The old blog was an express server that looked for .md files in a directory, converted them to HTML, and served it. That worked mostly fine. However, the converter didn't support many Markdown features, and was pretty buggy. Using an express server also meant that the site wasn't static, and had limited options for hosting.

Replit's free tier was pretty unreliable, and Render only allowed one free web service per account, which I was already using to run my faucet. I could've created a new Render account, but they recently started requiring credit card verification, which I didn't really want to do.

Besides, making the blog static instead of relying on an express server wouldn't be that hard. A month before, I had already wrote a better (?) or at least more fully featured Markdown to HTML parser, Makoto, so that was already one of the problems with the old blog solved.

Anyways, once I decided to start completely rewriting the blog, I established some goals that I wanted the new blog to accomplish.

Technical Goals

• Static, so it can be deployed by eg, Github Pages or Cloudflare Pages
• Built from scratch with no third-party dependencies (builtin modules like path and fs are ok of course, makoto is not third party, also doesn't count)
• Use Typescript
• No Javascript running client side - the web pages should be pure HTML and CSS
• Style-wise, should be minimalistic, nothing fancy
• Load quickly and be small in size

Non-Technical Goals

• Make two things I can call "Ryuji" and "Saki" to go along with "Makoto" (those are the three main characters of one of the best manga series ever)
• Move over some of the old blog posts (only the stuff I like), after rewriting them
• Start writing stuff on the blog again, at least semi-regularly

Code

Hedgeblog (oh, that's what I'm calling it by the way) is made of three components: Makoto (Markdown to HTML parser), Ryuji (templating language), and Saki (build system).

You can find the code here.

Makoto

Makoto is the Markdown-to-HTML parser, made with no dependencies. It was made around two months before Ryuji and Saki, and is meant to be more of a standalone thing. This is the sole npm dependency of the project. I npm installed it instead of just copying the file over mostly because I published Makoto to npm and wanted to make sure it worked. Also, it has a different license, documentation and stuff.

All the standard Markdown are supported (headers, bolds, italics, images, links, blockquotes, unordered lists, ordered lists, code, code blocks...), as well as superscripts and tables (although tables are probably buggy). Makoto also does some pretty neat stuff like passing on the language of the code block (if given) as a class in the resulting div: code-<language>, or automatically add ids to headers, so they can have anchor links.

It also has a very cool warnings feature, which isn't used in this project, but can be seen in action if you use the Makoto Web Editor.

Ryuji

Ryuji is a simple templating system that supports if statements, for loops, components, and inserting variables. It isn't quite as fully featured as Jinja/Nunjucks, but on the upside, Ryuji is less than 280 lines of code, and worked very well for my usecase. I think it's pretty cool.

Here's a quick overview of the syntax:

After finishing writing Ryuji, and writing some tests to make sure it all worked, I realized that I needed a few features that were missing.

There was no way to see the current index in a for loop, or the max index (length-1) of whatever variable we were looping over. This was needed for the tag links in the post.

In addition, if statements only checked if the variable was truthy (not false or 0 or ""), but I needed if statements making sure two variables were equal, as well as if statements making sure two variables were not equal. You can see this being used in the post's tags along with the new for loop features, as well as the "Next Post" link at the bottom of the post.

So, I added those features. Let's take a look of these new features being used to show and link post tags.

Formatting the code a little nicer, this is what it looks like:

Ok, in the first line (for:post.tags:tag:index:max), we are looping over the variable post.tags, and assigning each item in post.tags as the variable tag. That's nothing new, what's new is the :index:max portion. index is the index variable, starting at 0 and incrementing every loop, while max is the maximum index (the length of the variable to loop over - 1).

If you look at the Ryuji code, now you can see that it is looping over the tags of the post, and creating a link for each tag. If the tag is not the last tag (index is not equal to max), we will also add a comma (and a space).

Here's the equivalent python code, if it helps:

While Ryuji is meant for HTML, there is no reason it can't be used for other formats.

Take a look at the docs for Ryuji.

Saki

Saki is the build system that uses Ryuji templates to generate all the HTML files, and then outputs everything (including static files, of course) to the build directory. Even more simple than Ryuji, it is just around 70 lines of code.

Here are the very short docs for Saki.

Putting It All Together

When building, the program (index.ts) reads /posts/_metadata.json and passes all the post metadata information to the templates/index.html template, which is the home page! Then, it renders all the posts with the templates/post.html template and outputs to /posts/*. Next, it looks again at the post metadata and gets all the tags used. Once it has all the tags, pages for the tags are generated at /tags/*. That page lists all the posts with that tag. Scroll up and try it! It also outputs the static directory, as well, static files.

Tip: Serve Without The .html

Say we want to serve a HTML file at /posts/example instead of /posts/example.html. Just create a directory called example and put example.html inside it, renaming it index.html.

Basically, /posts/example.html becomes /posts/example/index.html, and now the HTML file is served at /posts/example. You probably already knew that, but if you didn't now you know ^{[citation needed]}.

Buttons Without Javascript

If you think back to around 950 words ago, you may recall that this site has zero frontend Javascript (or WebAssembly, as cool as it is). If you didn't recall that, I just reminded you. I will be sending an invoice later.

So how does the "Show MD", "Fancy Title", and Dark/Light theme toggle work? The key thing here is that all three of these are checkboxes. Yes, even the Dark/Light theme toggle is a checkbox. That toggle hides its checkbox and takes advantage of the fact you can click on a <label> with an appropriate for attribute to toggle a checkbox, and uses the ::after psuedo-element to change the content between the moon emoji and the sun emoji, depending on the state of the checkbox.

What's so special about checkboxes? The :checked (see MDN) property, that's what! With the :checked property, we can apply styles depending on whether a checkbox is checked. See the following, which scales the checkbox by 3x when the checkbox is checked:

And because of the a ~ b (select selector b after selector a) and a + b (select selector b immediately after selector a) CSS selectors, we can change the properties of other elements. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a pure CSS way to change the style of elements before the checkbox. There are ways around this, like putting the checkbox before the desired element in the code, but using position: relative, position: absolute, and other ways to make the checkbox visually look like it is after the desired element. I didn't really want to do that though, so you can notice that all the checkboxes on this website are before the element whose style they change.

Here's a real example. The following CSS makes the "Show MD" checkbox functional:

Other Style Notes

I used Verdana for headers, Courier New for code, and Times New Roman for everything else. These fonts were chosen mostly because they are websafe, ie included in most OSes. You cannot stop me from using Times New Roman. I like the look.

The colour for visited links is orchid, and the colour for non-visited links is forestgreen.

Since this blog is basically for my own "enjoyment", and doesn't need to look "sleek" or "professional", this site's design philosophy is moreso a rejection of those overdesigned corporate sites with too many popups, as well as certain React (or other framework) sites that don't even load with Javascript disabled, than a specific set of tenets. Combined with the fact that choosing colour schemes makes me angry, don't expect very consistent or aesthetic designs.

But I'll try my best.

Running

After git cloneing the repo, cd into the directory and install the (sole) dependency:

To build:

To build and preview locally at http://localhost:8042:

To run tests for Ryuji:

Todo

In the future, I would love to have those fun box gifs^[0] you used to see on geocities and other websites (like the ones on the bottom of the pensquid website), plus also something similar to Wikipedia Userboxes.

And I'll keep improving the site and fixing bugs, and occasionally write articles for the roughly four readers of this blog.

===

• [0]: This has been done! Plus, there's a RSS feed now too.

The big new thing is support for forms with text inputs that send a GET request on submit. For me, this primarily means Wikipedia's search box is now supported. Yay!

The interface and UX has been overhauled to be more similar to Malvim, the Vim-like text editor bundled with ming-wm. Some bugs and annoying things were fixed. The usual. Here are some fun images, the same ones in the README.md:

I plan to mostly use it to browse Wikipedia and HN, so I'm not too worried about the browser becoming useless^<p><b><img>[0]^. It's quite unfortunate that so many sites cannot be simply rendered, or even don't work without Javascript. I really miss the many sites that basically only used the tag, and maybe some and if the economy was good.

You can still find a decent amount of these simpler sites, especially on university subdomains, where older professors (rightfully) simply don't see the point in going beyond basic readability, but there's obviously more of these sites going down every year than coming up. Though, things like neocities seem to be "cool" again, in certain circles. Most neocities sites wouldn't really be readable on Koxinga, but another recently popular site, bearblog.dev is perfectly usable with Koxinga.

What is interesting is that unlike the other obstacles that anyone trying to use a simple browser (eg, the Cloudflare challenges, Javascript loading the content instead of it being in the static HTML, etc), there's no one to really blame. Modern web development is awful, but having only text-based sites (like in the Gemini protocol) is too restricting.

So I don't think Koxinga is the ideal browser in an ideal world. I would have loved for it to support more complex formatting, I just don't really want to work that hard on it, and I'm not really sure how I would do all this complicated rendering anyways. It does what I want.

...By the way, the ideal browser, in my opinion, would be Lynx.

===

[0]: It is a great POC app for ming-wm, anyhow. Plus, the development process for Koxinga led me to add several things to ming-wm itself that I realised were kinda important, like font data caching for faster text rendering.

Anyways, reading the manga, you'll notice that Tsukumizu (the author and artist) makes a large amount of literary references. Certainly enough to have a... book club! Yay! Read with us, it'll be fun!!!

Here, I'll write some brief reflections on the referenced books in the first 3 chapters, followed by thoughts about how it relates to the manga. If you read any of these books and would like to share your own feelings, please email us^[1].

Chapter 1: The Old Man and the Sea

How to cope with life

This novella by Ernest Hemingway was read by Shimeji, and can be prominently seen in the second-to-last panel of the 4th page of the chapter 1. In the subsequent panel, Shimeji thinks sadly about the marlin getting eaten.

The Old Man and the Sea is fundamentally about the universal human experience of giving it your all and being in a worse position than before; of getting beaten down for no good reason at all. The titular old man, Santiago, hasn't caught any fish in a long time. This is bad, because he is a fisherman. He goes far out to sea, and snares a ridiculously large marlin on his hook. He fights it for several days and nights. When he finally reels it in, some blood in the water alerts swarms of sharks, which despite the best efforts of the old man (he kills several), bite off all the flesh. When he returns to shore with the skeleton, tourists don't even know what creature the skeleton is from.

On the book itself, is it good? The prose is simple, and maybe a little tiresome to read. But somehow, Hemingway uses this to make you feel exactly what the old man is feeling. I felt the pain the old man felt when the line cut into his hands, or his hands cramped. I felt his fatigue every night, and his despair when the sharks ate his catch. It became my favourite book the second I finished it^[2]. It still is. So yeah, it is good, Very Good. You will be convinced of Hemingway's exceptional talent. He's a fucking genius.

The book and Shimeji Simulation share many thematic similarities. Both explore how we should respond to adverse situations. Hemingway, through his book, clearly has an opinion: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated", or in other words, don't give up! Your efforts justify itself, regardless of the results. You cannot be miserable if you refuse to consent to be miserable. A stoic-seeming philosophy, though it could be seen as a Catholic/Nietzsche-like view of "suffering builds character". Well, stoic views might not disagree with that either. I guess the key difference is that the Catholic/Nietzsche perspective glorifies suffering in a way that stoicism does not. Catholics might compare suffering to that of the Christ, or martyrs. Nietzsche also seems to embrace suffering as a path to greatness. Seeking out suffering and bearing it almost becomes a proof of virtue. Stoicism appears to agree that reactions to suffering are important, but disagrees in that suffering itself is not desirable, just inevitable. Shimeji Simulation, on the other hand, (imo) is more open ended, and explores many responses, including nihilism (most obvious in Mogawa) and the milder apathy (Shimeji), though both are ultimately rejected by the characters. It seems closer to stoicism than any Catholic of Nietzschean attitude, but it isn't quite that either. Regardless of the underlying philosophy, both Shimeji Simulation and The Old Man and the Sea brilliantly stir an emotional reaction, and both convey the feeling that we are not alone in feeling the way we do.

Both (but especially Shimeji Simulation, with the hole digging machine and Shimeji's older sister's inventions) are now especially important to read and reflect on, with the rise of "AI" and the general trend of ownership turning into rentership. With these worries already posing an existential threat to human livelihoods, creativity, and meaning, how do we manage?

That is obviously a complicated question, and one for another time^[3]. I personally found both the old man's grit, and Shimeji's indifference to death admirable, though I'd have to think about "why".

Chapter 2: The Catcher in the Rye

Cynicism vs. Apathy

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, can be seen very faintly as a book Shimeji is reading in the last panel of chapter 2.

This book is alright. It seemed to me like the protagonist, Holden, an angsty American teenage boy, was supposed to be at least somewhat sympathetic, but I did not think so. I found him and his narration mildly annoying. To the book's credit, it covers themes that for whatever reason, don't seem to be present in other similar coming-of-age genre books, such as alienation, uncertainty, and confusion. I guess since the book is written from the perspective of Holden, the annoying style shows his emotions and frame of mind well.

On the surface, Holden and Shimeji seem similar. Both previously suffered some kind of unpleasant event (the death of Holden's brother, the incident that made Shimeji dislike school, mentioned but unelaborated upon in chapter 1). Both are youths that are isolated from other people, and are unsure of their place in the world.

They are fundamentally different, however. Holden's misanthropy is a reaction to his attempts at connection with others failing. He is angry about others not acting the way he expects him to, and believes that they are in the wrong, that adults are all "phonies". After failing to find what he wants (meaning, sex, or friends), Holden believes the solution is just to run away and minimally interact with others. He prefers the innocence of childhood (his younger sister is the one who ultimately convinces him not to run away), and behaves in a childlike manner^[4]. He is both cynical and naive.

Shimeji's misanthropy is not misanthropy at all. Shimeji doesn't hate anyone, she just does not believe that interacting with others has any real value. She is apathetic to most things, but is not a nihilist, not cynical, and not naive. After all, she did presumably study for the senior high school exams, and she does go to school. I initially interpreted Shimeji going to school and going along with Majime's antics as a deep but hidden desire to connect with others (ie, apathy is not her "true" nature), but I now think otherwise. Shimeji strikes me as a person who thinks life is a bit of a chore. She wants to take the path of least resistance, and have everything pass by quicker. So, she indulges Majime, and because of the norms of modern society, goes to school. Of course, her character eventually changes, and she finds value in her friends and Majime. Holden does change a little by the end, but whether the change is significant is questionable.

Chapter 3: Alice in Wonderland

Acknowledging changing circumstances

This short children's book, by Lewis Carroll, is a little different from the other two. On the last page of chapter 3, Shimeji compares Majime leading her to join the bizarre hole digging club to the White Rabbit leading her down the rabbit hole to a bizarre world.

It is a children's book, it did popularise surreal fiction, and it does have immense cultural influence, so I won't be overly harsh. It wasn't a bad read by any means, but I was glad it was only twelve chapters. The poems did start to grow on me by the end though, and some parts were amusing^[5].

I took most of it at face value, though clearly the author put in some critiques (for example, the Duchess' obsession with everything neededing to have a moral, is probably a jab at childrens' education at the time).

What stood out to me most was Alice's reactions to the strange situations she found herself in. While she wasn't a stoic^[6] (she cries a small lake of tears), she seems to adjust surprisingly well. As children, the world defies our idea of how it ought to be, or how we are told it is; so maybe this is not much different for her. When reading Shimeji Simulation, I noticed the characters seemed similarly nonchalant and adaptive, at least relative to their situation of the fabric of reality changing completely. Shimeji may have been apathetic from the start, and never had that firm an attachment to the previous reality, but the nonchalantness is true for everyone. The world of Shimeji Simulation may be one much more laid-back and less stubborn than ours.

Then again, is the world of Alice or Shimeji so different to ours? Yes, obviously on a mundane level our world doesn't have talking rabbits, or perpetual motion machines. But absurd, surreal things happen all the time in our world. By and large, most people don't seem to be too freaked about it.

===

[0]: Why not? How unusual. wasona is a great way to learn

[1]: xrussianfanclub [at] xrotonmail [dot] com, xrussia [at] xrussia [dot] dev, except change all x's to p's

[2]: Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" must too, be recommended. Thematically, it feels quite similar. "The Sun Also Rises", also by Hemingway, is quite different, but also good. That book almost seems like an earlier stage of an evolution into the themes of other two books. By that, I mean that the themes of emptiness and disillusionment with the hedonistic life ("The Sun Also Rises") seem as if they could naturally progress to the acceptance of struggle (in the other two books). Curiously, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Old Man and the Sea" were in fact written decades after "The Sun Also Rises".

[3]: Hemingway ended up killing himself after suffering from injuries and sickness. I fear this may be insensitive, but I wonder if he would have considered this contrary to the values expressed in "The Old Man and the Sea". I don't know, but I don't fault him for doing what he did

[4]: There are many instances, but the title of the book being Holden's mishearing of a poem proves to me Holden's childlike nature

[5]: I normally like puns and wordplay (Shimeji Simulation has tons!), but I only found one or two funny...

[6]: In the colloquial sense

To very briefly summarise, Shugendo is a syncretic, mountain-worshipping Japanese folk religion. It was founded by the famous ascetic En no Gyoja (aka En no Ozunu or En no Ubasoku), and has been associated with wandering shugenja who endure harsh ascetic practices and wear somewhat distinctive clothing. It was banned in the 1870s (Meiji era), but has been somewhat revived post-war. The Mount Haguro sect holds Mount Haguro in particularly high esteem. Mount Haguro is one the Dewa Sanzan, three famous sacred mountains in northern Japan.

Wait, that isn't entirely accurate! One of the first misunderstandings that the author clears up is the notion of mountain worship. Shugendo (and more broadly, the religious practice of "sangaku shinko") considers (certain) mountains to be sacred places, where gods, Buddhas/Bodhisattvas, and/or spirits dwell. So, it may be more accurate to describe mountain worship as worshipping in the mountains, because they are sacred, rather than the worshipping of mountains, simply because they are mountains.^[0] Secondly, the Haguro sect claims not be founded by En no Ozunu, but Prince Hachiko (aka Shoken-dai-bosatsu). The Haguro sect claims that En no Ozuno merely founded the sect of Oomine (a different mountain in Nara), and that their sect was older. More on this in a bit.

What was good

The book does a great job at explaining what Shugendo is exactly. I think anyone with a little bit of knowledge about Buddhism and Japanese history should have no problem understanding the writing. As previously shown, the author also excellently cleared up misconceptions and prevented misunderstandings.

Another thing the book did well was describing both what the many rituals were, and the meaning behind them. Or rather, the meanings. The author uses two main sources, which ascribe multiple different meanings to aspects of the rituals, and the author also adds in his own knowledge, from his participation in the Aki no Mine (Fall Peak) ritual period, and his conversations with practitioners. Combined with the well-written glossary, this book seems like an incredibly useful guide to understanding the ceremonial parts of Shugendo.^[1] The rituals themselves were, of course, very interesting and certainly worth writing about. Though the Fall Peak was given the most in-depth explanation, I found the Winter Peak to be the most curious, with its initial long period of confinement for two senior ascetics, and ending with a fun festival full of competitions and celebrations. I understand why the Fall Peak was given much more coverage, given that it is slightly less public, and since the Winter Peak is more under the jurisdiction of the Shinto Dewa Shrine in modern times. The Summer Peak is the season where pilgrims come. The Spring Peak is no longer done, and is essentially a bunch of rituals perfomed privately by the highest-ranking members. I had no problem with how much each peak was covered, and thought it made sense. It was decently fascinating, and I was not aware of the lay pilgrimages in Shugendo before; I had mostly only thought of Shugendo in terms of the ascetics/priests that practice it, and had not thought too much about what the lay followers did.

With his own experience of the rituals, the author is able to provide details on how modern practices differ from the pre-Meiji ones. Besides modern practices generally being more abbreviated, it seems some holy sites no longer exist, or in one case, are inaccessible due to hydroelectric dam.

What I liked most is the explanation of the history of (Haguro) Shugendo, and how it changed through the ages. It seems it arose from the interaction of already ancient indigenous^[2] beliefs about the sacred role of mountains, and the imported Buddhist, and later Taoist, beliefs. As it became more organised, a formal hierarchy arose, divided between ascetics practicing on or near the mountain year round, and wandering folk priests serving various communities. Lay adherents received charms and various ceremonies (eg, to protect crops), and undertook long pilgrimages from across the country to the mountain. By the Edo/Tokugawa period, these wandering priests started growing more and more settled, and eventually stopped wandering entirely. After Shugendo was banned by the Meiji government, Shugendo priests and ascetics were either forced to give up their practices or become Shinto priests or Buddhist monks. A great deal of sites associated with Haguro Shugendo disappeared. But, enough was preserved and survived that it was revived post-war, even if in an abbreviated form.

Overall, the book touched on many interesting topics and tidbits, far too many to list. I learned about the involvement of the lay followers, and was surprised by the great (historical) reach and power of Haguro Shugendo. At its height, it had great financial and even military power. It quibbled with other Shugendo sects (such as the Hozan-ha, associated with the Tendai Buddhist sect^[3]).

The book presents convincing evidence of pre-Shugendo beliefs around mountains, which besides being fascinating, gave a good idea of how Shugendo arose. I find it plausible that Shugendo independently arose in many areas of the country, and based on inter-group influences came to have some common characteristics. I don't really know whether Haguro Shugendo really predates En no Gyoja (or even if En no Gyoja was real [probably?]), but I don't see why not.

What I wish was different

While the pre-Meiji history and doctrine of Shugendo is described in good detail, the post-Meiji history and doctrine of Shugendo is confusingly, barely covered. I was left with many burning questions. How exactly did Shugendo survive and revive? How did they decide which rituals to continue, and which to discontinue? When the resurrected Haguro Shugendo matures, will more rituals and practices be revived? What is the relationship exactly with Dewa shrine? What do the modern lay practitioners believe? Where did the shugenja of revived Shugendo come from, exactly? And what are their motivations?

When reading, small bits of answers are teased, but never fully fleshed out. For example, some of the modern Haguro Shugendo believers don't seem to like Dewa shrine, and how they carry out the rituals, but the other hand, (presumably Haguro) shungeja participate in some of the shrine's rituals. What's up with that? Who knows, no elaboration is made. Another example, the author at one point "accidentally observed an unofficial but interesting religious activity", where an older woman, who seemed to be in a "mild form of possession", and a young man were praying together. Afterwards, he talked to the woman (who he had, apparently, previously interviewed, though this is news to us) who explained that they were praying for the young man's dead father. She also said she had seen images of the founder (Prince Hachiko) while praying before. This short, off-hand passage is unfortunately the closest readers get to understanding the modern followers of Haguro Shungendo.

I don't understand why the author neglects the modern history. They obviously have plenty of sources to draw on, including his own experience and his conversations with modern practitioners, who surely remember the recent revival, and likely the pre-war underground state of Shugendo, so that isn't the issue. The modern history and motivations should be the easiest part to research! I also don't see why this would be out of scope of the work^[4], since revived Haguro Shugendo is still Shugendo. In my opinion, if the author would've included some of his takeaways from the interviews he clearly conducted with many followers and senior priests, the work would be greatly enhanced.

A major theme in the work is how Shugendo has changed over the years. As previously mentioned, the itineracy of the shugenja had declined by the Edo era, and strict asceticism had begun to fade too. And after the banning and revival, many rituals ceased or were abbreviated, certain positions/ranks were un-filled, and some holy sites or buildings no longer even exist. Meanings and interpretation seem to slightly change with time, though as the author points out, these meanings can coexist without contradiction. The revived Haguro Shugendo has a small fraction of the power it once had, and objectively it has declined. Perhaps the author considered the modern history and doctrine less important due to this decline? The author does associate the revived Haguro with other Japanese "new religions" in the conclusion (possibly implying that the revived version does not deserve quite the same comprehensive treatment as its pre-banned version), and separates it firmly from Buddhism (though obviously it acknowledges the great influence from Buddhism). These are both conclusions I disagree with, based on the practices and beliefs of Haguro Shugendo (both modern and pre-banning), as described in the book itself. Or perhaps the author just had a page limit and had to prioritise^[5]. Either way, I was left wanting for more.

Conclusion

For someone with just a passing minor interest in Shugendo, or Japanese religions in general, I do think chapters 1 (religious background and historical development), 2 (background and religious history of the Haguro sect), 4 (religious doctrine), 5 (religious life and ritual activity), and the illustration section are worth reading, or at least skimming. I do realise that is a decent chunk of the book. The other sections are probably too dry for this type of reader.

For someone who has a more major interest in Shugendo, and especially the meaning and minutae of the rituals, this book is an excellent resource.

However, as mentioned in the previous section, don't expect to learn too much about the modern history or the modern practitioners.

===

[0]: Though, my impression was the mountains themselves were actually venerated... though only because of their association with various deities, so it's a little more complicated than that, I suppose

[1]: The bibliography/citations and the index were also great, but those are table stakes for academic works

[2]: Given that "Shinto" was inextricably intertwined with Buddhism until the Meiji government forced them to separate (shinbutsu bunri in the 1860s, and given that the unification of the many indigenous beliefs of Japan into "Shinto" wasn't really attempted until hundreds of years after the introduction of Buddhism, I did not use that term. Of course, it's not accurate at all to call Shinto entirely an artificial creation of the Meiji government, given that the oldest surviving work of literature in Japan, the Kojiki include national founding myths, and clearly in the early years of Buddhism in Japan, there was a contrast (and conflict) between it and the native practices. However, in the 1000+ years since, Japanese Buddhism and these native beliefs have merged together and influenced each other quite thoroughly, each changing from their "original" forms. So clearly, Shinto as we know it today is not an accurate term for the native religious practices pre-Buddhism, but it's complicated! I recommend reading "The Religious Traditions of Japan - 500-1600" by Andrew Edmund Goble for a really good analysis of the relationship between these native beliefs and Buddhism, and how Shinto started forming

[3]: Tozan-ha, on the other hand, is associated with the Shingon Buddhist sect. I would guess this might be the Shingon gyoja I met was associated with, but I could be totally wrong. He said he was on the path to ordain officially as a monk of the Koyasan subsect of Shingon. I'm not really sure of the relationship between Tozan-ha and the other Shingon denominations

[4]: There were a few things that I wanted to learn more about, like the military power of Haguro Shugendo, or how other sects viewed them, but that is more understandably out of scope. Perhaps I'll look through the bibliography and see if there's anything that seems to mention it, though more sources than you would expect seem to be in French or German

[5]: By the way, the whole thing with "-ise" being for nouns and "-ize" for verbs (or is the other way around?) is so confusing and weird. I don't want to just use "-ize" though, z just looks... weird

I have been scanlating for apparently, well over a year now. As the translator of such mildly notable globally renowned works such as Shikanokonokonokokoshitantan and unbelievably obscure cultural giants like Ubunchu, I feel like I have enough street cred to say there's really only one fundamental thing that separates good translations from bad ones: Whether or not the translation accurately conveys the author's intent.

Well, yeah, no shit, right? Unfortunately, this is apparently not so obvious to everyone. Some hobbyist and (even) professional translations do a disappointing job of preserving the author's meaning.

So, I will vainly (in both senses of the word) try to get all us translators on the same page.

Localisation and Cultural Context

"Localisation" has always been a bit of a loaded and controversial topic, so I think it would be helpful to separate into two categories.

First, the intent of some localisations is to change or remove content from the source material, in order to avoid offending the non-Japanese audience's perceived sensibilities. A infamous example (though for an anime, not a manga) is the english version of Sailor Moon, which removed violent or sexual scenes, and changed queer characters to be non-queer, accidentally making a lesbian couple into a pair of incestuous cousins instead. More recently, lines or scenes perceived as misogynstic have been removed too. This can hardly even be called localisation, since it really is just censorship.

Second, other localisations change things in order to make them foreign concepts understandable to non-Japanese people. Good translations should do this! The easiest way to illustrate this is by looking at how dialects are handled^[0]. In "2DK, G Pen, Mezamashi Tokei" by Oosawa Yayoi, one the main characters speaks in a strong Hakata dialect. The excellent fan translation by Ropponmatsu, uses a Scottish dialect instead, and importantly, the translator explains that they substituted the Hakata dialect for the Scottish dialect. It's cute, and as the plot is divded between the character at work, where she speaks in standard Japanese, and at home, where she speaks in her dialect, the choice ends up working quite well. Similarily, the character Ayumu Kasuga Osaka in Azumanga Daioh speaks in a Osaka dialect, and is a bit of a "slow" character, which is portrayed as a American Southern dialect in both the dub of the anime and the manga translations. Now, the Osaka dialect is not a perfect analogue to a Southern dialect. When localising, you will find that these concepts rarely have perfect analogues. To avoid misleading readers, translators need to explain what decision was made, and why (which is what Ropponmatsu did). In Azumanga Daioh, they leave in that Osaka is from Osaka and speaks Osaka dialect. They do not change her into a character from the American South. Not having any localisation at all would make our translations only marginally better than machine^[1] or dictionary translations, and confuse readers.

However, there is a difference between translating concepts and removing them entirely. In many manga, a spoken word game called shiritori is played. No such equivalent exists in the western world. I have seen some translations change a game of shiritori into a different game entirely. That is wrong! This type of "localisation" doesn't help readers understand an unfamiliar concept, it just avoids doing so entirely. And in a practical sense, this will confuse the reader, especially if the omitted concept is referenced later, or there is some important information contained in it. Beyond that, it is not our place as translators to make drastic changes. We are not writing our own work, but trying to faithfully reproduce someone else's work in another language! Perhaps it is acceptable to change the words played into shiritori so that they start and end with the same letters, so readers have a vague (but not quite accurate) idea of what shiritori is. If that is done, the original words should be disclosed. And either way, there should be a TL note somewhere explaining what shiritori is.

There are other examples of this misguided practice. Some translations also change Japanese cultural references into western ones without noting they did so. Some translations do not indicate (whether by font, wording, or note) when a character is speaking in a certain level of formality. For these, the culprits at least have the thin veneer of an excuse. It can be a little difficult to explain these concepts to someone who isn't familiar, and even once explained, the reader won't truly "get it" like a native resident would.

Some translations change Japanese names into local names. The Detective Conan manga calls Kudo Shinichi "Jimmy Kudo", and Ran Mori "Rachel Moore" (to be fair, they do this to maintain consistency with the english dub, so it's really the anime's fault). Some translations change Japanese foods into western ones. The most infamous case is the Pokemon english dub called what were clearly rice balls "jelly-filled donuts". C'mon guys, I bet people can handle Japanese names or the concept of a rice ball! Some change panel and page order so manga can be read left-to-right instead of right-to-left, messing up the artwork.

Bad, bad, bad! Luckily, these practices are decreasing over time.

What these misguided localisations are trying to do is not "translation", but rather "retelling". There is a time and a place for this; yes. But it would simply be wrong to present, as an example, the West Side Story as a translation of Romeo and Juliet.

What is important to realise is that the cultural context is part of the story, you cannot remove it while preserving the story. Shockingly, manga written by Japanese people are often set in Japan or have Japanese characters. Good localisation familiarize unfamiliar concepts, enhancing the reader's understanding and enjoyment in the long run. Good localisation assumes the reader is curious!

Jokes

I often see jokes literally translated, so that they don't make sense at all, or even worse, removed. Needless to say, this is bad. This kind of thing is probably just the translator not being actually knowing Japanese (or being tired and missing a joke), so there isn't much that can be done about that, I guess.

Besides that, I think most translators handle jokes reasonably well. Most people handle puns by thinking of a similar pun in English and substituting it. To me, this is perfectly reasonable. Puns are normally "throw away" jokes, so the exact pun is usually not important. In many cases, a good pun cannot be found, so a TL note is left explaining the pun.

Transforming puns into puns is widely accepted, but other kinds of jokes are more complicated. Jokes that are funny because they make fun of a character or thing can usually be easily translated. But for more difficult jokes, I am on the side that they should be preserved, and an explanation given. These more complex jokes are not really "throw away", and can be elaborate setups by the author, and so it isn't right to replace them with our own jokes.

Content and Wording

This is the last section I'm writing so my lengthy tendencies have tired out a bit. I'll try to keep this short.

Some translations re-word and rephrase lines so much that it almost reads like the translator was given the cleaned page (the original text removed, only the drawings), and writes the text based on vibes. This is my criticism of the Shikanokonokonokokoshitantan manga's official translation. Well, it's not quite that bad, but you can see the wording and sentences are often quite different from the Japanese. As I am a fan translator of shikanokonokonokokoshitantan, do not take that as an objective criticism. It is probably coloured. Whether it sometimes goes too far, and loses some nuance, is probably a matter of personal opinion. Anyhow, I am against the styles of translation that treat it almost like an oral tradition that can retold a million different ways. Yes, there are many ways to translate a text, but the number of ways to translate it such that the voice of the characters (as the author wrote it) is preserved, is much fewer.

Accuracy vs. Flow?

So is a good, accurate translation at odds with readability? Are faithful translations doomed to be long, wordy, and clunky? Nope. In fact, it is just the opposite. Truly excellent translations flow with the same smoothness (or possibly, lack of smoothness) as the original text. The flow and length of the original text is part of the context, and cannot be ignored. How is this possible without compromising accuracy? Accuracy is not looking up every word in the dictionary and copying the definition into the text. It isn't even necessarily replicating the sentence structure exactly. It is about understanding what the text is actually saying, and successfully communicating it a different language, nuances and all. Rephrasing or saying something a different way is perfectly fine if the same meaning and nuances are preserved. Which is difficult. When a character says a line of dialogue, we should have questions like: "Why did the character say this?", "What emotions are present in the line?", "Is this speech casual, formal, passive-aggressive, or insulting?", etc etc. Then, we can ask the same questions of our translated text and see if the answers remain the same. Essentially, we should think: "If the character were to rephrase this, how would they do so?"

I'll admit sometimes I am too conservative and opt to preserve certain phrases, lengthening the translation as a result. It takes a lot of skill to have accuracy and flow co-exist, instead of balance. Hopefully I'll get better at this^[2].

But there no doubt will be situations where certain concepts or nuances cannot be succinctly conveyed, no matter the skill of the translator. In that case:

Use TL Notes, Goddammit!

At this point, you've probably noticed my preferred solution to most problems, translator notes. They really are a miracle cure, and underutilised. Please use them more. I especially love it when the translator adds a whole page at the end of notes to explain things that wouldn't fit under the panel.

Translator notes add nuance and clarification without making the dialogue too wordy and clunky. Translator notes educate the reader about cultural context or even plot context. Translator notes provide a window into the mind of the translator - what decisions they made, and why. Without translator notes, readers who don't know Japanese and don't have access to the source material will mistakenly believe the author/characters said something they never did, or even worse, not understand what is going on at all. If that happens, we as translators have failed.

While I assert that our job is to smoothly and correctly translate the author's intent, I do not mean we do not leave any of our own influence on the work. That is impossible, since there is no deterministic algorithm for translation. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional. We have to make decisions about every phrase and line. Hopefully, those decisions make it so non-Japanese readers can experience the manga in a very similar way as Japanese readers do. But, those readers should be made aware of those decisions.

Hence, translator notes are essential.

Holistic Translation

All these bad translations stem for a single misunderstanding of what is actually being translated. What is being translated is not just the plot, not just the words, not just the feelings of the character. Rather, it is all that, plus cultural context, and many other components, all considered together, considered holistically.

Now, different works and different translators will weigh these factors differently. For some stories, it might be critically important for the plot to be extremely precise, and other aspects might need to be slightly sacrificed to ensure that. There is still much room for great, and reasonable disagreement on what the weightings should be for all the factors, or whether a certain translation correctly reflects that weighting. These are more "subjective" disagreements, matters of taste. On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to take seriously translations which do not start from the basic premise that all aspects of the original work must be holistically considered, and that unweighting certain contexts requires extremely careful, serious thought.

===

Footnotes:

• [0]: I used to be of the opinion that sfx should not be localised, but I have changed my mind. Old me was wrong. English readers do not know that "ガタガタ" is the sound of something shaking or clattering, and even if they could read it as "gata gata", it wouldn't really help. I think the best way to handle sfx is to write, in small text next to the sfx, the meaning of the sfx. Unfortuantely, in some manga, there is no space, and having a TL note underneath the panel does not always work (eg, multiple sfx), so in that case cleaning the sfx and replacing with the English equivalent is appropriate. Honestly, leaving the sfx as the original is quite common and acceptable too, but providing a localisation is better.
• [1]: For obvious reasons, I have been thinking a lot about AI lately, mostly against my will. It really sucks that entire classes of art and craftsmanship are being wiped out. Regular translation has already been gutted, and I'm a bit scared for when it comes for scanlation too. Some people are probably already using it to translate... augh. Interestingly enough, the world's greatest piece of literature since the Epic of Gilgamesh, Shimeji Simulation, seems to have something to say about this. I want to eventually write an exegesis (what a fancy word...) about it. Hopefully Shimeji Simulation will help me cope.
• [2]: Translating to Toki Pona, which has only a few sentence structures, and 120~ words, is a good way to practice how to rephrase a line without losing the essence or important nuances, in my experience. If you try to translate too literally, the sentence will be too long and confusing, so you are forced to simplify.