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呑まねども読みにさえなお気の薬これぞ百薬の長が狂歌集　露月亭1766We do not drink but read it - this medicine for the soul, chief of a hundred remedies, is a book full of kyouka!狂歌は「気の薬」になる事は我が特許販売かと思ったが、近世上方の狂歌業書の第24冊を開けて見れば、最初の本がなんとの『狂歌気のくすり』だった。1770年成立で著作権は問題にならずも、二番茶がいやで、新案を考えた果に単行本をしてもっと良い書名『古狂歌 ご笑納ください』に到着した。そして「気の薬」も惜しくなったら、シーリーズを「古狂歌 気の薬 あくまでも不完全大集」と称した。「大全」ではなく「不完全大集」とは、諸君のご協力できたら、改造＋拡大をずっと続けてもいいという電脳時代ならではの出版企画を夢見ているからです。上記の狂歌本にあった書名に因む首を詠んだ盲人は、貞柳の高弟子米都の門人。百歳まで生きたかった上方狂歌の祖師貞柳は、八十歳を越えたが体質が協力しかねて1734に他界したも、その門に長生きと同一なる錬金術としての狂歌詠みという潜在発想が続存したかと思う。盲人の歌は、1766明和三年戌の春の「翁金八老人の瞾鑠*たるを見侍りて」、114歳の賀歌の中の一首だ。（*もう辞典にない語が輝いている感じか）。初期狂歌のもう一人の盲人の狂歌も有難い。踏み知らばめくらも蛇におちつべし知らねば易き和歌の道かな　盲人私可多咄17cIgnorance is bliss, as we blind fear not snakes we cannot see, knowing nothing about it, the Way of Waka is easy for me!自分の無知も、けっして負担ばかりでは無かった。とは言え、大人になってから学んだ日本語だ。日本人の清書・校正こそ要るが、原稿を見てくれる人は一人もいない。知人がみな稼ぎに追われし、和書を書く殆どの外国人の世話になる日本人の妻も、手伝いを雇う金銀も無いから、お目を汚す滅茶苦茶のてにをはも、ご笑納下さい。robin d gill

Imagine a cat who mastered more tricks than a highly trained dog, covered up cans of food he did not want to eat before they were opened and could delicately touch a tiny finger-spun top repeatedly without stopping it. Han-chan was such a cat. His memory, preserved in notes and sketches, inspired an authority on stereotypes of national character and translator of Edo era Japanese poetry to essay out of his fields of expertise and into felinity. Sample chapters: The animal that kneads the world. / Conversing with cats: easier in Japanese? / Smiling with closed eyes, or far from Ecotopia. /Are cats the most or least false animal. / Beauty: Is it relative or . . . is it the cat? / A little red mouse, or are we keeping the right pet? / The third-generation tanuki - a new theory of domestication. Observations are coupled with thought about things such as 1) whether the altered behavior usually explained as saving face or covering up weakness is not more like improvisation that, retrospectively, makes melodic sense of what would be wrong notes by offsetting or dream-style logic that, ever present, keeps the flow from breaking. 2) Cats, or some cats, may avoid trauma from bad experiences by convincing themselves it was only a nightmare and continuing to hope until they can cope. 3) Cats demonstrate their social nature by showing off their catches, sleeping together in the cold and behaving themselves, but most are, unfortunately, like so-called feral children: because they are separated from their family while too young to have socialized, they re-enforce the stereotype of the independent asocial cat. One can only understand felinity by living with generations of cats under one roof. The author did this. People who liked Barbara Holland's "Secrets of the Cat," the cat chapter in Vicki Hearne's "Adam's Task" and Leonard Michaels' "A Cat" will probably purr while reading this.

Even readers with no particular interest in Japan - if such odd souls exist - may expect unexpected pleasure from this book if English metaphysical poetry, grooks, hyperlogical nonsense verse, outrageous epigrams, the (im)possibilities and process of translation between exotic tongues, the reason of puns and rhyme, outlandish metaphor, extreme hyperbole and whatnot tickle their fancy. Read together with The Woman Without a Hole, also by Robin D. Gill, the hitherto overlooked ulterior side of art poetry in Japan may now be thoroughly explored by monolinguals, though bilinguals and students of Japanese will be happy to know all the original Japanese is included. This Reader is a selection from "Mad in Translation - a thousand years of kyoka, comic Japanese poetry in the classic waka mode," a 2000-poem, 200-chapter, 740-page monster of a book. It offers a 300-page double distillation high-proof sample of the poetry and prose, with improved translations, re-considered opinions and additional snake-legs (explanation some scholars may not need). The scattershot of two-page chapters and notes have been compounded into a score of cannonball-sized thematic chapters with just enough weight to bowl over most specialists yet, hopefully, not bore the amateur and sink a potentially broad-beamed readership. (More information may be found at the Paraverse Press website or Google Books)"

17-syllabet Japanese poems about human foibles, sans season (i.e., not haiku), were introduced a half-century ago by RH Blyth in two books, "Edo Satirical Verse Anthologies" and "Japanese Life and Character in Senryu." Blyth regretted having to introduce not the best senryu, but only the best that were clean enough to pass the censors. In this anthology, compiled, translated and essayed by Robin D. Gill, like Blyth, a renowned translator of thousands of haiku, we find 1,300 of the senryu (and zappai) that would once have been dangerous to publish. The book is not just an anthology of dirty poems such as Legman's classic "Limericks" or Burford's delightful "Bawdy Verse," but probing essays of thirty themes representative of the eros - both real and imaginary - of Edo, at the time, the world's largest city. Japanese themselves use senryu for historical documentation of social attitudes and cultural practices; thousands of senryu (and the related zappai), including many poems we might consider obscene, serve as examples in the Japanese equivalent of the OED (nipponkokugodaijiten). The specialized argot, obscure allusions and ellipsis that make reading dirty senryu a delightful riddle for one who knows just enough to be challenged yet not defeated, make them impenetrable to outsiders, so this educational yet entertaining resource has not been accessible to most students of Japanese (and the limited translations prove that even professors have difficulty with it). This book tries to accomplish the impossible: it includes all the information - original poems, pronunciation, explanation, glossary - needed to help specialists improve their senryu reading skills, while refraining from full citations to leave plenty of room for the curious monolingual to skip about the eclectic goodies. [Published simultaneously with two titles as an experiment.]

17-syllabet Japanese poems about human foibles, sans season (i.e., not haiku), were introduced a half-century ago by RH Blyth in two books, "Edo Satirical Verse Anthologies" and "Japanese Life and Character in Senryu." Blyth regretted having to introduce not the best senryu, but only the best that were clean enough to pass the censors. In this anthology, compiled, translated and essayed by Robin D. Gill, like Blyth, a renowned translator of thousands of haiku, we find 1,300 of the senryu (and zappai) that would once have been dangerous to publish. The book is not just an anthology of dirty poems such as Legman's classic "Limericks" or Burford's delightful "Bawdy Verse," but probing essays of thirty themes representative of the eros - both real and imaginary - of Edo, at the time, the world's largest city. Japanese themselves use senryu for historical documentation of social attitudes and cultural practices; thousands of senryu (and the related zappai), including many poems we might consider obscene, serve as examples in the Japanese equivalent of the OED (nipponkokugodaijiten). The specialized argot, obscure allusions and ellipsis that make reading dirty senryu a delightful riddle for one who knows just enough to be challenged yet not defeated, make them impenetrable to outsiders, so this educational yet entertaining resource has not been accessible to most students of Japanese (and the limited translations prove that even professors have difficulty with it). This book tries to accomplish the impossible: it includes all the information - original poems, pronunciation, explanation, glossary - needed to help specialists improve their senryu reading skills, while refraining from full citations to leave plenty of room for the curious monolingual to skip about the eclectic goodies. [Published simultaneously with two titles as an experiment.]

1. Identity - collective -- Japan 2. Orientalism -- Occidentalism 3. Intercultural communication - stereotypes 4. Translation theory - Japanese/English 5. Japanese - sociolinguistics Languages exotic to one another, such as English and Japanese, create false images of their respective speakers which form and confirm stereotypes that can be denied by Cultural Relativism but not disproved, much less vanquished. Being in denial is not the same as being cured. This book, like the author's seven books published in Japan/ese, treats prejudice by uncovering its roots and exposing them to the healthy light of reason. At the same time, it rethinks Orientalism together with Occidentalism by including the Sinosphere's perspective of what is East and West. While students of translation, sociolinguistics and cross-cultural studies may benefit most from the discussion (there are copious notes and indices of names and of ideas), the heart of the work is pure essay, "a work of travel by the path of language" that "leads us through delicious nuances . . . into important mysteries." Robin D. Gill is an American, who began to study Japanese as an adult and published his first seven books in that language while working as an acquisitions editor and translation checker of fine nonfiction for Japanese publishers. His most recent book, and first in English, Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! boasts close to 1000 holothurian haiku. The three most common adjectives used by reviewers describing him and his work are "eclectic," "erudite" and "fun."

Robin D. Gill, author of seven books in Japanese, is best known in the English-speaking world for thematic books of translated Japanese poetry. From Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! (haiku) to The Woman Without a Hole (senryu) and, most recently, Mad In Translation (kyoka), he developed multiple readings to prevent or compensate for loss of wit and style in translation between exotic tongues. Readings varying far enough from the original to become separate poems came to be called "paraverses." Readings combined into a single cluster to English Japanese poems of Joycean density untranslatable as single poems came to be called "composite translations." While this book essays the translation of poetry and glances at other books of multiple translation, it is mostly an exhibition of the art not only intended for serious students or scholars of translation but all word-lovers. While the author hates "how to" books, writing the last chapter, he came to realize that not only translators, but monolingual readers who find it hard to compose poems or do not know how to get other people to do so, might find it instructive. He dreams of millions of people working out their own poems - or variations on others' work - rather than crossword puzzles. A crossword solved ends up in the trash; with a poem, you can have your cake and not only eat it, too, but serve it up for others to eat. Any major newspaper or magazine editor with brains who reads this book should be able to figure out how to make that a reality. A DOLPHIN has 8 punning pictures by Thomas Hood (1799-1845), and no index but a dual Table of Contents, one ordinal and one categorical. The main title is part of a phrase from Horace who warned those who played with words and variation in translation to take care lest they end up with a dolphin in the woods and a boar in the flood (delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum). Sample of ORDINAL Table of Contents: 01 The Way of Ways, or count the ways to translate the first 6 characters of the Tao-Te-Ching. 02 Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! or the miraculous birth of elegant composite translation clusters. 03 "Still to be neat," "The Essay on Man" and other challenges for metaphysical paraverse. 04 God without turns demon within, or how aphorisms may be multiplied to no end. Sample of CATEGORICAL Table: I Multiple Translations: Watts/Tao-Te-Ching; Sato/Basho's Frog; Mostow/100-poets, Hofstadter/Le Ton Beau de Marot, Weinberger/Nineteen Ways ch. 1, 5, 9, 13, 17. & my own 20, 21, 22."

Gill introduces hundreds of haiku about flies, fly-swatters and flypaper, scores of which are by Issa (1763-1827), whose famous haiku about a fly begging not to be swatted has long been controversial because of its alleged maudlinity and anthropomorphism.

In 1585, Luis Frois, a 53 year old Jesuit who spent all of his adult life in Japan listed 611(!) ways Europeans and Japanese were contrary (completely opposite) to one another. Robin D. Gill, a 53 year old writer who spent most of his adulthood in Japan, translates these topsy-turvy claims - we sniff the top of our melons to see if they are ripe / they sniff the bottom of theirs (10% of the book), examines their validity (20% of the book), and plays with them (70% of the book). Readers with the intellectual horsepower to enjoy ideas will be grateful for pages discussing things like the significance of black and white clothing or large eyes vs. small ones, while others with a ken to collect quirky facts will be delighted to find, say, that the women in Kyoto were known to urinate standing up, or Japanese horses had their stale gathered by long-handled ladles, etc., and serious students of history and comparative culture will gain a better understanding of the nature of radical difference (exotic, by definition) and its relationship with the farsighted policy of accommodation pioneered by Valignano in the Far East.

Rise, Ye Sea Slugs! is a book of many faces. First, it is a book of translated haiku and contains over 900 of these short Japanese poems in the original (smoothly inserted in the main body),with phonetic and literal renditions, as well as the authors English translations and explanations. All but a dozen or two of the haiku are translated for the first time. There is an index of poets, poems and a bibliography. Second, it is a book of sea slug haiku, for all of the poems are about holothurians, which scientists prefer to call sea cucumbers. (The word cucumber is long for haiku and metaphorically unsuitable for many poems, so poetic license was taken.) With this book, the namako, as the sea cucumber is called in Japanese, becomes the most translated single subject in haiku, surpassing the harvest moon, the snow, the cuckoo, butterflies and even cherry blossoms. Third, it is a book of original haiku. While the authors original intent was to include only genuine old haiku (dating back to the 17th century), modern haiku were added and, eventually, Keigu (Gills haiku name) composed about a hundred of his own to help fill out gaps in the metaphorical museum. For many if not most modern haiku taken from the web, it is also their first time in print! Fourth, it is a book of metaphor. How may we arrange hundreds of poems on a single theme? Gill divides them into 21 main metaphors, including the Cold Sea Slug, the Mystic Sea Slug, the Helpless Sea Slug, the Slippery Sea Slug, the Silent Sea Slug, and the Melancholy Sea Slug, giving each a chapter, within which the metaphors may be further subdivided, and adds a 100 pages of Sundry Sea Slugs (scores of varieties including Monster, Spam, Flying, Urban Myth, and Exploding). Fifth, it is a book on haiku. E ditors usually select only the best haiku, but, Gill includes good and bad haiku by everyone from the 17th century haiku master to the anonymous haiku rejected in some internet contest. This is not to say all poe