Chinese Poetry in Kansai Dialect
Get Closer to Chinese Poetry of Difficulty, with This!

Date：19, Sep, 2013
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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You, Japanese guys, how did you feel about Japanese in your school days? I suppose it might have been neither good nor bad. Not your favorite subject but not your worst subject.

In the subject, do you remember there was a genre most were poor at? That is Chinese poetry, you see. All written in kanji, it is so difficult to get and memorize. It would be sure that no Japanese students had fun of the subject.

Well then, we can never enjoy Chinese poetry freely? Chinese Poetry in Kansai Dialect, Kansaiben de Tanoshimu Kanshi, is a book written by Momoshiro Ayumi. That is a magical book which can let you do it.

Firstly, put modern translation by the Chinese poems. All of you would have had that on past sessions. However, the translations have not come to mind since we all live in different situations from the time of the Chinese poems.

So Momoshiro Ayumi tried to make free translations of Chinese poetry, in Kansai dialect.

For example, there is a Chinese poem “桃夭” Touyou. That originally starts as “桃之夭夭 灼灼其華.” We hardly get it. Translation says peaches look fresh and the flowers show red like burning. It is hard to realize anyway. Then, the author makes a bold leap and tells us the core of the Chinese poems with her characteristic poems in Kansai dialect.

Touyou mentions about feelings of parents whose daughter is about to marry, as a matter. The heart is all the same as recent parents and we readers get it finally. The book has magic which let us catch the universality included in Chinese poems. How does Momoshiro Ayumi translate? Please read really and check it.

Her audacious jumping translations, anyway, make us feel more familiar to the world of Chinese poetry. The poems in Kansai dialect have mysterious charm and are worth reading for enjoying poetry.