Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

29th March 2006

Number 61 - Filling in with Nayochin

I took a two-day break from this blog[1].

At present, production has entered a good phase, and it has become difficult to update the blog every day.
So, I'm going to get the man called Nayochin, who I wrote about last week, to be my pinch hitter[2] and write it for me for a while.
He is responsible for publicity for the film "Tales from Earthsea", so without planning it that way, he's likely able to write about the latest news.

Continuing on from that, I am going to introduce the origin of his nickname.
Now in regard to this nickname, and I'm writing this for the sake of his honour, it is definitely not because his penis is floppy[3].
I don't know what the true facts are there, but the origin of the nickname is different.

He joined Studio Ghibli in February of last year.
Then he was doing stuff like gathering material to support Director Takahata's project.
At around the end of February, "Person A" discovered sitting on his (Kishimoto's) desk a paperback of the play "Nayotake"[4].

This person A immediately went around spreading this all around the vicinity. "It's perfect. Nayotake! Ahahaha".
Now Kishimoto is incredibly thin and white-skinned, so he looks just like "Nayotake".[5] From that day his nickname was "Nayotake".

Before we knew it, this became "Nayo", which changed into "Nayochin"[6].
The thing to note here is the accent.[7]
At first everybody pronounced it innocently.
But one time, a woman who heard this turned red-faced.

"Oh, eat thou this forbidden fruit!"[8]

At that time, his fate was decided.
Or probably, from the time he was given the name "Nayotake" it was already decided.
Four months after that, he was married to the name-giver, "Person A".

So, for the time being, I will leave this weblog in the hands of Nayochin.
From this point, you will see what I'm up to through his eyes.

Translator's Notes

[1]: It is five days since the last entry, but that includes two days of the weekend and the fifth day, on which this entry was posted. So he has only missed two entries.

[2]: Note for readers from non-baseball playing nations, a pinch hitter is a substitute batter who replaces another player.

[3]: Mr. Kishimoto's nickname is "Nayochin". "Chin" is slang for penis. "Nayo-nayo" means floppy or limp.

[4]: This is (according to the National Theatre of Japan) a postwar theatrical masterpiece, based on the ancient fairytale "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter", in which a baby girl is discovered inside a bamboo stalk, who grows up to be a beautiful princess. Her name Nayotake no Kaguya-hime means shining princess of the young bamboo.

[5]: Note that Nayotake in the story is a princess. This is no doubt why everybody found it so funny.

[6]: See note to entry 14. Chin is an even more diminutive form of 'chan', the cute/affectionate form of 'san'.

[7]: There are many words in Japanese that sound alike but are pronounced with different emphasis. Mispronunciation can lead to embarrassing mistakes. English speakers should consider how the phrase: "I got it at the pawn shop", could be misinterpreted.

[8]: This is an analogy of the serpent in the Garden of Eden which offered Adam and Eve the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3). Here, the nickname was innocent until the woman's misunderstanding opens their eyes, after which they have lost there innocence are unable to resist the temptation to apply a dirty meaning to the name.