Talk:Botchan

Edited this page to make the English sound more natural - Prosfilae talkpage request. I haven't read the novel in question, so hopefully I didn't change any plot points! --Sir Ophiuchus 00:40, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Character names
One of the problems with articles like this is that there's no standardized list of names; each translation uses its own set of names. I'm tempted to use the names from the Gutenberg version; it may not be the best, but it is a published version that I have access to.--Prosfilaes 13:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * For the sake of consistency, I have changed all 赤シャツ (Akasatsu/ Redshirt/Akashatsu) references to Akashatsu. While different translations provide different character names, and while my overall preferred translation by J. Cohn uses Redshirt, the name Akashatsu will best reflect the original Japanese. It is sufficient, I believe, to keep the parenthetical reference to Redshirt in the character list.Kairaiseiken (talk) 11:49, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Contradiction
The entry for Akashatsu in "Main characters" says "Soseki [. . .] wrote that 'if I were to assign an actual person to every fictional character that appears in Bochan, then Akasatsu would have to be me,'" but the entry for Uranari says "Most agree that Uranari, or some combination of Uranari and Botchan, is Soseki's representation of himself." Either one of these is wrong, or "most" people disagree with Soseki himself as to which character represents him (which strikes me as very unlikely).

If there are no objections I'll remove the "Most agree . . ." line. Istaro (talk) 04:00, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Dubious Links
I'm not sure the link to http://no-sword.jp/botchan/ at the bottom of this article is appropriate. It's basically just a link to a sample of the first chapter of Botchan and the rest of the book you have to buy from the site. That website is basically just a link to a product for sale, an advertisement. I'm going to remove it for this reason. 79.66.207.160 (talk) 22:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It was at one time a link to the entire book.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:16, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Mood of the book
I just finished reading this novel in the English translation in Gutenberg and I'm rather bewildered by the tone of the summary, which seems to suggest that the book is some kind of serious battle for the soul of the narrator. "Botchan" is obviously a light-hearted satire, making fun of just about every character who appears. From reading the summary you would have no idea that it's a very amusing novel, written with a kind of twinkle in the eye, and poking fun at mankind's foibles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.92.6.152 (talk) 01:07, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I tend to agree on the whole. There is this to be said, that the author tells a story from the point of view of an ignorant and fairly complacent fellow (who does, for want of better, "grow up" some by the end, I think...) and manages the feat of making him a somewhat sympathetic character. Schissel | Sound the Note! 22:53, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Time Frame
"The time frame of the narration is not given."


 * Maybe this was added by the translator, but it seemed from the references to the Sino-Japanese conflict (of 1894-95 I assume? Or was it something below-war-level from before 1906, assuming that is that the author intended a semi-definite time?...) and other external events and authors (Balzac, Gorky, etc etc etc etc!), that some notion of _when_ the story was happening could, if not be fixed, at least could be given a lower bound. (And the party reference in chapter 9 to "Sino-Japanese Negotiations" may or may not be a reference to the accident that ended the 1894-95 war, or something?? I really don't know though if the context enlightens someone else, I'd be very interested.) Of course, that may not be what was meant by "time frame" - it may mean, probably does mean, length of time that the novel takes. Though it seems that can be inferred/estimated (though it's not strictly-speaking "given"?) The first chapter takes us to six years after his mother's death, the question I guess is how much time passes between there and the end of the novel (not more than a year, probably less, I'm fairly sure, but I've probably missed something??) Schissel | Sound the Note! 22:45, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Info on Translations into English
Would it be possible to add a section on what translations into English are out there and who did them? I mainly ask because that's what I came here for, but it's not listed, and I have seen it before (the Japanese article for Nineteen Eighty-Four lists the Japanese translations). It could also solve the names issue by just mentioning which version the names were pulled from. 11:34, 1 May 2018 (UTC)