“All the more reason to be as accurate as we can.” He said this almost to himself. “You could put an illustration of a raccoon dog figurine carrying a sake bottle next to Shigaraki ware in the dictionary, but not next to raccoon dog. That would be highly problematic. For the same reason, we can’t put up a picture of a kappa holding a bottle of sake without any justification. Some people believe in kappa, and take them very seriously. We can’t just . . . have any old thing.”
Left to his own devices, Majime would probably go all the way to the folklore-rich city of Tono in Iwate Prefecture, supposedly the hometown of the mythical kappa, to capture one. She could just see him inquiring of his quarry, “Do you ever carry a sake flask?” Quickly she said, “There are various theories about the appearance of kappa, so I think it would be all right to leave it this way, but if it really bothers you, why not just ask the illustrator to erase the sake bottle?”
“Right. If I’d known it was going to be this much trouble, maybe I should have just gone with an illustration by Toriyama Sekien, the eighteenth-century folklore artist.”
He turned to his computer and started to type an e-mail. He was going to politely ask the illustrator to correct the picture. Without a pause, he said, “What were you going to ask me?”
“It’s about the entry for ai, ‘love.’” She brought over the proof to show him. “I understand the first definition: ‘A feeling of tender affection for someone or something irreplaceable.’ But look at the sample compounds using the character ai: aisai.” (Beloved wife.) “Aijin.” (Lover.) “Aibyo.” (Pet cat.)
“Is there something wrong?”
“There certainly is!” Her tone was bristling. “Listing lover right alongside beloved wife implies that you can have both at the same time, but the definition says this is impossible—because the object of one’s affection is ‘irreplaceable.’ It’s as if we’re asking someone to choose between his lover and his wife! And while I’m on the subject, I object to equating love for another human being with love for a cat.”
“Love is love, without any distinction or ranking. I love my cat as much as I do my wife.”
“That may be,” she said heatedly, “but I’ll bet you and your cat don’t have intercourse!” Then, feeling the eyes of the part-timers on her, she tried to make herself small.
It took a few seconds for her meaning to register with Majime; the word she had used, seiko, had various other meanings, including “succeed.” He seemed to sift through the possible compounds, mentally trying out different combinations of characters. Suddenly he turned red and mumbled, “Well, no . . .”
“See?” Kishibe threw out her chest in triumph. “What’s even stranger is the second definition: ‘Being enamored of a member of the opposite sex, sometimes accompanied by sexual desire. Romantic love.’”
“What’s strange about that?” Majime looked at her, trying to read her face. He seemed to have lost all confidence.
“Why limit it to a member of the opposite sex? If a homosexual person is enamored of someone and feels intermittent sexual desire for them, are we saying it’s not love?”
“No, I didn’t have any such intention. But does it really—”
“Matter?” She cut him off. “Yes, it matters. The Great Passage is supposed to be a dictionary for a new age. If we yield to the majority and stay bound to stale ways of thinking and feeling, how can we ever offer true definitions of kaleidoscopic words—words that are in constant flux but have underlying bedrock meanings?”
“You’re right.” Majime’s shoulders sagged. “When I was young, I remember having the same doubts about the meaning of ren’ai, ‘romantic attachment.’ And yet somehow in the course of working on so many other things I forgot about it. I’m ashamed of myself.”
Lately Kishibe had begun to feel more confident about her work on the dictionary. Majime often accepted her opinions, and he made her feel that he regarded her as a powerful ally. With a sense of relief and pride, she took back the proofs.
“Now that I think of it,” he mused, “Nishioka said once that I should put myself in the shoes of the dictionary user and imagine whether the definition they encountered would boost their spirits. If a young person thinking he or she might be homosexual looked up the word ai in our dictionary and read, ‘Being enamored of a member of the opposite sex,’ how would they feel? I didn’t have enough imagination.”
“No,” Kishibe agreed, “you didn’t.” Then, seeing his remorse, she added forgivingly, “But it’s understandable. You’re a member of the elite, someone who’s always been on the winning side.”
“The elite? Me?”
“Yes. You have a graduate degree and a beautiful, talented wife, and you’re a leading expert on the editing of dictionaries. You don’t seem to have any problems related to being a minority.”
“Is that how I seem to you?” He gave a troubled laugh. “Anyway, I think your point about ai is well taken. Now, how to fix it?”
“Since you are so devoted to your cat, we’ll leave in aibyo, ‘pet cat,’ and take out aijin, ‘lover.’ How’s that? And we could change ‘a member of the opposite sex’ to ‘another person.’”
“Sounds good to me. Professor Matsumoto will be here soon, so I’ll ask him to go over the changes.”
At that point Miyamoto called to say that the latest paper sample for The Great Passage was finished. “We have finally produced the ultimate paper!” he told Kishibe in triumph.
“Excellent,” said Majime. Then he glanced around the office, where proofreaders and student workers milled around and a slew of galley proofs covered all the desks. “But there’s no space here to spread out paper samples. Miss Kishibe, I’m sorry to trouble you, but would you go to the Akebono office and check the sample yourself? If you think it’s good you can tell them to go ahead and start production.”
Paper used in dictionaries was distinctive and needed in large quantity, so unless they started to make it at least six months before publication, it wouldn’t be ready in time. Kishibe understood this, but she wasn’t comfortable making such an important decision on her own.
“Can’t you go instead of me?”
“No, because I have to discuss some things with Professor Matsumoto.” He looked at her and nodded encouragingly. “You’ll be fine. You’re a dictionary editor of the first water. You make shrewd judgments and you know as much about paper as anyone, if not more, since you’ve been in on all the trials so far. I have full confidence in your judgment.”
Charged with such an important mission, Kishibe left Gembu Books feeling slightly nervous.