Minekura Kazuya - Saiyuki Reload, vol. 04 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

These are more random notes than anything else, given that I've already read it before in the Chinese trans. and written it up elsewhere (also as random notes).

Spoilers for Reload 4

Hazel has a southern accent! It's very odd, and I don't know what I think of it yet. It's also difficult because I don't exactly know what his accent is in Japanese, but I think he is fairly polite and using different sentence endings that somehow "sound" softer.

And I know this is a sort of odd point to get hung up on, but every time Hazel says a Japanese name and I know it's with a southern accent, I start giggling and my brain freezes.

Also, everyone already knows this, but I still love the TokyoPop translation so much! And grumpy Sanzo!

This is about the eighteenth time I've read the Burial arc, but that image of Sanzo's hand grabbing Goku's still kills me, as does Sanzo's little smile at wee!sleeping!Goku and his decision to let Goku sleep a little more. I think that may be the nicest I've ever seen Sanzo treat anyone.

And oh, the Gojyo and Hakkai chapters are even better with a good translation! I am greatly pleased by how the slang that Banri and Gojyo use sounds real and that the dialogue flows.

And yay to the start of "Even a Worm"!

And now, I go off into my long, convoluted thoughts on Saiyuki and race and how it could be read as a commentary on race (have absolutely no idea if Minekura intended it and seriously doubt that she did).

Still spoilers up till Reload 4!

So.. In which I am heavy-handed:

I reread vol. 4 last night, and while Hakkai's conversation with Banri always makes me feel nidgy, it made me feel even more so after an entire week of discussion on cultural appropriation and race.

So, the thing is, I keep reading youkai as minorities. There is, of course, the up front problem of reading demons as minorities, even though the beginning of the series stresses that Shangri-La/Tougenkyou is a place in which youkai and humans are supposed to live in harmony (ideal of a world without racism?). Then comes the Minus Wave and all the youkai go mad.

I keep thinking of Shangri-La as the ideal of a world without racism because of what Banri says -- everyone says it is a world in which youkai and humans are equal, but Banri feels that even before the Minus Wave, they weren't seen as equal.

Also, there's stigma on half-breeds, although there isn't the passing for someone of the other race and the entire tragic mulatto thing. But! You've also got the youkai limiters, which allow Hakkai and Goku to pass for human, not just in the way they look, but also in protecting them from the effects of the Minus Wave.

I dunno. Maybe I'm entirely on crack. It's just that Banri's comments to Hakkai saying that youkai shouldn't have to feel the need to "pass," that they should be accepted as they are, that struck a sore point with me.

Obviously, this comparison breaks into six million little pieces when you think that the youkai side of Hakkai and Goku are their stronger killing sides, but Hakkai's hatred of his youkai side is rather nidgy when read in this light.

And, of course, there's Hazel, who will take souls from youkai and put them into humans, but not the other way around, because who would want to save a youkai?

Again, yay for moral complications and world-building and for finally not taking the "Shangri-La as paradise for youkai and humans" at face value. On the other hand, it reminds me of Whedon's inadvertant comparison of vampires and demons to minorities in Angel.

Mely also pointed out that Gat is coded to be Native American, which completely passed me by.

Ahhh, Minekura, I love you, but I have Issues sometimes (the other Issue being severe lack of cool women, particularly undead, un-evil, un-big-boobed women).

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I think that Minekura does actually intend the youkai/human conflicts to parallel racial tensions, although I don't read the youkai as equivalent to any race in particular. Maybe I should say cultural tensions instead of racial? But I've read it as a not particularly tight analogy to real-world racial prejudices since v.1. Reload has impressed me by taking up some of the points about the youkai as people (rather than the youkai as plot devices) that Minekura let drop for a while.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I don't think it's any race or culture in particular, but one is definitely treated as the minority, even if the numbers don't mean they're the minority. And yeah, I think it's been there since she mentioned that the youkai weren't insane prior to the Minus Wave and that Shangri-La/Tougenkyou was a place where the humans and youkai were supposed to live in peace.

I'm really glad that "Even a Worm" in particular has really started confronting youkai issues and complicating the matter so they aren't just assassin plot devices (of DOOM!). And eeeee, I can't wait for the rest to come out in translation, because I love what she's been doing with Hazel, particularly in the contrast between Hazel and Sanzo.

[greenapple2004.livejournal.com]

Hazel has a Kyoto accent, which is similar to an Osaka accent, but with connotations of being more refined. :-) I was telling telophase a few days ago that Lianne & the translators were going for Southern gentleman, although since half of us are New Englanders, it's apparently not quite right in places. My excuse is that it's weird enough that Hazel speaks a dialect of Japanese, so some slips in it sort of go with the flow.

I *definitely* think Minekura's going for cultural/racial commentary in this arc. As she becomes a smarter storyteller, her themes get more interesting and complicated, and this is no exception. Reload 5 deals with the value of individual lives and whether youkai have the same value as humans, which, considering what merciless killers the Sanzo Party tend to be, is ironic, to say the least. You've got a lot to look forward to, including some puns that I swear will be the death of me (curse you and your accent, Hazel!!).

[oyceter]

Ok good. I keep thinking I'm paranoid now, particularly after the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate (of DOOM!).

And oh, I love Reload 5! Am trying to keep spoilers out for people who haven't read it and are reading comments, but gah. I'm so anticipating the later volumes of Even a Worm in translation, particularly because I read them in Chinese and Japanese and am probably missing giant chunks of subtext and text.

And thanks for the accent explanation!

Finally got my copy

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Eeee, Sanzo and Goku were so sweet! "Like a little round dumpling," indeed.

I think youkai are intended to be read as social minorities-- probably racial/cultural minorites, but all that stuff with Banri and discussions of passing also read as if they could also be read as gay in a straight-majority world.

Minekura's youkai=minority works better for me than Whedon's, because the youkai were no more or less violent or crazy than the humans until the minus wave hit them, whereas in the Buffyverse, that question was very muddled and I don't think Whedon was consistent in how he applied it.

I think Hakkai's seriously mixed feelings about his youkai side are intended to be disturbing to the reader on that basis. (That also reads as more like a gay metaphor than a racial minority metaphor, because some people don't realize they're gay until they're adults and already have an established identity, whereas being a racial minority is something you're more obviously born with.) Also, Hakkai was much scarier and more out of control as a human than he's ever been as a youkai... He's scared of his youkai form, but so far, though he's physically stronger, he's never gone out of control that way.

Goku is nidgy because Seitan Taisei looks youkai and Goku looks human, but he's not exactly a youkai or a human, but an Earth spirit-- a one of a kind.

(Gat is supposed to be Native American? Wow, did I ever miss that one. He looks like a cowboy with dreadlocks.)

Re: Finally got my copy

[oyceter]

Yeah, definitely youkai=minority. I think I just read them as racial/ethnic minorities because a) Great Cultural Appropriation Thing of DOOM! and b) the fact that they can be distinguished as youkai by a look and that Hakkai and Goku "pass" by disguising their youkai looks.

Obviously, people can tell they're youkai by the youki and whatnot, but it was that part that got me.

I think Minekura's use of youkai as minorities works more for me than Whedon's because of what you say (and because Whedon's was sort of tossed in to some episodes and then completely jossed in others...), but I wish we had more chances to see non-Minus-Wave youkai. I think we get glances in the beginning, and the reader is told about it, but there's still the immediate tendency to see youkai as the enemy because of Gyuumaoh and etc. being youkai.

That said, eeeeeeee, I can't wait till you read more of "Even a Worm"! I don't think it's spoilery to say that it explores the whole youkai issue much more than Minekura has been!

Re: Finally got my copy

[telophase.livejournal.com]

OK, somehow I completely missed this post until someone else pointed it out as meta this morning (oyceter, did you take a long time composing it and post it without adjusting the time? That's the usual reason I miss posts), but I feel the need to point out that Gat looks exactly like a 20th century Native American. :) Cowboys don't wear fringe except in 1950s singing-cowboy movies, that's more of an NA thing, and he's got the feather braided into his hair. The bandana on his head codes as NA to me as well, but I can't say why - probably because Hazel's hat from the front looks like a cowboy hat, even though it goes into that bizarre tricorn thing from the side and back.

A decade or so back I was talking with a curator or collections manager, something like that, at ... I want to say the Denver Museum of Art, since I was in Denver getting my anthro/museum degree, and they talked about arguing with the Powers that Be at whicever museum this was about a new exhibit. The exhibit was supposed to reflect the contemporary reality of NA culture, and have art objects and artifacts that were relevant to modern NA life. So this person fought long and hard to have a beat-up Ford pickup included, because that's exactly what's replaced the horse and currently occupies the same position in NA life as the horse used to, but the Powers that Be prevailed. Why? Because that was too weird and everyone (meaning: the people who come to the museum and give them lots of money) knows that Indians ride horses.

At any rate, I think my point when I started that is that the contemporary Native American looks a lot more like a cowboy than people realize. :D

Re: Finally got my copy

[oyceter]

Hrm, I think I posted it a while back? I don't really remember now!

Wow, so Gat really is coded as Native American. That is SO WEIRD.

Re: Finally got my copy

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup. And they pulled that out and went with it in the anime, although by the time they got there it was as far divorced from manga canon as you can get. In the anime, his backstory involves being part of an unnamed clan/tribe running around a place that looks an awful lot like the American West, whose prey - that they caught by hunting with traditional methods, IIRC - was slaughtered wholesale by men on horses with guns and moustaches (er, the men, not the horses or guns) who then went and slaughtered the rest of the clan/tribe.

I don't actually remember if Gat's folk lived in tepees in the anime, and wild horses aren't going to get me to pop that disc in again because it was the most excruciatingly mind-numbingly boring episode in a bad lot.

Anyway, we were definitely explicitly supposed to see him as NA in the anime, and they pulled that from his appearance in the manga, I think.

(damn I need to make that DON'T CRY EMO HAZEL icon.)

[researchotaku.livejournal.com]

It's not totally crazy.

I've seen the racial minority since volume 1 of the series, mostly with Gojyo.

A year or so before I read Saiyuki, I read an essay about "halfu" in Japan (half-white/half-Japanese). I think about that essay a lot when Gojyo's whole "child of taboo" thing comes up. In short: halfus are treated like shit.

I also find it interesting that what marks a "child of taboo" is stereotypical of white people (the minority in Japan): red hair.

So, yes, at the very least I see Gojyo as representing halfus in Japan. With Banri's speech in Reload volume 4, it only encourages the "metaphor for ethnic tensions" idea.

[oyceter]

Huh, I didn't know that about the red hair! Cool.

[grendelity.livejournal.com]

Waaah I'm so late in jumping on this boat but--

I find the racial prejudice thing to be a very interesting theme. It really makes me wonder how Hakkai changes over the series. I mean...I dunno. It's just interesting. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. ^_^;

[oyceter]

Me too! I keep watching him in the Even a Worm arc to see how much he's changed from his Burial self. I think he has been changing quite a bit, particularly after having lived with Gojyo for so long and seeing how being a half-breed affects Gojyo. Plus... Goku is all youkai (or... not human, at least) as well. I think Hakkai's youkai-hatred is abating as his self-hatred is as well.