No, I haven’t seen the movie yet…but that title fits my feelings after reading this article over on Asahi.com. I was intrigued by mangaka/poetess Sugiura Hinako’s fascination with the Edo period, but I felt like I was missing out on the true meaning of the things she described–and I know there were layers of meaning in her poems that didn’t come out in those translations. This is one of those times where I’d like to see the translation alongside the original Japanese, so I could make a comparison and see why the translator chose to express it that way, and so I could pick up subtler shades of meaning that are difficult or impossible to translate.
Sugiura’s work, as mentioned in the article:
大江戸観光 (Oedo Kanko
風流江戸雀 (Fuuryuu Edo Suzume; “Folks of refined taste in Edo”)
もっとソバ屋で憩う (Motto Sobaya de Ikou; “More relaxation at buckwheat noodle shops”)
Amazon.co.jp has a lot of other results for her name (杉浦 日向子), too. (Hey, look…that’s the same ‘sugi’ as in Uesugi!)