CHAPTER 2
On
"Though They Drift,
They Don't Sink,
But Nor Do They Sing"
: As an Interpretation of the Work,
and As a Case Study for
the 'Alternative Ways of Translations'
for the Japanese Manga
As every passionate fan knows, the Manga work by Kou YONEDA, Twittering Birds Never Fly /『囀る鳥は羽ばたかない [Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai]』(2011-), or Saezuru in short, has two precursory short stories. The first one is “Don’t stay gold”, a love story between Kageyama and Kuga, which was published by Tokyo-based Core Magazine in April 2008 and first released in the May 2008 issue of Japanese BL comic magazine, drap, and the second one is “Though They Drift, They Don’t Sink, But Nor Do They Sing /「漂えど沈まず、されど鳴きもせず [Tayutaedo Shizumazu, Saredo Nakimosezu」" , a story of Yashiro’s first unrequited love for Kageyama in his late teens, which was first released in June 2009 in HertZ, band. 32, published by Tokyo-based Taiyotosho. Both these stories are now included in Volume 1 of Twittering Birds Never Fly. After these two releases, in August 2011, the series Twittering Birds Never Fly started regular release in the bi-monthly BL comic magazine, HertZ (and ihr HertZ), and is still ongoing as of now, Spring 2023.
In this essay, I would like to conduct an in-depth analysis of the second one of the preliminary Extra Chapters, "Though They Drift, They Don't Sink, But Nor Do They Sing”. It is, firstly, because this story is such a well-created and well-orchestrated, excellent masterpiece on its own, and secondly, because it is an extremely significant hotbed, or stepping stone, work, that lead to the author’s conception and creation of the following Saezuru as a whole, with Yashiro becoming the principal character for the very first time.
Also, in this essay, through reading this story, I would like to operate an exemplary sample case study, with which I aim to perform an alternative way of translating a Japanese Manga work into English and to challenge how it is possible and valid to try to present translations “as faituful as possible” to the unique and beautiful original expressions by the author.
Thereby, in this essay, all quotes from the work translated from Japanese into English are differentiated in two colours: words in grey are excerpted from the official English translations by translator Sai Higashi, from the current official 2021 revised edition, published by Juné Manga, Digital Manga Inc., California, and the words highlighted in black are new English translations that I made from the Japanese original texts for the sake of the afore-mentioned purpose of this translational case study.
The story contains 39 pages, and it dates back to the high school days of two major characters of Saezuru, Yashiro and Kageyama. As I mentioned, it depicts Yashiro’s first bittersweet experience of unanswered love with Kageyama. Through relaising his own feelings of love, Yashiro comes to deeply know the overwhelming sense of solitude of being alone, and being a human. It begins with an extremely intense coloured page, where Yashiro is having sex with a seemingly Yakuza man with tattoos on his back, tied up at his wrists with a black neck-tie-like clothes and muzzled with a white clothes, with the guy's penis stuck in his ass from behind, saying the powerful and unforgettable inner monologue:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Human beings are made full of contradictions.
I want to fuck.
I want to be fucked.
I want to torment someone.
I want to be tormented." *1
It is one of the most important monologues by Yashiro in the entire Saezuru series. In a word, it matches Yashiro and the world of Saezuru just so convincingly well. It is a very acute and precise depiction of what kind of principal thoughts Yashiro has as a person as well as of what kind of stories the whole works of Saezuru is attempting to depict. In a word, this monologue is so idiosyncratic to him and to this work, and it sounds like it embodies, in an amazingly direct and concise way, what the author wants to envision and to convey through creating the Saezuru world. The monologue tells us how multi-layered, double-sided, and often contradictory, humans can be, and Yashiro is no exception, rather he is an extreme sample of us. In a sense, human attitudes during sexual intercourse reveal our most primal nature. Thus, Yashiro's moaning voices during the sex are functioning well as cascading background sounds to suit this monologue strongly pointing out the ambivalent truth that humans are often confronted with in their lives:
Yashiro
"Nn——…!
…
…
…Nn
…
…Huh
……Nh"
After this intensely impressive first page, the title page appears. It is a full-page colour image of the twilight sky shining in orange with some white-to-grey hued crowds floating, seen from the window of Yashiro’s apartment room. The scenery looks almost awesomely overwhelming and beautiful, without an image of anyone, with only Yashiro’s school bag sitting on the floor by the window still. Then, the story moves on to an episode showing how Yashiro and Kageyama got close to each other among all their other classmates, with Kageyama having noticed scars and bruises that Yashiro got on his wrists and other parts of his body from his experiences of hard sex with men, which he had been carefully keeping from others’ notice until then, and Kageyama started to bring band-aids all the time when he sees Yashiro.
Though both of the two are quite independent individuals and rather solitary figures who haven't really made close friends with other boys or girls in the school, they begin to share some sorts of sympathy and empathy with one another. It seems to turn out that way, partly because of the contradictory factor that they sensed a shared preference toward being alone.
Then, the story begins to unfold with Yashiro's own observation and analysis of his family circumstances and sexual preferences.
Again, this long monologue is extremely important to understand what kind of a self-image Yashiro had fostered by the time he reached his late teens:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Let me explain.
These scars were entirely intentional, I wanted them.
They aren't the result of domestic violence or anything depressing like that.
First off, I haven’t seen my mother once in the past year, even though there were signs that she came home.
As for the man she re-married, I haven’t seen him for about three years.
——I went off track, but, my sexual tendency that I enjoy pleasure from pain, mainly inflicted on me by external factors or my own self hurting acts… and the fact that I get orgasms through them….
Simply stated, I am a “masochist”.
In addition, solely as far as sex is concerned, I’m extremely close to a homo, so things get even more twisted.
Getting a dick inserted by a man is way more pleasurable than having sex with a woman.
And, while I’m a masochist, I also have a sadistic touch, and…
that tendency surfaced when I was in the middle of having sex with a girl in Junior High.
She cried so much that I started finding straight sex to be too much of a hassle.
In the first place, it is hard for me to feel pleasure by playing the active role having sex with women…
so, I’m prone to be ever more like a homosexual in the habits of being.
That’s about the gist of it.
Sad as it may be..."
As you can comprehend from this long monologue, Yashiro is neither a simple masochist nor a sadist. He is, as in the title of this story, "drifting without sinking" in an in-between sphere. And, his self image and mode of sexuality seem to have been already almost completely established by the late teens. And, just as he still doesn't in his thirties and forties, already in his teens, he did not like to see himself as a normal "homosexual" or "gay" either, despite the fact that almost his entire sexual experiences had been so much bent toward men.
After this long monologue by Yashiro, the story goes on to the next episode where Yashiro comes to notice Kageyama likes watching and touching the scars and cigarette burns on his chest, stomach, and elsewhere in the school nurse’s room, where Kageyama serves as a Students’ Health Committee member. The scene develops as follows:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"...Seriously...
in what way am I receiving treatment?
Is he a homo?
All he's been doing is touching me...”
Yashiro
“Uh... Kageyama."
Kageyama
"S-sorry. I just..."
Yashiro
"Just what…?”
Yashiro (in his mind)
“Could it be?"
Kageyama
"..."
Yashiro
"Do you like injuries and stuff?"
Kageyama
"..."
Yashiro
"Nnn—?"
Kageyama
"……Injuries, or more like…
burn marks and scars…"
Yashiro
"Haha!
So that’s what it is.
You should’ve told me earlier."
After that, the mental distance between the two gets closer, and Yashiro also starts to feel excited when he is touched by Kageyama:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"I found it amusing so I let him do as he pleased.
There was just one problem.
It’s that my hidden part starts to get excited when he touches me."
So, Yashiro tells himself not to go deeper in this intriguing experiences with Kageyama, but he cannot stop wanting to have this intimate time with him, and asks:
Yashiro
"…You won’t be…
called for duty for a while?"
Kageyama
"…No."
They then move to the AV Room, and keep having those moments of touching and being touched:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"And another two weeks passed...
At this point, I wasn't sure if Kageyama wanted to touch me or if I wanted him to touch me.”
Shaken by complex feelings, Yashiro comes to “confess” his secret to Kageyama out of “being mischievous”:
Yashiro
"——I’m bi,
you know.”
Yashiro (in his mind)
“I felt like being a little mischievous.
The truth is, I'd never fallen in love with anyone before."
Kageyama, however, shows neither much emotion nor interest. Yashiro picks up Kageyama’s ear with his fingers, and his “confession” accelerates:
Yashiro
"That's not all."
Kageyama
"!!"
Yashiro
"From the Third Grade up to High School, the guy my mother remarried forced me have sex with him.
Because of that, I think about sex all the time.
Well?!"
Kageyama
"………
I see."
Yashiro (in his mind)
"On top of it, I'm a serious masochist, you know——."
Kageyama looks perplexed this time but doesn't have much to say. Yashiro shows a little unsatisfied look on his face. Clearly, Yashiro has started to feel very attracted to Kageyama, trying to close the psychological distance between them, even through the act of making a kind of confession he probably never had done with anyone before.
And in the next scene, he again gives us a monologue self-reflection on his life experiences and thoughts while having a violent sex with a man. It reads:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Life is an ongoing series of dark events.
Now that I think about it, the guy my mother remarried hated that my body matured into “a man’s body” as I got older."
During this sex scene, however, he gets seriously beaten up and injured. He cannot hide the scars and everyone’s attention at the school is drawn to the huge bandage on his face:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"I don’t particularly dislike Yakuza,
those guys who think that violating a guy in the ass is a stylish pastime to be enjoyed after serving their prison terms.
I have nothing against them, but...
my ass is small and it can only take so much. I'll need to be more careful."
Other classmates start buzzing, and the teacher tells Yashiro to come to talk with him in the Teachers' Room after school. Yashiro lies that he was a victim of a one-sided attack by some other school kids on the street. And, he asks the teacher why Kageyama has been absent of school from the day before, and he comes to know Kageyama’s father passed away. Yashiro thought "Kageyama’s probably at the wake right now in tears. I couldn't help myself and ended up coming" to Kageyama's home, imagining it as:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"I got all thrilled just by thinking that maybe Kageyama with his usual deadpan face could be holding tears in his eyes."
But, when he actually reaches the house and Kageyama finds and pulls him toward him, Yashiro starts losing his composure, blushes his face, and says in his mind:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"What?
I can’t look at his face."
Yashiro apologises to Kageyama that he couldn’t bring any incense, and winces as Kageyama pulls him from the side. After moments of hesitation, what Yashiro could manage to look at was Kageyama's half crying half gently smiling face, saying "Thanks..." in a trembling voice to Yashiro, who kindly came over to his father's wake.
With this event, Yashiro's heart finally melts, and his feelings uncontrollably starts to flood over. He rushes back to his apartment and reaches sexual orgasms, recalling Kageyama's face and voice over and over again in his mind:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Kageyama.
Kageyama.
……!
Nh…
Huh…
Kageyama.
———!"
And what he imagined was:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"The Kageyama I saw in my imagination wasn't on top or on the bottom.
He was just crying."
So, this was how Yashiro fell in love with someone for the first time in his life. It feels to me like one of the most beautiful scenes of confession of love, or “self-realisation of having fallen in love with somebody” that I have ever read or seen among thousands of comics and other literature from around the world. The object of his love and affection is "neither the top nor bottom" and "just crying", and that's all Yashiro needed to fall in love. Nothing more. Maybe it's how we would feel when we are suddenly and genuinely hit by and surrendered to an overwhelming thrust of love. Also, it is very intriguing and interesting that the image of Kageyama that Yashiro felt lust for was not at all sexual in any direct sense, and cannot be "classified" as either "active" or "passive" in the acts of making love. In other words, the object of love and sexual desire for Yashiro here seems to keep staying on its own, as a unique entity, and to remain at a stage, prior to actual sexual differentiation as an object or subject in a relationship of love. That means that the person seems to remain “pure” and “innocent”, not yet functioning in real acts of love, i.e., sex. The person can stay to be an object of affection in the realm of the other’s fantasy forever, or they may be seen to be “beyond any supposition”, being still flexible and formable, into anything they wish.
And the story continues:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Ever since I confessed to being bi, Kageyama stopped coming to touch me.
He just hung out with me like a normal friend would.
This is torture."
Again, it's such a touching and poignant monologue by a person truly experiencing one-sided love:
Yashiro
"Hey, do you know…lately…
who I think about when I jack off?"
Kageyama
"I don’t care."
Yashiro
"It’s you that was crying at the funeral…!
Your voice was all trembling and it was really cute!"
Yashiro sounds like he is having an almost motherly kind of warm affection and tender love toward someone he is in love with (He will be like that again with Doumeki, another principal character of Saezuru, during the three months after they first meet). He even couldn't help confessing the truth to Kageyama, though he was pretending he was just joking.
But at the same time, Yashiro is smart as usual, and keeps observing the object of his love from a very objective viewpoint. He says:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"For better or worse, Kageyama is someone who has no interest in others.
To him, everyone is the same and average. He thinks no one goes in any other directions beyond his ideas."
And Yashiro's cool, smart mind also observes and analyses himself in a very distanced manner:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"And now, I’m awfully twisted, inside and out.
For a serious masochist like me to lust after Kageyama in such a normal way is proof of how twisted I am."
He continues:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"I wanna torment him and make him cry...
But, if he rejects me…
I’ll probably easily get hurt.
Certainly, I will.
This is clearly a distortion that has occurred inside me."
Right after this monologue, Yashiro, alone in his class room, picks up Kageyama's contact lens case from his desk chest, and secretively takes it back with him. Probably, almost unconsciously, he just comes to take it back, spurred by his desire to own some fragments of his loved one. And this case will become a dear treasured keepsake of his for years to come——.
Why did Yashiro want to torment Kageyama and make him cry? Although he was so deeply in love with him? Because of his "sadistic touch" he admitted himself? Or because of his "mischievousness" that seemed at times to move his emotions and actions? Why did he have to call his feelings toward Kageyama "a distortion" developed inside him, although he was so certain he would "get hurt" if Kageyama rejected him? Why did he have to claim he was "a serious masochist"? Had he ever really been a true masochist in the first place?
As he said at the beginning of this short story, he is very much a mere "normal" human, in the sense that "human beings are made full of contradictions". He is, as always, smart and good at observing people and situations analytically, and yet, he is smart enough to "act out" a role he imposed on himself. Thus, he seems to be very good at deceiving even himself. He says:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"I don't mean to brag but I'm a pretty good actor.
I can talk to others without showing any real emotion no matter how ugly my heart may be."
Thereby, he can keep looking composed even after Kageyama starts dating with his new girlfriend while Yashiro keeps "jerking off to" Kageyama and the girl:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"If I keep jacking off to Kageyama like this...
I'm going to drown in my own semen soon."
So, he goes out to sleep with "some old guy for the first time in a while." One of his classmates sees the scene of them entering a "Love Hotel" and one day at his school, this classmate comes to Yashiro to tease and to despise him with another classmate for Yashiro being a homo and selling his sex. Other classmates start buzzing watching them from a distance. Yashiro, who was bending his head down on the desk, slowly start rising his head. At first, he appears as if he's slowly awakening from his slumber, listening to the voices of the two classmates right in front of him, and quietly starring at Kageyama. And the next second, he stands up, holds the classmate’s face toward himself, and starts deeply kissing that classmate who looked down on him with words of disdain. Yashiro has blown his top. He crushes the penis and balls of that classmate in his hand, and starts laughing like a crazy man. Yet, while doing so, he is still also acting as an observer:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Kageyama...
is looking straight at me———."
The Classmate
"Kno...ck...it
off...!
……O…w…..!"
Another Classmate
"Let go of him, Yashiro!"
The Classmate
"Aaaaaah!"
Yashiro
"Haha!”
Yashiro (in his mind)
“Shrieks of agony... My hand digging into his balls...
The voice of Kageyama calling out my name...
And my own laughter..."
Kageyama rushes to Yashiro with a seriously desperate look on his face, holding him strongly with both arms, trying to take him away from the boy he had been attacking. In Kageyama's arms, after some seconds, Yashiro stops laughing and his face starts to look sedated little by little over four framed cinematic serial panels.
After this incident, Yashiro gets suspended from school for two weeks, and then comes back. The story comes close to a climax with the scene where he and Kageyama have a long and intense conversation on the rooftop of the school:
Kageyama
"What'd you do for two weeks?"
Yashiro
"Have sex."
Kageyama
"……
Didn’t your parent…tell you off?"
Yashiro
"Why would she? I haven't seen her for a year or so."
Kageyama
"?
…Is that so?"
Yashiro (in his mind)
"...
Even after all that's happened, he still hasn't caught on to my true nature.
What a blissful idiot."
The conversation and Yashiro's introspective analysis talk continue, and Kageyama starts to talk about his plan after graduating the high school, and says he will go to medical school to become a doctor. Yashiro thinks to himself:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"…Heh…
That sounds good.
Taking over the family business…
that’s a decent way of life and suits you quite well."
Kageyama
"What about you? Isn't there anything you want to be?"
Yashiro
"Hmm... How about an actor or a show biz talent?"
Kageyama
"Knowing you, you could probably pull it off."
Yashiro
"Really?"
Kageyama
"You’re different from other people."
Yashiro
"Haha.
You think so too?
I wonder if it's my aura."
Kageyama
"......
...Sorry."
Yashiro
"Hm?"
Kageyama
"…I’m thinking…
you’re a pitiful person.
I’m thinking you’re painful to watch and pitiful,
though I am your friend."
Yashiro
"…Why is that?"
Kageyama
"Because you are…
all alone. …I’m the same, though."
Yashiro
"…Alone?"
Kageyama
"Yeah."
Yashiro
"Heh?"
Then, Kageyama confesses to Yashiro that he has been thinking that Yashiro "may be weird but [...] likeable", that he didn't make fun of Kageyama's fetish for burn marks, for an instance. Then, Yashiro realises that Kageyama is also "different" from others and "strange" in his own way, and thinks:
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Before I was even aware of it, Kageyama had fostered an unjustifiable sense of empathy in me."
Kageyama
"You’re an important person to me.
As a best friend."
Yashiro
"Pfft!
Are you serious?
What are you talking about? That's gross.
Grooooooss——!"
Yashiro couldn't stop laughing and “I kept laughing and giggling on and on, to no end." Those are the closing words for this rooftop scene.
And the final scene comes. Yashiro, coming back home from school after the conversation scene above, is sitting alone on the window still inside his apartment, against the twilight sunset sky. He appears to be recalling what has just been happening to the two, or his heart seems to become empty. Then, after some still and silent moments, the tears start falling out of his eyes, flooding all over his face. His heart has reached its limit, and got broken at last, like a glass window smashed into fragments. Kageyama thinks of him being “pitiful and painful to watch”, and being “his best friend”. Yashiro must have noticed for sure that Kageyama’s such feeling would never ever change into something else. That feeling of pity seems even hurting and compromising Yashiro’s self-image that he has been acting out all the way through. This ending scene is so touching, with all the recollections of the crucial words that have appeared before, and their subtle but critically significant variant phrases. And the series of close-ups of Yashiro's face all in tears moves our emotions so strongly and deeply. He is also merely such a vulnerable, sensitive, delicate, pure, and “innocent" human, no matter how well he seems overcoming all the hardships he has been through and can act so well most of the time, with his gracious, light, and resilient attitudes. His face looks ever more beautiful with tears in fact. And he is gripping the contact lens case in his hand that he stole from Kageyama’s desk chest without almost knowing it.... Yashiro cannot supress his tears, and keeps on crying with his head down on his fists on his knees. And on the final page, there appears that sunset sky, with the last line of his words floating in the centre.
This final scene makes this short story an unforgettable episode that would long linger on in the following Chapters of Twittering Birds Never Fly:
Kageyama (in Yashiro's recollections)
"Because…
You’re alone.
All alone."
Yashiro (in his mind)
"Human beings...
are made full of contradictions.
I'm lonely.
I'm not lonely.
I miss a person.
I don’t miss the person."
*1……
All the quotes printed in black are translated by the writer from Volume 1 of the original Japanese edition. All the other quotes printed in grey are translated by Sai Higashi and taken from Volume 1 of the official English edition.
The original Japanese Edition of Volume 1 was published on the 30th January, 2013, by Taiyotosho, Tokyo. The official English version of Volume 1 was first released on the 24th September, 2014, by Juné Manga, Digital Manga Inc.: California as follows:
Kou Yoneda, Twittering Birds Never Fly, Volume 1, Translated by Sai Higashi, Juné Manga, Digital Manga Inc: California, 2014.
The writer referred to the latest revised edition, which was released on the 18th September, 2021. As there is no revised edition information printed in the English editions, it is impossible to tell how many revised editions have been made so far since the first release.