Belated Cryoburn realization

[snarp]

If you're writing a book about a bunch of Japanese people who are into putting themselves into cryonic suspension for generations at a time - how do you get through it without anyone ever mentioning Urashima Taro? How is that even possible?

(If you don't know who he is, here. The story's like Snow White in Japan - every single person in the country knows it by heart, there are picture-book versions in every grade-school classroom, and it's been retold in kids' and adults' stories of varying levels of metatextuality thousands of times.

...Actually, I'm surprised that Bujold missed it, because one of those retellings was Ursula K. LeGuin's A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, which covers some similar subject matter. Not that, when you re-work a sci-fi concept, you need to read every single re-working that came preceded yours - I just thought that a lot of Anglophone nerds had read this one in particular.)

Comments

[james_davis_nicoll]

Oh, I didn't recognize the name but that was one of the stories in the book of Japanese fairy tales I had as a kid. Beautiful illustrations....

[chomiji]

That really does sound like quite a helping of research fail. So (getting back to you earlier comment) what did she do with the honorifics?

[alas]

Well, as a matter of practicality, with the way the book is written I can see how it might happen; after all, most of it is people's interactions with Miles, or through his POV, so the fairytale reference we get is of course Snow White. But OTOH, I think the lack of Urashima Tarou reference is pretty telling of the general lack of Japanese culture in the world-building ;_:.

[snarp]

Well, to be fair, she'd clearly looked at a couple websites and knew the technical usages. There was nothing really egregious, like people calling Miles "Auditor-tan" or something. (Though actually I would be fine with that one, if done properly!) It's just that the usage of honorifics is tied into cultural stuff. I mean, the fact that there's no easy way to translate "-sama" in modern American English is not merely a linguistic issue - it's an attitude issue. The attitude that makes you want to use these sorts of terms is, if not a specifically Japanese one, not one that appears in American society.

But all these characters act like modern-day Americans, so their usage of the terms is off. There's a kid named Jin in there who's fairly respectful towards certain adults, and there's this older medical/tech expert named Tenbury who's important in his community. If this story was a manga, Jin would probably call this guy "-sensei," even though he's not technically a doctor. If it was a shoujo manga, there might be a scene in which he insists that Tenbury ought to be called "-sensei," even if other people don't respect him as they should!

But Jin calls a doctor he doesn't know "-sensei" and doesn't use any honorific at all for Tenbury, because Bujold didn't get that the terms' usage is relative and context-dependent. I'm guessing she read that, you know, "-sensei" is what you call teachers, doctors, and writers, and figured that it was just a title.

[snarp]

There are plenty of references to Egyptian mythology, and anyway Jin gets a lot of POV time. I think if she'd known the story, it would've been in there.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Wow, you are so right. I didn't think of that.