Again, like the "man I loved" it's a strange line because nothing else in the story supports it.

Regardless of reading, this line has the purpose of establishing further distance and differentiation.

So she hates the witch, even though there was no mention of it beforehand, and it's thrown out the window literally seconds later.

I was perplexed when I read this line at first... But before reaching that line, I had been perplexed by her previous cold attitudes toward the witch within the house, had been perplexed by her choice of words like "背負う" or "shoulder" in terms of the curse when words naturally carry "burden." This combination of love and hatred, of affection and resentment makes sense. The story's only so long, but the foundation is laid. It's just not explicit. You have to look for the details.

Thank you, this was what I was actually thinking of. When I was thinking of a disease LGBT people would take the blame for, HIV came to mind. That was the only point I was trying to make. I think even today homosexuals are banned from donating blood in some countries, stemming from thinking it's a 'gay disease', so that stigma is still there.

You're absolutely right. To wit, http://www.jrc.or.jp/donation/about/refrain/detail_04/. That's a Red Cross Japan page detailing how it will not accept blood donations from those with AIDS or those who are suspected of having AIDS. Within it, incredibly disturbingly, is the blanket restriction on, "男性どうしの性的接触があった." "Men who have had sexual contact with other men."

I know this is a yuri board, but it's worthwhile to point out here that societal acceptance of LGBT individuals in Japan has a long, long way to go.

But if you translate it to "the man I loved" it doesn't necessarily mean that they were together. Now in light of what you just said, then okay, they were lovers. So my bad on that, but it could've been translated more conclusively that they were together.

You make a good point that we brought up during QC. "Boyfriend" doesn't fit the language of the story. "Man who was my lover" sounds forced. Longer descriptions run into bubble size problems. We thought this was the best compromise here. Thanks though. =)

I guess kind of gives in to the love she feels for the witch in the end?

Yes. Absolutely yes.

last edited at Oct 30, 2015 9:08AM

Thanks for the food for thought. The only thing that surprised me was the mention of a terrible disease bereaving people of their families. Now I figure it's supposed to be HIV/AIDS and it just fits.

I haven't really seen HIV pop up as a theme in comics about homosexual life since the late 90s and I don't think I've ever read about it in manga. Thoroughly enjoyed this work; thank you for translating it.

I'm not sure if we can extend it that far. Remember that we're talking about disease, aging, lack of young people, death. These are incredibly general. (Yet to a certain degree also somewhat reminiscent of the present issues facing 21st century Japan. 少子高齢化 and all that jazz.) Remember that there was the girl in the nearby village who was condemned to death for "tempting a priest."

It might be instead worthwhile to think here of the attitudes of the townsfolk as reacting to difference, to the other. The, "[...] not natural" lines here might be instructive here. And, if anything, I may have underwritten the translation for the first instance it occurs, where we actually have something more strongly worded in the Japanese.

The theme of LGBT as scapegoat isn't far fetched in the slightest.

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One thing to add. It's interesting to me how her visits from the village always return her to a place outside outside of and apart from the village into which others cannot penetrate, "say doesn't exist." It's interesting to me that she further has to make this walk. Chapped hands, et cetera. In my view, here are a lot of interesting things going on in the overhead here.

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As for the timeline, how does it not make sense? Again, it only states "the man I loved" it doesn't mean they were together (that's my hope anyway, you can interpret it however you want ;))

The line here is 愛した彼. I think it is pretty explicit. 彼 = boyfriend. But I don't think that has any contradiction with the LGBT journey either. I know of very few LGBT men and women who during middle school, high school, or even college didn't have boyfriends or girlfriends of the opposite sex as a function of what they thought they were or, moreover, what they were trying to be. I even have a family member who married a man who left her a few years later when he came out of the closet. There isn't any contradiction here whatsoever unless... someone wants to argue that somehow yuri can't or shouldn't realistically reflect an LGBT journey. And then I think I shake my head.

A good question here might be: If she resents/hates the witch she awoke for "taking her family, friends, and the man whom she loved away from her," why didn't she return to her hometown for several decades immediately thereafter? One answer might be: She resents/hates the witch because the witch awoke in HER the realization of her own sexual identity and sexual preference, because that meant that she couldn't be normal, because that meant that heteronormativity was no longer an option for her.

last edited at Oct 30, 2015 7:16AM

Translator here. I'm of the opinion that Huyou Satoyoshi's doujinshi are wonderful conceptually but perhaps a bit lacking in terms of language and editing. The storytelling-type vibe is inconsistently developed in the Japanese. And narrative tenses and narrative perspective shifts wildly and inconsistently. It might be plausible that the inclusion here is an error... except...

Despite the rough edges in terms of grammar and perspective, it's important to remember that Huyou Satoyoshi and Yatosaki Haru have been respectively been developing nearly exclusively yuri doujinshi for years. Many of the latter's works are available on this site in fact. This would suggest that the inclusion of the "man I loved" line here was both deliberate and purposeful. I would suggest the following:

1) The immediate, "Ooh, het," reaction without further consideration of the context in which it was written and the potential story values here is rather surprising to me. From my previous glimpses at Dynasty commentary on "We Don't Like Love Songs" and "Haru ni," I know that Dynasty is an incredibly sophisticated community relative to the general manga scene.

2) The central themes to this story are isolation and loneliness. Injecting an instance of apparent heteronormativity helps add a degree of distance between what our more newly minted witch was and what she became... or... per a more sophisticated meaning, what she thought she was and what she realized herself to be.

3) I think it's feasible to regard the whole of the plot here as a metaphor for the journey of self-discovery that is the process of coming out. The initial self-identification as a "normal" member of society, the curiosity, the hostility, the "closeted" stage, suspicion from others, backlash, and ultimately self-acceptance. Put the page order into timeline order, and that's what you get. (Of course, I'm not saying that this is the only meaning of the story. There are other things going on here. But this is one thing here.)

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Et cetera. I hope these thoughts might supply some perspective on this one facet of what I consider to be an incredibly thematically rich work. I'd be happy to provide further commentary on some of the other items I see at play here should they be desired.

Translator here.

The depth of this discussion and the intricacy of many of the arguments advanced frankly amaze me. Ladies, gents, and so forth, my hats off to you. I never would have in my wildest dreams considered many of these avenues.

I would like to advance one point that I am desperately afraid might disappoint some of you. Japanese filmmakers since at least pre-war Ozu have used the imagery of people standing on opposite sides of train platforms to indicate partings and diverging paths. I'm not sure that the imagery here isn't just that simple.

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This manga, I feel, is another one that's deceptively simple. There's so much dialogue in this one shot that says so little literally yet says so much on other levels. Japanese people culturally often don't say what they think, and the dialogue here approximates that better than dialogue will in 95% of manga I read. It feels real. And that's what make conversations like these possible.

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I'm working on a second one shot from this author and sincerely hope you enjoy it on its release.