Fushigi no Kuni no Bird - Vol. 11 Ch. 51 - Mori

[MangaDex]

 

[SlightlyQuarky]

Thanks for the chapter!

Kinda had a feeling this was a manga-original chapter, the real life Bird sounds like she'd have a completely different take on the assimilation lol

 

[GruntZone360]

Thanks for the chapter!

Kinda had a feeling this was a manga-original chapter, the real life Bird sounds like she'd have a completely different take on the assimilation lol

My thoughts exactly as I was reading the chapter. xD Then I read the note at the end and was like. Wow so my hunch was right eh?

Thanks for the chapter like always!!!

 

[tamarakko]

I'd prefer if the author saved such thoughtful nuances for original characters of their own instead of whitewashing racist history. Isabella Bird wasn't woke and certainly wasn't moe, but well, I guess it'd be too problematic to ship her with Ito otherwise 🤷‍♀️ Gotta tone down our girlboss colonizer

 

[toriaezu]

I'd prefer if the author saved such thoughtful nuances for original characters of their own instead of whitewashing racist history. Isabella Bird wasn't woke and certainly wasn't moe, but well, I guess it'd be too problematic to ship her with Ito otherwise 🤷‍♀️ Gotta tone down our girlboss colonizer

I both agree and disagree with this sentiment and I'm going to tell you exactly why in this essay:

Was the original Isabella Bird racist? I would argue that while she was certainly not a liberal icon, she never looked down on non-white peoples. Her vocabulary is frequently derogatory and she uses terms (i.e. savages, mannikin, yellow) that absolutely are racist today, but at the time, they were descriptors first and insults second. Miss Bird absolutely treats the people she interacts with with respect. She doesn't mince words on whether or not she likes something/someone, but she's never rude or abusive like A LOT (oh my god so many) of contemporary European men were. Her writings on the religious practices she encountered are shockingly free of any sort of derision or contempt considering her father was a vicar and her father's cousin was Archbishop of Canterbury. So while the manga absolutely moe-fies Miss Bird to appeal to the modern reader (and I can't fault the author for this because you can't sell books if everyone hates the main character), the manga Bird is certainly true to the spirit of the original, if not the letter.

On the subject of colonization, this again is a tricky subject, and we've got to look at it through the eyes of the target audience, the typical Japanese reader. They're unlikely to even view the settling of Hokkaido as colonization. The word used in Japanese is 開拓 (cultivation, development, pioneering) when referring to Wajin taking over Hokkaido. In many ways it's extremely similar to how the push west on the Oregon Trail is depicted. It's not colonizing, it's expanding, it's pioneering, it's spreading out and making new farms, new cities. How can it be colonizing when it's right next to you and you're not going overseas? The first step here is recognizing that yes, it is colonization, and while this is a good thing for some people (land of opportunity) it also means a big change for those who were there before.

I believe the author is walking a very fine line here with his portrayal. He's introducing new concepts to his audience, softening it by including both the viewpoint they're familiar with, coupled with worldview-changing information. Having Bird and Itou deliver this also makes it much more impactful – another new character would remove it too far from the reader, it's weightier coming from characters we've known for 11 volumes now. The headman is representative of the positives of settling, the Ainu man the negatives, while Ito and Bird are neutral witnesses, Ito leaning more positive, Bird leaning more negative. The addition of another character would tip the scales too much in either direction.

Is it whitewashing? It certainly does tell a romanticized version. Was Miss Bird a colonizer? Not personally but she absolutely reaped the benefits of colonization. Should the story be absolutely historically accurate? No, the author is allowed historical liberties in the interest of telling the story that he wants to tell, otherwise Bird would be 47 and crotchety. Personally I think it would have been more of a disservice to history to leave out a condemnation (gentle that it is) of the cruelties forced on the Ainu people.

So yeah, while I agree that the author went a tad overboard with the final monologue, the feelings are in the right place, and I would much rather the issue were addressed than glossed over.

 

[trimurti3]

What a fantastic chapter. The beginning, in which Isabella is recounting the episode with the Ainu hunters and Itou is like, "Yes, this is the fifth time you told me," has this warmth that really shows how far they've come in 11 volumes and a long journey to Hokkaido. The headman of Mori has such a distinctive appearance that I'm curious to know if he's supposed to resemble someone historical in particular (of course, anytime one thinks of an eyepatch-wearing former samurai on the losing side of the Bakumatsu Era and Boshin War it's Saitou Hajime who comes to mind thanks to Rurouni Kenshin, but I wouldn't believe that's the case here).

Isabella's ending monologue and Itou's response that advocates the existence of anthropologists is interesting. I can't say I fully appreciate it since it comes from people benefiting from colonization and expansionism, however indirectly (and I am including the mangaka in this description), I feel like it's still a useful sentiment overall as to the importance of the field of anthropology. We all are reading this fictionalized depiction of a field study and taking in the views and actions of people from nearly two hundred years ago. We can and should criticize what we are viewing, but ultimately this manga is making us consider the plight of the Ainu in the Meiji Era just as we should consider the plight of all the other peoples in human history who have been and will be used and exploited. Isn't that an amazing thing?

 

[tamarakko]

I both agree and disagree with this sentiment and I'm going to tell you exactly why in this essay:

Was the original Isabella Bird racist? I would argue that while she was certainly not a liberal icon, she never looked down on non-white peoples. Her vocabulary is frequently derogatory and she uses terms (i.e. savages, mannikin, yellow) that absolutely are racist today, but at the time, they were descriptors first and insults second. Miss Bird absolutely treats the people she interacts with with respect. She doesn't mince words on whether or not she likes something/someone, but she's never rude or abusive like A LOT (oh my god so many) of contemporary European men were. Her writings on the religious practices she encountered are shockingly free of any sort of derision or contempt considering her father was a vicar and her father's cousin was Archbishop of Canterbury. So while the manga absolutely moe-fies Miss Bird to appeal to the modern reader (and I can't fault the author for this because you can't sell books if everyone hates the main character), the manga Bird is certainly true to the spirit of the original, if not the letter.

On the subject of colonization, this again is a tricky subject, and we've got to look at it through the eyes of the target audience, the typical Japanese reader. They're unlikely to even view the settling of Hokkaido as colonization. The word used in Japanese is 開拓 (cultivation, development, pioneering) when referring to Wajin taking over Hokkaido. In many ways it's extremely similar to how the push west on the Oregon Trail is depicted. It's not colonizing, it's expanding, it's pioneering, it's spreading out and making new farms, new cities. How can it be colonizing when it's right next to you and you're not going overseas? The first step here is recognizing that yes, it is colonization, and while this is a good thing for some people (land of opportunity) it also means a big change for those who were there before.

I believe the author is walking a very fine line here with his portrayal. He's introducing new concepts to his audience, softening it by including both the viewpoint they're familiar with, coupled with worldview-changing information. Having Bird and Itou deliver this also makes it much more impactful – another new character would remove it too far from the reader, it's weightier coming from characters we've known for 11 volumes now. The headman is representative of the positives of settling, the Ainu man the negatives, while Ito and Bird are neutral witnesses, Ito leaning more positive, Bird leaning more negative. The addition of another character would tip the scales too much in either direction.

Is it whitewashing? It certainly does tell a romanticized version. Was Miss Bird a colonizer? Not personally but she absolutely reaped the benefits of colonization. Should the story be absolutely historically accurate? No, the author is allowed historical liberties in the interest of telling the story that he wants to tell, otherwise Bird would be 47 and crotchety. Personally I think it would have been more of a disservice to history to leave out a condemnation (gentle that it is) of the cruelties forced on the Ainu people.

So yeah, while I agree that the author went a tad overboard with the final monologue, the feelings are in the right place, and I would much rather the issue were addressed than glossed over.

I should make clear that I have a ton of appreciation for this manga and its role in conveying a past era in an interesting and incredibly well-drawn story (also, huge thanks to your hard work in translating these). As a fan of historical manga, I think Fushigi no Kuni no Bird goes above many authors when it comes to addressing the uglyness of the past. And given how rarely depicted women in past eras were (and if they showed up, it was mostly as supporters instead of roles where they took the lead), Bird's example earns curiosity and appreciation for her contributions.

I won't say it's Sassa Taiga's intention necessarily (because we often tend to push the blame onto the mangaka when it's often mandated by editors in order to make a story appeal to more readers), but the thing is, you still see to this day history figures being glorified and softly reinterpreted to appeal to our current generation's lenses to make them "relatable" albeit still "a model to follow", divorcing them from their original complexity. This Isabella Bird example is absolutely not the worst example of it by any means, but it's an elephant of the room readers will notice and want to talk about nonetheless.

Do historical manga necessarily need to be 1:1 to be respected? No. However, adapting something isn't politically neutral and certain changes will inherently convey a certain agenda regardless of the well-meaning intentions behind. Seeing Isabella in several scenes being the moral voice of the reason regarding the complexity of racial relations, the one that says "you should respect native Japanese culture" to Ito, the one that feels pity for the Ainu, as if she of all people is always the reader's role model for all situations even outside of her own expertise and personal experience, feels as tone-deaf as the Green Book movie. It's not that I don't want this manga touching on delicate subjects; it's the /way/ they are handled that I think could have been done better if it wasn't for the fact it tries hard to protect Bird's image in a liberal narrative instead of acknowledging that as impressive as she may have been for her time, she was a person with faults and biases of her own that inherently came from the society she was raised in.

 

[toriaezu]

I should make clear that I have a ton of appreciation for this manga and its role in conveying a past era in an interesting and incredibly well-drawn story (also, huge thanks to your hard work in translating these). As a fan of historical manga, I think Fushigi no Kuni no Bird goes above many authors when it comes to addressing the uglyness of the past. And given how rarely depicted women in past eras were (and if they showed up, it was mostly as supporters instead of roles where they took the lead), Bird's example earns curiosity and appreciation for her contributions.

I won't say it's Sassa Taiga's intention necessarily (because we often tend to push the blame onto the mangaka when it's often mandated by editors in order to make a story appeal to more readers), but the thing is, you still see to this day history figures being glorified and softly reinterpreted to appeal to our current generation's lenses to make them "relatable" albeit still "a model to follow", divorcing them from their original complexity. This Isabella Bird example is absolutely not the worst example of it by any means, but it's an elephant of the room readers will notice and want to talk about nonetheless.

Do historical manga necessarily need to be 1:1 to be respected? No. However, adapting something isn't politically neutral and certain changes will inherently convey a certain agenda regardless of the well-meaning intentions behind. Seeing Isabella in several scenes being the moral voice of the reason regarding the complexity of racial relations, the one that says "you should respect native Japanese culture" to Ito, the one that feels pity for the Ainu, as if she of all people is always the reader's role model for all situations even outside of her own expertise and personal experience, feels as tone-deaf as the Green Book movie. It's not that I don't want this manga touching on delicate subjects; it's the /way/ they are handled that I think could have been done better if it wasn't for the fact it tries hard to protect Bird's image in a liberal narrative instead of acknowledging that as impressive as she may have been for her time, she was a person with faults and biases of her own that inherently came from the society she was raised in.

I totally get where you're coming from and I don't disagree with anything you've said. The difference between real-life Bird and manga Bird is something I struggle with as a translator to keep both homogenized yet also distinct. The manga absolutely paints her in a much more liberal light than perhaps she deserves. But as I mentioned before, I can't see how to write a story appealing to Japanese readers without taking these historical liberties.

As an aside, I'd like to note that although the Ainu people are often called "native Japanese" or "aboriginal Japanese", they're a distinct ethnic group, separate from the Yamato and Ryukyuan peoples. I think it's even more important to acknowledge them as their own separate ethnicity because it was only in 2019 (6 years after this series started!) that they received legal recognition of the fact.

 

[FandomRatGuy]

Good chapter and a very interesting conversation here in the comments. Thank you for all of it!

 

[Yaiova]

Thank you for the chapter! Despite the romanticisation some comments mention, even if its fluffed up, the events, the colonisation of parts of japan, the development, the wars, happened. Its because of this manga among other sources that I've learned so much about history of other countries. I think the author is doing a splendid job if this manga is made to entertain and inform people. This is definitely a genre of manga I cannot get enough of.

As a side note, because of this manga I actually bought Bird's book 'Unbeaten Tracks in Japan', as well as hard copies of the manga when they've become available.

 

[toriaezu]

As a side note, because of this manga I actually bought Bird's book 'Unbeaten Tracks in Japan', as well as hard copies of the manga when they've become available.

Good luck! It can be a bit of a slog at times, but her descriptions are so vivid and compelling it's no wonder she was a bestselling author.

If anyone else is interested, all of Isabella Bird's works are in public domain and can be read at Project Gutenberg.
Unbeaten Tracks in Japan is here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2184/2184-h/2184-h.htm

 

[friendly]

First of all: Xigbar.

Second of all: Original as it may be, I truly appreciate the presence of these chapters. Expansion and settlement, survival and erasure..... It's a grim subject, and all the tougher when an audience might not be used to thinking about it.

Its something i think about a lot. I'm of romani descent. Ive had someone tell me to my face I was lying about it because they thought we were all dead.

 

[bassardgooey]

Thank you so much for translating this series, seriously. It's one of my all-timers! I always love the notes at the end of each ch too always helpful to get the extra context ^_^