Translating Strange Houses

It has been a couple of months since Strange Houses, Uketsu’s debut novel in Japan and second in English translation, came out in both the US and UK. I figure it’s about time to address some of the particular issues translating this one, given that people have probably had a chance to read it.

The UK cover of Strange Houses by Uketsu. It is a pink-colored house layout against a blue background. Inside the house diagram is a bloody meat cleaver, a severed hand, and the caption "The chilling Japanese mystery sensation." It also has the Japanese title. — The UK cover of Strange Houses by Uketsu.

Just to warn you, this is not a spoiler free effort. I won’t go out of the way to include hidden details, but I’m going to go where I’m led.

So.

To recap a bit, I first encountered Uketsu as a YouTuber. My wife became a fan during the height of the pandemic and introduced me in 2022. I shared her interest, but being more interested in books than videos, I was pleased to see that he was also publishing books. Strange Houses actually began from a long-form video and a simultaneous story published on the fiction site Omokoro. An editor at the publisher Asuka Shinsha then reached out to Uketsu and said it would make a great novel if expanded. The existing story became the first chapter of the novel, and I think this helps explains some of the roughness that people might notice in Strange Houses as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I love the mood and characters it introduces, but in terms of storytelling it is a little loose. And the ending is… Eh. It has its flaws, though I honestly believe the charms outweigh them.

That story is about a friend reaching out to Uketsu about an odd house he was thinking of buying. Poking into the house’s design, Uketsu’s other friend, Kurihara, speculated that the house had been designed for the purpose of murdering and dismembering people. The original friend ended up not buying the house because a dismembered body was discovered in a nearby wooded area and it just felt like a bad omen.

Now, here is where we get to the “translation issue.” In the original publication, that first dead body—the dismembered body missing its left hand, which becomes a significant plot point as other bodies missing hands are discovered—is never mentioned again. The conclusion seems to wrap up all kinds of plot points, but no one even says “Hey, what about that one guy.”

The English editor and I were both rather nonplussed by that. It seemed a rather significant plot point, indeed the instigating incident for the whole book, to just let fade into nothing.

We reached out to Uketsu about this, and about the possibility of adding something, even some simple comment like “It’s crazy that the first body was just a coincidence” so it didn’t feel like people just forgot about a whole dismembered body.

His response was initial surprise, since, as he said. “In the two years since publication not a single person has even asked about that.” But then he said that there was a new mass market paperback edition (or bunkoban) coming out in Japan with a new Afterword “by Kurihara,” which added some doubts and twists to the story as recounted by the fictional Uketsu. Real world Uketsu proposed both adding the Afterword to the English version and making some adjustments that would incorporate the initial body into the doubts Kurihara expressed, which was both a rather neat solution to our doubts and a very cool idea in general.

What this also means is that the English version of Strange Houses is in a very real way a different story from either version in Japanese—and I want to emphasize, it was made so by Uketsu himself. This wasn’t some rogue decision by the editor and I.

I think this should tell you something about the “literary” translation process. On top of cultural/linguistic issues, translators are some of the closest readers you’ll ever find. We dig deep, deep, deep into the stories we translate because, honestly, most of us are terrified of missing something important. We get confused. Sometimes it’s because we do miss things. Sometimes it’s because the author missed something. And sometimes it’s because of a gap in values, world-view, or cultural assumptions. And that’s where we, as translators, start to dig and clarify so we can ensure that the readers of the translated story have the best experience possible.

It also speaks to the role of editors. I think many people assume that in publishing, the author is some kind of towering, monolithic talent whose words are inviolate. It just isn’t true. Editors have enormous power to shape a story and even an author’s voice, and almost always for the better. You think it’s a coincidence that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Ernest Hemingway all just happened to be discovered by the same editor? Look up Maxwell Perkins. It is an edifying example of how editors can influence literary output. The same is true of translation, perhaps even more so. See my review of Who We’re Reading when we Read Haruki Murakami for more on that.

So, yeah, it turns out that published stories are far more collaborative than is often believed. That’s not a bad thing! It makes the experience better for readers, if a bit stressful for writers…

Exploring Choice in Translation – A Case Study

A lot of the talk about translation done by people who don’t think all that deeply about it—even professional translators!—focuses on things like accuracy and faithfulness, but I find that tends to work around assumptions that are worth investigating. Like, when something is “accurate,” we tend to think of it as closely reflecting some kind of observable truth or fact. In the case of, say, a machine manual, accuracy does often come down to a reflection of the physical specifications of the machine and its use.

But when we are translating communication of a less tangible sort, things aren’t so clear. Even in the realm of non-fiction, writers often layer intent and meaning and reference in ways that force translators to decide which layer to convey in the translation, because there is no sensible way to convey them all together in the same way as the original does. They have to choose.

I was recently reading a book in translation that got me thinking about that kind of choice.

The cover of The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi. It features a blue-green background with a drawing of a horned, demonic mask.

The book was The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi in a translation by Jesse Kirkwood. Now, let me preface this by saying the translation was great. The book itself is lurid and its prose rather purple, but Kirkwood made it readable and interesting. So, don’t even think of taking anything I say here as a criticism.

But there was one single passage that made me stop and wonder, really wonder, what was going on, and it had nothing at all to do with the murder.

The scene is this. Near the beginning of the book, we are in the POV of an older public prosecutor reminiscing about attending a local festival with a lost love. He says “and yet the face of my companion back then, asking me to wait while she bought me a whelk egg case, had been lost to the winds of time.”

Record scratch.

Whelk egg case? What the fuck? I’ve lived in Japan for over twenty years. I’ve been to countless small town festivals and fish markets. I’ve never, ever seen a whelk egg case at any of them. I do know that whelks themselves are fairly popular seafood, so I could only assume it was some kind of regional dish. But “egg case?” Not “eggs” or “egg sac” or some other more… Appetizing word?

I had to figure this out, for my own sake. My dictionary told me that the Japanese for “whelk egg case” is 海ホオズキ umi hoozuki and a quick google search brought me to a page on Wikipedia with the explanation: “かつての日本ではグンバイホオズキ等の卵嚢が、口に含んで音を鳴らして遊ぶ使い捨ての玩具として縁日や海辺の駄菓子屋で売られていた。” Or, roughly, “Once, in Japan, the egg cases of whelks were used as a kind of disposable toy, taken into the mouth to make noise, often sold on fair days or at cheap snack shops near the seaside.”

Further searching took me to this Japanese page that talks about how they used to be sold. It describes a “buzzing” sound when you use them. So… You put them in your mouth and blow, and they make a buzzing sound

They’re like kazoos. Weird, snail-made kazoos.

Which, in fact, subtly changed my reading of this (mostly unimportant) scene. Without the investigation, I assumed it was some little seafood snack. So, the man is wistfully remembering a thoughtful girl who bought him food when he was hungry. But after I knew what was going on, my view of the girl changes. She’s whimsical, fun, trying to buy the serious guy a little children’s toy at a festival stall.

She’s the playmate rather, than the mother figure.

Now, I have no way of knowing the late writer’s intent. My experience of the reading in both cases might be totally different from someone else’s. But this, I think, is a very clear example of how even a very minor choice can influence the reading experience of a translation.

Kirkwood translated 海ホオズキ 100% accurately as “whelk egg casing” and was perfectly justified in doing so. That’s what the writer wrote, end of story. Mostly.

But. If I had translated this, I might well have chosen to translate it “kazoo” or even “whistle.” Because that would better convey what I felt was happening between those two people at that local festival to readers in English, which arguably is more valuable to readers than accurately translating the word 海ホオズキ. To once again paraphrase Damion Searls, it’s about translating the usage rather than just the word.

Now, I have no idea what kind of path led to the choice that Kirkwood made. Or even if it was a choice as such. He might not have given it all that much thought. I also know that editors have enormous say in the final choices made in a book, so there might have been some behind the scenes conversation about this. Or not. Who knows!

So, let me once again reiterate that I do not, in any way, shape or form, even want to imply that there is something wrong with this translation. There isn’t! It’s just an interesting thought experiment about choice, “accuracy,” and the reading experience.

I’m In The Library To The Max

So, as mentioned previously, my books are now in the Hikari City Public Library. But apparently that wasn’t the end of my library adventures.

The other day, I stopped by my neighborhood sake shop and the owner told me the library’s new head, who had taken over after my last donation, wanted to talk to me about boosting local library usage. Which, despite my enthusiasm for libraries, seemed like something beyond my skillset. But, hey, I’m always happy to meet and talk.

I talked to the new head, who in a small-town coincidence, knew me because our sons went to preschool together. He wanted to talk about things like running book recommendations from “interesting people” in the library newsletters and such, and briefly mentioned that the library would love to stock my sake book. I also happened to get a shipment of the US version of Strange Houses just before, so I brought one along, too.

So, we set up a little publicity stunt where I donated books to the library when a reporter from the local newspaper just happened to be there to get pictures!

Two men in glasses standing in front of a bookshelf holding two books, smiling at the camera. — Me and the library head in the Setouchi Times.

I have no idea if this will raise interest in the local library, but I certainly hope it does.

The library set out a recommendation board for my book.

Strange Houses is Out Today in the US

The cover of the US edition of Strange Houses by Uketsu. It is salmon colored with an image of a house floor plan. In the bottom right corner is a picture of the author, Uketsu, wearing a white mask. In the bottom left it reads "Translated by Jim Rion." — The US edition of Strange Houses from HarperVia.

June 3rd is the official release date for the US edition. It is June 3rd in Japan, so I’ll go ahead and announce it now, but your time zone might demand you wait a bit. Apparently the UK pub date has been listed as July 3rd? That strikes me as odd… Anyway.

Confusingly, the original Henna Ie was Uketsu’s debut work in Japan, while Henna E was his second. Anyway, both are now out in English and I hope people like this new addition. I have mentioned this before but I feel like Strange Pictures is a better written, better structured novel, which is natural as Strange Houses is a debut work written as an extension of a short video (basically the first chapter of the book) at the behest of a publisher.

Still, I really like this one. There is such creepiness in it, such oddness, that I find myself drawn back to it sometimes.

I’ll write something a bit more in depth about the translation process later, when people have had a chance to read it, but for now, just know this is a shorter work, with a weirder climax, than Strange Pictures, and worth investigating for people who like dark, bloody secrets and weird family histories.

If you’d like to buy this one, here’s a UK link (releasing July 3rd. WEIRD): Strange Houses on Blackwell’s

And here’s a US link: Strange Houses on Bookshop.org

I’m in the library

Figuratively as well as literally.

A tabletop display of The Devil's Flute Murders and the U. S. And U. K. Versions of Strange Pictures, along with a photocopy of a newspaper article about the translation of Strange Pictures. — My books on display.

When I got a whole bunch of comp copies of both editions of Strange Pictures, for more than I knew what to do with, the first place I went was to the library to see if I could donate some to put on their shelves.

Hikari Public Library is small and serves a relatively limited Japanese community, so there isn’t a lot of demand for English materials, but the staff not only accepted the books, they celebrated them. They were openly excited to get copies after seeing the local newspaper article about my Uketsu translations. I’m not sure I can explain how good that feels.

I’m one of those people for whom libraries are borderline sacred. I have been a ravenous reader since I was in first grade, and there were no bookstores in my small town. So, I practically lived in the library. The librarian, Mrs. Beard—who was almost laughably stereotypical librarian: little old lady in glasses on a chain—knew me by name and never tried too restrain my reading by age or “difficulty.” She just helped me find books to love.

That library was utterly foundational to who I am. It’s where I discovered Stephen King. Where I explored art and history and parts of the world that I never dreamed that I might actually one day get to see. It was where I started to see stories as more than just words on a page, but a way to live other people’s lives for a time.

I really could go on and on. The smell of all those old books, the quiet and cool spaces where you can just read and read as long as you want… You know, I’m sure, for yourself.

And now I’m right there on the shelves at the library. How lucky I am too live this life.