cute in its own way, this mangaka really has a way with women's lives in the late 19th to early 20th century.

It's a small niche, but this author really has Meiji era yuri covered super well. The art is always gorgeous too, very elegant, for lack of a better term.

Looks like SheepD is in the mood for creating more yuri one-shots, this is their second one this week! :)

This was nice

Pretty nice! SheepD definitely has a knack for these period stories. I would've liked if this one had gotten a little spicier, but it was still quite sweet, as well as an interesting glimpse into history!

I see I can always count sheepD for some historical manga.

God the industrial era was just brutal

I have to contradict the translators notes here, so pardon me.
I don't know much about the historic costs of Japanese foods and staple crops, but Mitsu specifically mentions that here husband "died in the war with Russia". The only war with Russia I am aware of Japan engaging in during the Meiji period would've been the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, which would place the story as set somewhere around 1905-1906, most likely, rather than 1875 as the translator surmises.
Not that any of that has a huge impact, but my tism demands I point it out

I have to contradict the translators notes here, so pardon me.
I don't know much about the historic costs of Japanese foods and staple crops, but Mitsu specifically mentions that here husband "died in the war with Russia". The only war with Russia I am aware of Japan engaging in during the Meiji period would've been the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, which would place the story as set somewhere around 1905-1906, most likely, rather than 1875 as the translator surmises.
Not that any of that has a huge impact, but my tism demands I point it out

I do like the translator's idea tho. "The author might have misplaced when the Russo-Japanese war was, but obviously they had historical soba prices on lock. Everyone knows those."

I have to contradict the translators notes here, so pardon me.
I don't know much about the historic costs of Japanese foods and staple crops, but Mitsu specifically mentions that here husband "died in the war with Russia". The only war with Russia I am aware of Japan engaging in during the Meiji period would've been the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War, which would place the story as set somewhere around 1905-1906, most likely, rather than 1875 as the translator surmises.
Not that any of that has a huge impact, but my tism demands I point it out

I do like the translator's idea tho. "The author might have misplaced when the Russo-Japanese war was, but obviously they had historical soba prices on lock. Everyone knows those."

It can be easy to condense far away periods into seeming like far shorter timespans than they really are.
A more time appropriate conflict with their estimate would be the invasion of Korea

There are a few more details that point to the 1870s that I didn’t think to squeeze into the first page, namely:

• The declaration of mass recruitment of samurai family girls for Tomioka Mill so they could learn skills to take back home (and the rumors of foreigners drinking the factory girls' blood) began in 1872 and lasted only 10 or so years. The blood-drinking rumors specifically lasted only a short while before recruitment really took off. This puts the core setting of the story in the early to mid 1870s. [1]
• The foreigners at the mill (French silk spinners like the woman we see in this comic / equipment experts) were only present at Tomioka until 1875. After that, teachers & management were all Japanese folks. [1]
• The time period is also important as starting in the late 1880s until past the end of the Meiji era, labor disputes and far more oppressive working hours (up to 20 hours a day) clouded over the lives of silk workers [2], while in the 1870s working conditions were very reasonable (8-hour work days and Sundays off) [1] which aligns better with Ikuko's activities in the comic (going out on weekends and evenings)
• Ikuko’s father was a samurai, which suggests he was at least an adult by the early 1860s, and doesn't look very old. Ikuko also she seems to have a clear awareness of the change in her family’s status, so it’s likely Ikuko was even born before the Meiji Restoration (1868), somewhere in the 1850s-60s, making her the right age for the large scale recruitment for silk mills in the early 1870s. [3]

[1] https://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/nakamata/%E5%BB%BA%E7%AF%89%E3%81%AE%E9%83%A8/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC/97-2/
[2] https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/11807/annals0010201810.pdf
[3] https://www.jobu-kinunomichi.jp/en/special/koujyo.html

last edited at May 31, 2025 3:01PM

Lovely, if light on the actual yuri. But no worries, I have my goggles on.

There are a few more details that point to the 1870s that I didn’t think to squeeze into the first page, namely:

• The declaration of mass recruitment of samurai family girls for Tomioka Mill so they could learn skills to take back home (and the rumors of foreigners drinking the factory girls' blood) began in 1872 and lasted only 10 or so years. The blood-drinking rumors specifically lasted only a short while before recruitment really took off. This puts the core setting of the story in the early to mid 1870s. [1]
• The foreigners at the mill (French silk spinners like the woman we see in this comic / equipment experts) were only present at Tomioka until 1875. After that, teachers & management were all Japanese folks. [1]
• The time period is also important as starting in the late 1880s until past the end of the Meiji era, labor disputes and far more oppressive working hours (up to 20 hours a day) clouded over the lives of silk workers [2], while in the 1870s working conditions were very reasonable (8-hour work days and Sundays off) [1] which aligns better with Ikuko's activities in the comic (going out on weekends and evenings)
• Ikuko’s father was a samurai, which suggests he was at least an adult by the early 1860s, and doesn't look very old. Ikuko also she seems to have a clear awareness of the change in her family’s status, so it’s likely Ikuko was even born before the Meiji Restoration (1868), somewhere in the 1850s-60s, making her the right age for the large scale recruitment for silk mills in the early 1870s. [3]

[1] https://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/nakamata/%E5%BB%BA%E7%AF%89%E3%81%AE%E9%83%A8/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC/97-2/
[2] https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/11807/annals0010201810.pdf
[3] https://www.jobu-kinunomichi.jp/en/special/koujyo.html

Thank you for the research and notes!

Roodypatooti posted:

God the industrial era was just brutal

I believe there was a mathematician who said something like "yeah, it's been hard on folks ever since"

There are a few more details that point to the 1870s that I didn’t think to squeeze into the first page, namely:

• The declaration of mass recruitment of samurai family girls for Tomioka Mill so they could learn skills to take back home (and the rumors of foreigners drinking the factory girls' blood) began in 1872 and lasted only 10 or so years. The blood-drinking rumors specifically lasted only a short while before recruitment really took off. This puts the core setting of the story in the early to mid 1870s. [1]
• The foreigners at the mill (French silk spinners like the woman we see in this comic / equipment experts) were only present at Tomioka until 1875. After that, teachers & management were all Japanese folks. [1]
• The time period is also important as starting in the late 1880s until past the end of the Meiji era, labor disputes and far more oppressive working hours (up to 20 hours a day) clouded over the lives of silk workers [2], while in the 1870s working conditions were very reasonable (8-hour work days and Sundays off) [1] which aligns better with Ikuko's activities in the comic (going out on weekends and evenings)
• Ikuko’s father was a samurai, which suggests he was at least an adult by the early 1860s, and doesn't look very old. Ikuko also she seems to have a clear awareness of the change in her family’s status, so it’s likely Ikuko was even born before the Meiji Restoration (1868), somewhere in the 1850s-60s, making her the right age for the large scale recruitment for silk mills in the early 1870s. [3]

[1] https://kousin242.sakura.ne.jp/nakamata/%E5%BB%BA%E7%AF%89%E3%81%AE%E9%83%A8/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC/97-2/
[2] https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/11807/annals0010201810.pdf
[3] https://www.jobu-kinunomichi.jp/en/special/koujyo.html

That's certainly a great deal of evidence, so now the talk of a "war with Russia" seems somewhat odd, especially since I can't personally find any time Japan and Russia fought that would've been around that time. Again, it may simply be a side effect of the author condensing parts of history, as otherwise it implies some sort of 30-year time jump.

None of this detracts from the quality of the work, I should also say. It's a nice piece, and I don't expect perfect historicity from a work that is obviously just trying to give the vibe of "being set in the Meiji Era". The general backdrop of the pain and stress caused on society, with the main girls as our POV characters, by rapid modernization, industrialization, and imperial expansion is more important to the overall story than whatever specific year this would be set in. Again, you could easily replace the mention of "war with Russia" with "war in Korea" or "Boshin War" and it wouldn't change much.

Yeah it’s quite funny because it’s remarkably consistent and detailed about the specific decade if not exact year it takes place in, but the Russo-Japanese War reference is so concrete and so incompatible that it’s kinda hard to make sense of lol. I did consider the time skip angle, but it definitely stretches believability that Iku has been at the mill for 30 years by the time she encounters Mitsu at the restaurant, both because she doesn’t appear to have aged at all (at least not until the montage of her rising the ranks, which is after the Russo-Japanese War mention), and because most people only worked at Tomioka Mill for a couple years before going back home to a closer mill to teach others. Personally I find anachronisms/human error always a little funny and endearing! Or maybe it’s an easter egg sheepD-sensei put in to make us history nerds scratch our heads :)

last edited at May 31, 2025 6:15PM

God the industrial era was just brutal

Was?

Nice work dating the setting. I was thinking around '85 because of the train going to a rural area, but then the war reference would make it 20 years later, close to sanshiro in '08. Looking up the prices is impressive!

This type of tl notes/discussion is why I absolutely adore fan translations, and wish that professional translators would do tl notes as well. In an era of machine translation encroachment it's a great way to highlight all the important labor that goes into these types of projects, which is kinda hidden otherwise.

This type of tl notes/discussion is why I absolutely adore fan translations, and wish that professional translators would do tl notes as well. In an era of machine translation encroachment it's a great way to highlight all the important labor that goes into these types of projects, which is kinda hidden otherwise.

It's crazy to me that official translations from what I remember used to be terrible, and we had to pretty much completely rely on fan translations, then over time we've gotten better official translations but usually still not on the same level of quality as fan translations (for the reasons you mention as well), and now the times are approaching a cliff of going back to awful official translations for largely greedy reasons. So the importance of fan translations being accurate, nuanced, and giving important extra information, will in theory be more important than ever.

Same here. I was telling JQ that doing this oneshot together was particularly exciting for me, because it was specifically reading JQ’s lovely notes over the last few years that made me appreciate fan translations so much, and in turn made me want to take up fan translation myself (for sheepD’s ongoing historical yuri series at first). Fast forward a year and now I get the honor of co-writing historical notes with JQ <3

Appreciate good fan translations, anyway... the variance is high, perhaps higher than in the past.

Appreciate good fan translations, anyway... the variance is high, perhaps higher than in the past.

Yeah translating is not easy and of course not every fan translation is equal or good, but at the very least you're not paying for an allegedly professional product that is the supposed definitive version, only for that official release to be subpar. I try to support the official release but it will be become increasingly difficult to do if companies really try to cut workers and costs by relying on machines that aren't even good at the task. I love and greatly appreciate good human translators and I want them to be hired and payed properly. Also stating the obvious here but companies that license and publish media in another language it is their literal job to properly translate the media, if they're not translating properly there's no point in the company existing.