Repository path: workshop/translations/botchan-ch2/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-botchan-ch2-R06-v1 — 「坊っちゃん」chapter 2 whole

Source. 夏目漱石「坊っちゃん」(Hototogisu, April 1906), 二 — the whole chapter, 13 paragraphs, 5,981 non-space Japanese characters, read in Japanese. Copy-text Aozora Bunko 000148/752_14964 (底本『ちくま日本文学全集　夏目漱石』筑摩書房), re-fetched 2026-08-16 with tools/fetch_aozora.py; the chapter text as used is stored beside this file as source-ch2-ja.txt. Sōseki d. 1916: public domain.

Regime. R06 v1.0 — lead single pass, source only, no return pass. Cost $0 (charter §3, A4).

Length. 5,981 Japanese characters → 3,407 English words.

Why this chapter. It is the shortest chapter in the novel and it is the densest in the book in one particular device: fifteen 擬音語・擬態語 sites (the census is §Mimetic census below, written before any study of it was designed). Chapter 1 is already on the anchor shelf as A-morri-botchan, so chapter 2 continues a parallel text the project can read whole on both sides: Morri's 1918 English is public domain and reachable, and this chapter has never been rendered by this project or by any of its panel seats.

Contamination: suspected, and the basis is specific. The lead has previously rendered Botchan chapter 1 (S150, T-botchan-R22-v1; also R04/R06/R21 spans at S126) and read Morri's 1918 preface. It has not read Morri's chapter 2, or any other published rendering of this chapter, before freezing this text and this log: the Gutenberg file of Morri's full translation was downloaded to a scratch path and left unopened, and is opened only after this commit. The overlap measurement against Morri is therefore taken on a genuinely blind rendering and is reported on the arm page, not here. Note (bhb) applies to the lead against itself, but chapter 1 and chapter 2 share no prose, so the self-overlap channel is not open here.

The translation

1. The steamer gave a hoot and stopped, and a lighter pulled away from the shore and came rowing out. The boatman is stark naked but for a red loincloth. A barbarous place. Though in this heat you could hardly wear clothes. The sun is strong, so the water glares. Stare at it and it dazzles you. I asked one of the ship's clerks and it seems this is where I get off. As far as I can see it is a fishing village about the size of Ōmori. Making a fool of me — how is a man to put up with a place like this? — but there was nothing for it. I jumped down first, smartly. Five or six followed me, I suppose. They loaded four big crates besides, and Red Loincloth rowed us back to shore. When we landed I was first man up again, and I went straight at a snot-nosed boy standing on the beach and asked him where the middle school was. The boy stood there vacantly and said, "Dunno." Slow-witted country lout. A ward the size of a cat's forehead, and there are fellows in it who don't know where the middle school is. Then a man in an odd tube-sleeved coat came up and said come this way, so I followed him, and he brought me to an inn called the Minatoya or some such. Unpleasant women called out "Please come in" all together, which put me off going in. I stood in the doorway and told them to tell me where the middle school was, and heard that the middle school is a good two ri on from here by train, which put me off going in still more. I hauled my two leather bags back off the man in the tube-sleeved coat and shambled off. The people at the inn were pulling faces.

2. The station was easy enough to find. The ticket gave no trouble either. I got aboard and found a train like a matchbox. It rumbled along for about five minutes and then I had to get off already. No wonder the ticket was cheap. Three sen, that was all. Then I hired a rickshaw and came to the middle school, and it was after hours and there was nobody there. The master on night duty had stepped out on an errand, the porter told me. A very easy-going night duty they keep. I thought of asking for the principal, but I was worn out, so I got into the rickshaw and told the man to take me to an inn. He pulled up smartly at a house called the Yamashiroya. Yamashiroya is the same shop-name as Kantarō the pawnbroker's, so I found it a little funny.

3. They showed me into some dark room under the stairs to the second floor. Too hot to sit in. When I said I would not have a room like this, the man said unfortunately every other room was taken, threw down my leather bags and went out. There was nothing for it, so I went in and sat sweating and putting up with it. Presently they said the bath was ready, so I went in with a splash and came straight out again. Looking in on the way back, there were plenty of cool-looking rooms standing empty. Impudent fellow. He had lied to me. Then a maid brought my tray. The room was hot, but the food was a good deal better than at the boarding-house. While she was waiting on me the maid asked where I had come from, and I said I had come from Tokyo. Then she said Tokyo must be a fine place, and I told her of course it is. When the maid had taken the tray away and gone off to the kitchen, I heard a great burst of laughter. Rubbish. I went to bed at once, but I could not get to sleep for a long time. It was not only the heat. It was noisy. Five times as noisy as the boarding-house. I dozed off and dreamed of Kiyo. Kiyo was eating Echigo bamboo-leaf candy, leaves and all, munching away at it. I said the leaves are poison, you had better stop, and she said no, these leaves are the medicine, and went on eating with relish. I was so dumbfounded that I opened my mouth wide and laughed ha-ha-ha-ha, and woke up. The maid was opening the shutters. The same weather as ever, as if the bottom had been knocked out of the sky.

4. I had heard that when one travels one gives tea-money. I had heard that if you do not give tea-money you are treated shabbily. Being shoved into a narrow dark room like this would be because I had given none. Because I am poorly dressed and carrying a canvas-covered bag and a cotton-mohair umbrella. Sized me up, did you, and you a countryman. Very well, I shall give tea-money and give them a shock. I left Tokyo with some thirty yen of my school money left over in my pocket, even so. After the train and steamer tickets and sundries there is still about fourteen yen. I can give the lot away, since from now on I shall be drawing a salary. Country people are stingy, so five yen will certainly startle them and make their eyes roll. Watch what happens, I thought, and washed my face with an air of unconcern, and went back to my room and waited, and last night's maid brought the tray. She carried the tray in and waited on me, smirking and smirking. Impudent creature. It is not as if a festival procession were going across my face. Even so, mine is a good deal better than this maid's own. I had meant to do it after I had finished eating, but it got on my nerves, so halfway through I brought out a five-yen note and told her to take it to the office afterwards, and the maid pulled a strange face. Then I finished eating and went straight off to the school. My boots had not been polished.

5. I had driven up to the school by rickshaw the day before, so I have a fair idea where it is. Two or three turns at the corners and I came out in front of the gate. From the gate to the entrance it is paved throughout with granite. When I went over these flagstones by rickshaw the day before, rattling and clattering, it made such an absurdly grand noise that I was a little put out. On the way I met a great many pupils in cotton-drill uniforms, and all of them go in at this gate. Some of them are taller than me and look strong. To think I am to teach fellows like that made me feel somehow uneasy. I sent in my card and was shown to the principal's room. The principal is a dark-complexioned man with a thin beard and big eyes, like a badger. He was extremely pompous about it. Work hard, now, he said, and handed me my appointment with a great seal stamped on it, very reverently. This appointment I screwed up and threw into the sea on my way back to Tokyo. The principal told me he would introduce me to the staff presently, and that I was to show this appointment to each of them one by one. A needless piece of trouble. Rather than go through anything so tiresome, it would be better to paste the appointment up in the staff room for three days.

6. The teachers do not gather in the common room until the bugle sounds for the first period. There was a good deal of time. The principal took out his watch and said he meant to talk things over at leisure by and by, but he would like me first to take in the general idea, and then gave me a long sermon on the spirit of education. Of course I listened to it any old how, but partway through I began to think I had come to a devil of a place. There is no doing what the principal says. Taking hold of a reckless fellow like me and telling him he is to be a model to the pupils, that he must be looked up to as the moral exemplar of the whole school, that he cannot be an educator unless he brings a personal moral influence to bear beyond his subject — making outrageous demands like that. Would a great man of that sort come all this way to a hole in the country for forty yen a month? Men are much of a muchness. If a man's temper is up, anybody will get into a quarrel or two, I had thought; but at this rate one can hardly open one's mouth or take a walk. If the post is as difficult as that, they might have said so before they hired me. I hate telling lies, so there was nothing for it: I resigned myself to having been taken in, and thought I would make a clean job of it, refuse here and now, and go home. I had given the inn five yen, so there is only nine yen and something in my purse. Nine yen will not get me back to Tokyo. I ought never to have given the tea-money. A pity. Still, nine yen — something can be managed. Better to be short of travelling money than to tell a lie, I thought, and said: I cannot possibly do as you say; I return this appointment. The principal blinked his badger eyes at me and looked at my face. Presently he said, laughing, that what he had just said was only a hope; he knows very well that I cannot do as he hopes, so I need not worry. If he knows it so well, he need not have frightened me with it in the first place.

7. While this was going on the bugle sounded. Over on the classroom side there was a sudden hubbub. The teachers must all be in the common room by now, he said, so I followed the principal into the teachers' common room. Desks are set round the walls of a wide, long room, and everyone was sitting at them. Seeing me come in, they all looked at my face as if by agreement. I am not a sideshow. Then, as I had been instructed, I went up to each man in turn, produced my appointment and made my bow. Most of them merely rose from their chairs and bent forward, but the thorough ones took the appointment I held out, examined it once through, and returned it reverently. Just like a play at a shrine festival. By the time I came round to the gymnastics teacher, the fifteenth, I had grown a little exasperated with doing the same thing over and over. The other man is done in one go. I am repeating the same performance fifteen times. They might consider a man's feelings a little.

8. Among those I bowed to there was a head teacher, so-and-so by name. He is said to be a Bachelor of Arts. A Bachelor of Arts means a university graduate, so I suppose he must be a great man. He was a person with a strangely soft, womanish voice. What surprised me most was that in this heat he wears a flannel shirt. The stuff may well be thinner than usual, but it is bound to be hot. Trust a Bachelor of Arts to dress himself with such elaborate discomfort. And on top of that it is a red shirt, which is making a fool of people. I heard afterwards that this man wears a red shirt all the year round. A strange complaint to have. By his own account red is good for the body, so he has them made specially, for his health; but that is worrying about nothing. In that case he had better have his kimono and his hakama red as well. Then there was an English teacher called Koga or something, a man with a very bad complexion. Generally people with pale faces are thin, but this man is pale and puffy. Long ago when I was going to primary school there was a boy in my class called Tami Asai, and this Asai's father had just this colour to him. Asai was a farmer, so I asked Kiyo whether people go that colour when they become farmers, and she told me no, that man is pale and puffy because he eats nothing but bottom-of-the-vine pumpkins. Ever since, whenever I see a pale, puffy person I think it is the reward for eating bottom-of-the-vine pumpkins. This English teacher too is certainly eating nothing but bottom-of-the-vine. Though what a bottom-of-the-vine may be I do not know to this day. I did once ask Kiyo, but Kiyo laughed and did not answer. Most likely Kiyo does not know either. Then there was a mathematics teacher named Hotta, in the same subject as myself. He is a sturdy fellow with a chestnut-burr crop, with the face of one of the bad monks of Mount Hiei. When people politely showed him their appointments he would not so much as look, but said, "Ah — you're the new man, are you? Come round and see me some time, a-ha-ha-ha." What is there to a-ha-ha-ha about? Who would go and visit a fellow with no more manners than that? From that moment I gave this priest the nickname Porcupine. The teacher of Chinese classics, as one would expect, is a stiff old thing. You arrived only yesterday, you must be very tired, and yet you begin your lessons already, you are most diligent — reeling it off without a break, an engaging old man. The drawing teacher is thoroughly the entertainer. He wore a flimsy, papery gauze haori and snapped his fan open and shut, saying, "And where might you be from? Eh? Tokyo? Ah, that's a pleasure, I've company at last... I'm an Edo man myself, you know." If this is what an Edo man is, I would rather not have been born in Edo, I thought to myself. There is no end to what one might write about each of them one by one. But there is no limit to it, so I stop.

9. When the bowing was over, the principal said I might go home for today, though I should arrange the teaching business with the head of mathematics and begin my classes the day after tomorrow. I asked who the head of mathematics was, and it was that same Porcupine. Damnation — am I to work under this fellow? Oh dear, I thought, disappointed. Porcupine left me with, "Here, where are you lodging? The Yamashiroya? Right, I'll come round presently and we'll talk it over," and went off to his classroom with a piece of chalk. Coming to me himself to talk it over, and he the head — an undignified man. Still, it is better than summoning me.

10. Then I went out of the school gate meaning to go straight back to the inn, but there was no point in going back, so I thought I would take a turn about the town, and walked about at random wherever my feet took me. I saw the prefectural office. It is an old building of the last century. I saw the barracks. It is not so fine as the regiment at Azabu. I saw the main street. The roadway is about half the width of Kagurazaka and the shops are worse than there. A castle town of two hundred and fifty thousand koku, and this is all it comes to. I was thinking how pitiable a man must be who lives in a place like this and gives himself airs about the castle town, when before I knew it I came out in front of the Yamashiroya. It looks big and it is small. I suppose I have seen about all of it. I would go back and have something to eat, and went in at the door. The mistress, sitting at the office desk, saw my face and came flying out and put her head down to the boards — Welcome home... I took off my boots and went up, and the maid showed me to the second floor, saying a room had come free. A fifteen-mat room at the front of the second floor, with a big alcove. I have never in my life been into so splendid a room. There is no knowing when I shall get into one again, so I took off my Western clothes, stripped to a summer kimono, and lay down spread-eagled in the middle of the room. It felt good.

11. After lunch I wrote a letter to Kiyo at once. I write badly and I do not know many characters, so I hate writing letters. And there is nowhere to send them. But Kiyo will be worrying. It would not do to have her thinking I have been wrecked at sea and drowned, so I made an effort and wrote her a long one. This is how it went.

12. "Arrived yesterday. Dull place. Sleeping in a fifteen-mat room. Gave the inn five yen tea-money. The mistress put her head down on the boards. Could not sleep last night. Dreamed you were eating bamboo-leaf candy, leaves and all. Coming home next summer. Went to the school today and gave everyone nicknames. The principal is Badger, the head teacher Red Shirt, the English teacher Bottom-of-the-Vine, mathematics is Porcupine, drawing is Clown. I shall write you all sorts of things soon. Goodbye."

13. When I had finished the letter I felt comfortable and drowsy, so I lay down spread-eagled in the middle of the room as before, stretched right out. This time I slept soundly, without dreaming or anything. I woke to a loud voice saying, "Is it this room?" and Porcupine came in. "Sorry about just now. Your classes are —" and he opened negotiations the moment a man had got to his feet, so I was thrown into confusion. I asked about my classes, and as there seems to be nothing especially difficult about them I agreed. If it is only this much, I should not be startled if he told me to start tomorrow, let alone the day after. When the teaching business was settled, he said: you cannot be meaning to stay in an inn like this for ever; I will find you good lodgings, so move. Nobody else could arrange it, but if I speak they will do it at once. The sooner the better — look today, move tomorrow, go to school from the day after, and you are properly settled — settling it all by himself. It is true I could not go on staying in a fifteen-mat room. I might pay my whole salary in room charges and still not cover it. Having splurged five yen of tea-money, it is a little galling to move straight out; but if I am to move in any case, it is more convenient to shift early and settle in, so I left that side of it to Porcupine. Then Porcupine said, come and look at it with me at any rate, so I went. It is a house halfway up the hill at the edge of the town, and extremely quiet. The master is a man called Ikagin who buys and sells curios, and his wife is a woman some four years older than her husband. When I was at middle school I learned a word, "witch," and this wife is exactly like a witch. Being a witch is no concern of mine, since she is another man's wife. In the end it was settled that I should move in tomorrow. On the way back Porcupine treated me to a glass of iced water in Tōri-chō. When I met him at the school I thought him a rude, high-handed fellow, but seeing him take all this trouble for me, he does not seem a bad man after all. Only he seems, like me, to be hasty and quick-tempered. I heard later that this man is the most popular of all with the pupils.

Mimetic census — written before any study of it was designed

The chapter's 擬音語・擬態語 sites, as the translator found them while translating, with the base rendering above and the class the translator would assign. The class column is the translator's own and is not evidence: it is recorded here so that an independent census and classification can be measured against it rather than built on it (note (bpt)).

The rule used to find them: a reduplicated bimoraic kana form (ABAB), or a bimoraic kana form with 〜り/〜と, functioning adverbially or as the stem of a light verb. Reduplicated forms that are degree or frequency adverbs rather than depictive (いろいろ, なかなか, とうとう, だんだん, ますます, わざわざ, いよいよ) are excluded by the rule and not by taste; so are the interjections おやおや and これこれ. The two laughter strings ハハハハ / アハハハ are recorded separately below because they are direct representation of a sound rather than adverbial depiction, and the study set does not use them.

Fifteen sites: seven the translator would call sound-imitating, eight manner- or state-depicting. Not in the study set: ハハハハ (¶3) and アハハハ (¶8), rendered ha-ha-ha-ha and a-ha-ha-ha.

M10 and M13 are the same Japanese verb — ぱちつかせる, from ぱちぱち — at two sites, once of eyes and once of a fan. The translator would class the fan as sound and the eyes as not, because a blink makes none. Whether an independent reader draws that line in the same place is a question this census cannot answer about itself.

Translator's log — frozen with the text

Decisions and alternatives. Any evaluative sentence here is internal-judgment-only.

(a) The voice. R06 gives one pass, so the register had to be set in the first sentence and kept. Botchan narrates in a blunt 俺-register with a heavy present tense; the past-tense English novel convention would flatten it. The compromise taken throughout: narrated events in the past, standing facts and judgements in the present — "The boatman is stark naked", "Yamashiroya is the same shop-name", "Men are much of a muchness" — which is what the Japanese actually does with its 〜ている/〜だ forms against its 〜た. It produces a tense mixture that an English editor would smooth out. It was not smoothed, and there was no second pass in which to smooth it.

(b) The mimetics, and the claim this log makes about them. At every one of the fifteen sites the first move reached for was a single English word carrying the depiction in its own sound or in its lexical manner — hoot, rumbled, splash, shambled, hubbub, snapped. At four sites that move produced nothing and the rendering doubled instead: smirking and smirking (M08), rattling and clattering (M09), munching away (M07), stretched right out (M14). At two sites the rendering is a bare adverb with no depictive resource at all — vacantly (M02), soundly (M15) — and at those two the translator's own sense while writing was that nothing had been carried. The alternative that was live at every site and refused at every site was the manner adverb (walked off slowly and heavily for M03, slept deeply for M15): it states the manner instead of enacting it, and R29's log claims English sound-symbolic verbs make it unnecessary. Whether the refusal was right is not something this log can settle, and it is what the arm this text was made for asks.

(c) のそのそ (M03). Shambled was chosen over lumbered, plodded, trudged. The Japanese depicts slow heavy unhurried motion by a man who is annoyed; shambled carries the gait and adds a shabbiness the Japanese does not have. Plodded is closer in effort and loses the unhurriedness. The choice is a loss either way and was made for the sound.

(d) べらべらした (M12). The trap here is the common sense of べらべら, "talking volubly", which is not the sense at this site: it is applied to 透綾の羽織 and depicts thin flimsy fabric. Flimsy, papery doubles because no single English adjective for cloth does both the thinness and the cheap rattle the reduplication suggests.

(e) うらなり (¶8). Left as bottom-of-the-vine, glossed by the surrounding sentences, because Botchan says three times over that he does not know what the word means — the joke is that the nickname is opaque to its coiner. Any domesticating equivalent (Weed, Squash-face) would make it transparent and kill the joke's second half.

(f) 山嵐 and the nicknames. Porcupine for 山嵐, Badger for 狸, Red Shirt for 赤シャツ, Bottom-of-the-Vine for うらなり, Clown for のだいこ. のだいこ is a country 太鼓持ち, a hired jester; Clown loses the professional sense. The alternative Sponger keeps the parasitism and loses the performance. Chosen for the letter's list, where five short nouns in a row is the effect.

(g) 二里, 三銭, 十五畳, 二十五万石. Kept in Japanese units throughout — two ri, three sen, fifteen-mat, two hundred and fifty thousand koku — with no conversion and no footnote. Botchan is a provincial-arrival comedy and the units are part of what he is measuring the province with.

(h) いか銀. Rendered Ikagin, untranslated. It is a shop-name pun (いか squid + 銀) of the same kind as 山城屋; the chapter makes nothing of it and neither does this rendering.

(i) The two laughs. ハハハハ at ¶3 is Botchan's own, in a dream; アハハハ at ¶8 is Hotta's, and Botchan repeats it back in the next sentence to sneer at it. Rendered ha-ha-ha-ha and a-ha-ha-ha so the repetition in "What is there to a-ha-ha-ha about?" has something to repeat. English has no neutral orthography for a laugh and both look childish on the page; there was no better option and no second pass.

(j) What was left undone, R06 being one pass. "Making a fool of me" (¶1) for 人を馬鹿にしていらあ loses the vulgar 〜いらあ contraction entirely, and the same construction recurs at ¶8 (人を馬鹿にしている) where it is rendered differently — an inconsistency a revision pass would have caught and this regime forbids fixing.