This article was translated with the author's permission from Yasuki Yasumo's Introduction to the Interpretation of Video Games, Modern Bookstore, 2005. The original title was "Kenji Miyazawa and the Video Game".
1. Dependent arising
To evaluate a game work, as long as it belongs to the general category of games, generally speaking, it should first be evaluated using the subjective dichotomy of "fun/not fun". However, games can sometimes make people want to discuss the content from a different perspective. Today, I would like to discuss a role-playing game based on Kenji Miyazawa's fairy tale work, "The Tale of the Ideal Country" (イーハトーヴォ物語). [1]
The game's manual contains Kenji Miyazawa's chronology, along with the following passage.
"It is quite difficult to explain in one sentence that 'the so-called Kenji Miyazawa' is quite difficult, because Kenji Miyazawa is extremely colorful, diverse, and complex. As a poet, a fairy tale writer, an agronomist, a young rural instructor, a religious thinker, a believer in the Lotus Sutra, and so on, he has many identities and distinguishes himself in various fields. If we try to read Kenji Miyazawa's poems and fairy tales, we will also feel a variety and variety. ”
In this way, we can probably understand that this is a game work that wants to try to reproduce (reconstruct) Kenji Miyazawa's worldview. [2]
The purpose of this work is to find seven of Kenji Miyazawa's lost notebooks, and the player will play the role of the protagonist who travels to the "Ideal Town" as the story stage. [3] The story is divided into nine chapters, each with the themes being "Chapter One – The Fire of the Shell, Chapter 2 – Captain of Cairo, Chapter 3 – Qian Shilin Park, Chapter 4 – The Land God and the Fox, Chapter 5 – The Biography of Guscob Doli, Chapter 6 – Ozbel and the White Elephant, Chapter 7 – Ghosh on the Cello, Chapter 8 – Crossing the Snowfields, Final Chapter – Night of the Galactic Railway." ”
Games have their own way of telling stories. For example, the player initially goes to the Shell Fire Forest to obtain the treasure "Pearl of Fire of The Shell" that can communicate with animals (which is indispensable in Kenji Miyazawa's fairy tales). Players will then receive hints from humans and animals to rescue frogs or cedar saplings guarding Qianshi who have been abused by the leader of Cairo, thus obtaining Kenji's lost notes. This is also known as the "errand-running" role-playing game (RPG) (Figure 1).
In Japan, where the number of RPGs is innumerable, players willing to buy this game that costs nearly 10,000 yen[4] are fans of Kenji Miyazawa if they are not game enthusiasts (most of them are estimated to be the latter). The reason why players are willing to buy this game must also be to see "how far this game can reproduce Kenji Miyazawa's worldview." This article will take this issue as the main object and take a look at this game work.
Figure 1 "Errand type" RPG "Ideal Township Story", HECT
2. The sense of theme that runs through the work
At the beginning of the game, the first verse in the prologue to Spring and Shura is shown first. [5]
Figure 2 Spring and Shura prologue shown at the beginning of the game, HECT
This game includes many works by Kenji Miyazawa, so why is this passage shown before the title of the game? Let's read the full text of the preface. First, in the first verse he places himself in the objective existence of "phenomena"; after the second verse he speaks of the "accumulation of reincarnation" of worldly phenomena that "in the accumulation of time we once thought that the correct structure and nature will also change", and in the last verse ends with "All these propositions will be asserted in the fourth extension as the self-nature of mental images and time". [6] For example, how many people in this world do you really believe that the Iron Locomotive can ride in the night sky? The concept in Kenji's last works is a very beautiful "dream" for us, so it has always been accepted by us.
In this preface, the final part, which is actually hidden (omitted), shows us the "fourth extension",[7] the worldview of the "four dimensions". This corresponds exactly to the "fantasy of the fourth time" mentioned in the last chapter. In other words, the game is actually telling the player, "I hope that you can fully enter this fantasy, four-dimensional world." Moreover, the dead or exodus characters in each chapter ride along with the galactic railway in the last chapter, which is a great tribute to the Night of the Galactic Railway, and people have to be moved by their creativity (Figure 3).
Figure 3 "Galactic Railway Night" in the "Fantasy of the Fourth Time" worldview, HECT
For Japanese people who wield magic such as "Bejoimi" and "Remila" in Dragon Quest and already know the fun of the ideal world of "Melkid" and "Domdora", the unique place names and personal names that appear in Kenji Miyazawa's works- for example, the creation of words with strong personal styles such as "Ideal Township", "Gao Xiu", "Aw", "Guscobu Dori" in Iwate Prefecture will not only leave a strong impression, but also make readers feel the possibility of adventures in other worlds. It can be said that Kenji Miyazawa's works already have similar characteristics to RPGs at the beginning of their conception. [8]
The reason why the game chose to focus on these nine stories is also evident in this preface. That is to say, if the game is based on the story of "my phenomenon", then any of the nine stories can be understood as Kenji's own story. For example, "Qian Ten" is kenji's ideal form, and the opposite "land god and fox" is kenji's inner world. There have been many studies of Kenji Miyazawa in the past that the characters who appear in all chapters of this game are incarnations of Kenji Miyazawa. [9] When individual stories are brought together and condensed into a single story, it may cause the plot or theme to leak, but this work successfully connects several pearls with a consistent theme. [10]
3. The difficulty of reproducing Kenji's works
That said, given the high price of this game, there are some unsatisfactory points. That's how to reproduce Kenji's expression in his work.
First of all, I have doubts about the end of each chapter. For example, the novel "Otzbel and the White Elephant" (オツベルと象) ends like this:
"Ah, thank you for saving me." The white elephant smiled lonely.
"Why does the white elephant laugh lonely?" That's because the joy of being saved is mixed with the loneliness of his relationship with Ottsberg that can only be liquidated through death. "This is where we get touched even if we haven't read it intensively in a language textbook. But the game's sixth chapter ends like this:
Otzbel, who only knew how to collect money, was knocked down by the white elephant. No matter what era, people who do not care about others can always be pampered. But people like Ozbell can't disappear either.
It is hard to think that this last lesson-style ending is a successful adaptation. The Land God and the Fox (土神と狐) has the same problem. The ending of the original work is:
From the mouth that the land god had just opened, a mournful cry came out.
Tears fell on the fox like raindrops, and the fox lowered its head, as if laughing, and died.
However, the game's fourth chapter ends with a morally strong admonition:
The fox was dead. The fox died clutching his hand.
Liars aren't just foxes. People who lie are actually suffering for their lies all the time.
This emphasis on moral meaning is also striking in the game's story. For example, in the first chapter of the game, the cunning fox who pushes the winglet into a trap says, "I will never do bad things again, I want to live well." Winglets that believe too much in the fire of the shell and fly over other animals (whose retribution is blindness) also give the player the advice of "I am too blind, please be careful to be proud of this trap of the soul". In the second chapter of the game, the leader of Cairo, who was kicked out of the village for abusing others, returns to the village (and is accepted by the villagers) later in the game. This may be an interpretation of Kenji Miyazawa's original work, but is this really the way kenji Miyazawa's original worldview is? [12]
I also have doubts about the adaptation, that is, the change in Kenji Miyazawa's "language" and "expression method". One of the charms of Kenji Miyazawa's work is the use of "onomatopoeia" and "language rhythms", but the game completely ignores this. There are about 2,500 onomatopoeic words included in the modern Japanese onomatopoeia, but the onomatopoeia used in Kenji Miyazawa's works has an originality that is not found in the dictionary, and it can be said that Miyazawa is a master of the use of onomatopoeia.
For example, Takaaki Yoshimoto praised the sound of the rice huller in "Otzbel and the White Elephant" in Miyazawa's work as "のんのんんのん" (rumbling) instead of "ぶんぶんぶん" (嘣嘣嘣), "This is not only closer to the sound of a machine running, but it seems to make me clearly feel a protruding cylinder shape." No one else can combine onomatopoeia and image so cleverly. He even has a chapter devoted to Kenji Miyazawa's use of onomatopoeia. In addition, Tenzawa (1997) once commented on the vivid "rhythm of language" in the following passage. [13]
The hut is quite sturdy, and there are (7 sound 节?5 sound 节) / School, but (8-tone 节?5-note) / Somehow new rice handling instruments are (7-tone 节?8-note) / 6 units are also set, so (9-tone 节?7-note 节)/None. (8-tone-5-note)
(The translator cannot reproduce the beauty of the original text on the syllables, and can only translate the meaning of the passage as follows: the hut is really strong, the shadows in the school are mottled, the new rice hull shearer, there are six non-stop operation, rumbling and rumbling.) ）
Toshio Yin (1993) "银铁铁艏紧阻阵阻阵阵 83抖这籓对諙词撽搭搱搭搭搱搭 The comet says "(comet call) etc.
Kenji Miyazawa skillfully and freely uses a large number of newly created onomatopoeia, which fully demonstrates his unparalleled poetic talent. At the same time, the world he imagined has a place beyond this world (the so-called four-dimensional world). This particular world might not have been able to be depicted without these newly coined onomatopoeia. ”
At the same time, Kasa Shouxiong also commented:
"However... He first made a close observation of reality, and then gradually woven into the text these onomatopoeic words that directly describe sound or state..."
He believes that Kenji Miyazawa's writing method is not outside the real world, but on the contrary, Kenji has a direct and close contact with reality, and then uses bold and meticulous performance to achieve the effect of "transcending this world".
Unfortunately, at this point, "The Tale of the Ideal Country" actually "ignored" the original onomatopoeia coined by Kenji Miyazawa.
If you want to extract the worldview and thematic framework of Kenji Miyazawa's story works and reinterpret them in other media, it is difficult to escape the fate of becoming a secondary creation of "Kenji Style", and it is difficult to give readers (viewers, players) satisfaction. In the game, the producers also want to faithfully reproduce the whole (from the world view to the genre) of Kenji's fairy tales in their entirety before pursuing a free gamified performance, which also dooms the game to have completely different difficulties from the reproduction of the works of other writers.
IV. Conclusion
"Ideal Country Story" is an RPG but there is no battle. There are no changes such as weapon armor, and there is no experience points. There is no need to cultivate the protagonist. Can such works really be accepted by the public? This is what I had in mind when I first played the game.
However, in the game magazine's demo and reader reviews, the game received excellent evaluations that "this is a fantasy world full of goodness". [14] In fact, the group of gamers around me (mainly women) also had a high opinion that "this is the first game that makes me want to play it again after completing it once".
Should we pursue literature in highly similar RPGs, or should we pursue Kenji's worldview, or pursue a "healing system" that does not require killing enemies? I have no way of knowing. But at least many of the valuable lessons from This Tale of the Ideal Country still survive in video games. I sincerely look forward to the reappearance of this kind of game work that contains literature, fantasy and healing, but also retains playability.
exegesis:
[1] Nintendo Home Computer Console (FC) gaming software, released by HECT in 1993.
[2] According to this article, the game manual is also part of the game software. Gérard Genette refers to the "border strip" that forms the "border zone" between the article and its exterior, that is, the part that forms the context surrounding the text, as the "generalized text." This refers to the author's name, title, preface, commentary, text, illustrations and photographs, or subsequent author interviews, letters, diaries, etc., which are inseparable from the interpretation of the text. In addition, this passage written in the manual is also quoted from the analytical text of Tenzawa Rejiro in the "New Editor, Wind no Yoshizaburō" (Shincho Bunko).
[3] Players will transform into travelers and explore the Forest of the Land God, the Garden of Ants, the Forest of the Shell fire, the Village of The Ten, the Volcano Bureau of the Ideal Township, the Village of Crossing the Snowfield, the Waterwheel Cottage Village of Gosh, and the Village of the Otzbel Mansion, centered on the locations of the Ideal Township (The Ropelands Association, the Ideal Township Agricultural School, and the Cat's Office, etc.). Characters include Simmering Cat, Fasero, Leorosius, Dr. Guber, Sensei Cave Bear, Captain of Cairo, Pious Ten, Land God, Fox, Birch, Guscobb Doli, Neri, Otsbell, White Elephant, Ghosh, Shiro, Hanko, Andaburo, etc., covering almost all of The characters in Kenji Miyazawa's works. Players will have to gather information in conversations with these characters in search of the "7 Notes Lost by Kenji". In the process, in order to unfold the storyline, the game will create many events, such as conditioning the collection of Oncho, also making the player follow Otzbel's requirements (such as finding Bridge's watch and other tasks), and also having the player help Cysaburo in order to see the fox's slide, and so on.
[4] The game was priced at 9,700 yen at launch.
[5] Subsequently, Kenji Miyazawa's watercolor painting Sun Wheel and Mountain appeared in the title screen.
[6] The full text of the preamble is as follows: The phenomenon of the so-called I / is assumed organic alternating light / A cyan illumination / (is the complex of all transparent ghosts) / With the landscape and the crowd / Hurriedly extinguished / Faithfully continuous illumination / Is a causal alternating current lamp / A cyan illumination / (Although there is a light, there is no electric lamp) / / These are all floating from the direction of twenty-two months / Past / Paper and mineral ink are connected / (everything is extinguished with me / Perceived by everyone) / It is what has been preserved so far / Every shade of light and shadow / Its original mental image switch / / About these issues Man and the Milky Way, Shura and the Sea Urchin / Eat cosmic dust Breathe the air and salt water / Do not think about their own new eternity / This is, after all, a wind object of the mind / But these are indeed recorded landscapes / and recorded scenery / If it is nothing, nothingness itself is so / In a way it is common to everyone / (everything is like the beings in my eyes / / It is everything in the eyes of all beings) / / / But these are in the cenozoic shock world / in the great accumulation of bright time / the words that should have been written correctly / Even a little bit is in the light and darkness of the universal existence / (or a billion years in the asura world) / Their structure and nature have changed / Yet neither I nor the printer / Feel their change / Tendencies are possible / Probably as we perceive our senses and / Landscapes and people / Like common perception / Records and history Or something called geography / Together with its various arguments (data) / (under the condition of causal space-time) / It is just our feelings / I am afraid that after two thousand years / A geology that is completely different from the present will be circulated / Evidence of this will gradually emerge from the past / Everyone will be like two thousand years ago / There are many colorless peacocks in the sky / New college students will be in the upper layers of the atmosphere / From the shining solid nitrogen / Unearth beautiful fossils / Or from the surface of Cretaceous sandstone / possible discovery / transparent huge human footprint / / All these propositions / will be as mental images and the self-nature of time / Asserted in the fourth extension / (quoted from the Complete Works of Kenji Miyazawa, Chikuma Shobo)
[7] For a discussion of Kenji Miyazawa's "Four Dimensions", refer to Fumiyuki Okuyama's Preface to Kenji Miyazawa's "Haruwa Shura": Language and Reflection/Montage
[8] Starting with names such as "Winglet", "Guscobudol", and "Ghosh", and the introduction of chemical terms such as "acetylene" and "electrical", these selected (for the right) "unknown words" contain a wealth of knowledge and appear continuously, underpinning the fantasy of Kenji's works.
[9] There has been a great deal of research on Kenji Miyazawa, and of course there are various arguments. If you want to illustrate that the characters in the work are Kenji's doppelgangers, you can use "Earth God and Fox = Kenji's Heart" (Fumiaki Nakamura, 1992), "White Elephant and Otzbel = Kenji's Heart" (Yuzo Ikegami, 1982), "Qianshi and Gosh = Kenji's Ideal", "Rainfrog and Wingfing = Kenji's Mind" (Fumiaki Nakamura, 1996), "Portrayals of Shiro and Hanko = Kenji and Noborishi (Kenji's sister), Budoli = Kenji's ideal" (Hatayama, 1990), etc.
[10] In addition, the overall style of the game is not the anime style of the mainstream RPG games but the picture book style (Figure 5). The background music is also very good in line with the game's kind worldview, and it can be said that there are no elements that damage the theme of the game at all in terms of visual and acoustic sense.
The game's picture book style
[11] In the original, the king in The Chief of Cairo finally said, "All creatures are friendly and kind." We must not hate. The lion, who is the governor in Cat's Office, says, "What have you all done?" Is it necessary to investigate historical geography for this? Stop work for me! Ahem, I order you to disband! Both stories end with a slightly abrupt superior order that elevates the story. In the game, however, the player takes the role of the king. In the Cat's Office chapter, the player ends up hearing only rumors that the office was dissolved because the cats quarreled with each other, which made the players who intervened in the quarrel several times feel overwhelmed.
[12] In the third chapter of the game, when the original story progresses to 2/3, the plot of The Death of Pian Ten and Ping II is canceled. The focus of the story of "Qian Shilin Park" is (it should be) the death of two people. But in the final chapter of the game, the two don't know when they arrived at the Galactic Railway station, where they started saying "Oops, I got typhoid fever after that...". It's hard to understand why these two people are here (to qualify for the Galactic Railway).
[13] In other words, Unda in "Crossing the Snow Plains" (ちゃんと私が畑を作って播いて草をとって刈っ て叩いて粉にして練ってむしてお砂砂糖をかけたのです。 (Meaning: I plant, sow, mow, polish, grind, knead, add sugar.) Called "overlapping grammar", it is believed that the performance of "speaking" in Kenji's works is more attractive than the performance of "writing". Kenji Miyazawa's works are as poetic as the clever use of dialects, but it is a pity that this unique charm is not reflected in the game. Others in the original that can express Kenji's poetic language characteristics are the beauty from the dialect. Instead, the game uses "こんどはアリの Queenに会いいくといいだ" (I'll meet queen ant next time) and "ゲ" and "ゲスコーブドリさんはカルボナード島に残っただか??? おしい人を、なくしただ" ( Is Guscobb Doli still on Kalubanad Island?) ...... He lost, the important man. ) and other typical stage language, people feel regretful. For example, in the original "Qian Shilin Park", there are "お母(おがあ), おらさ杉苗70 books, buy って呉ろ(けろ)" (Mom, I want to buy 700 fir seedlings) and "どどごさ植ぇらぃ" (where to plant 700 fir seedlings? In the same way, the conversation between Qianshi and his mother is expressed in the dialect of Iwate County, but in the village where Qianshi is located in the game, no one speaks the local dialect. 虔十個人語特征也使用了包括"ど、どうもありがとう。 こ、これ??? あげるよ"(谢...... Thank you...... you. this...... This is for you) of expression, which only retains its stuttering characteristics. In fact, examples of the use of dialects in literary works are extremely rare. For example, Junichiro Tanizaki's "reference" to dialects in the corpus, and Inoue also tried to actively use dialects in "The First Year of the Chinese" and "Kirigiri", but this is based on the existing dialect material, which is different from the dialect spoken by Kenji Miyazawa from his mouth. How should we use dialects when creating plays, TV series, etc.? In their guidebook for script production, Shinichi Arai and Shoro Harajima argue that "we should use a dialect that can be understood by the people of the whole country, and we should grasp and express local characteristics." In The Tale of the Ideal Township, the game does not refer to this suggestion at all, but instead uses the standard language as the center, and a small number of stage words are inserted. In Kenji's Silent Weeping, there are also irreplaceable methods of expression such as "あめゆじゆとてちてけんじ" (let the rain and snow slap me) and "Ora Orade Shitori egumo" (I go alone). The author hopes that in the future, there will also be an application of Kenji's expression method.
[14] According to the editorial board of FAMI Pass, the game had a 70-point demo rating and a reader rating of 8.4545. For example, Romance Saga (ロマンシングサ?ガ) has a demo score of 70, a reader rating of 7.8686, and A Sword Legend 2 score of 70/8.3397, which means that Ideal Story is a game that can compete with these popular RPG works. Incidentally, Dragon Quest 6 has a score of 90/9.4061.