord.

From a review that talks (among other things) about some of the misuse of Japanese language conventions, which would bounce me right out of the book even if the rest of it were superb and I had never read these interviews:

Let's start with my primary nails-on-a-chalkboard issue, the usage of the words "hai" and "sama", shall we? Here are a few examples of these words in action in Stormdancer:

Sama:
"That is more than fair." [...] "Ameterasu bless your kindness, sama."
"I want for nothing. Thank you, sama."
"He slew Boukyaku, young sama. The sea dragon who consumed the island of Takaiyama."
"Honor to you, great sama."
"What is Raijin song, sama?"
"Forgiveness, sama."
"Apologies, sama."

So. Yeah.

Comments

From the FAQ on his website

[birke]

"I've tried to be as accurate as possible with my use of Japanese terminology and honorifics, and recruited a dirty posse of badass Japanese speaking folks to help me with my translations. But I did co-opt a few terms for my own nefarious reasons, and I am gaijin at the end of the day. Hopefully no offense is caused. This is fantasy folks, not international frackin' diplomacy."

My dad is an international diplomat. He helps organize cultural and academic exchanges -- including fellowships for writers to do research in other countries. It's quotidian stuff, no high-level save-the-world negotiations. But it's the kind of thing that Kristoff could have benefited from, and it's the kind of thing that creates the understandings that make saving the world unnecessary. Engaging with other countries, even through art, is essentially an act of amateur diplomacy, and it helps if you realize that's what you're doing instead of assigning responsibility to the professionals. That tends to result in them having to clean up your mess.