While updating some older movie-related entries I bumbled into a Wikipedia entry about the longest novels currently known, with the serial novel (Nakazato Kaizan's Daibosatsu Toge) that inspired Sword of Doom as one of the entries. 5.7 million Japanese characters is a monster by any standards; the Japanese Amazon entry for the book lists it having a whopping 1,149 pages. One wonders if there's any chance at all of this ever showing up in English.
While we're dreaming, here's some others I'd like to see translated:
- Dogura Magura, by Yumeno Kyusaku. A French translation exists (which I have), and it was adapted not very successfully into a movie by the same fellow who gave us Funeral Procession of Roses. If you can read Japanese, a copyright-free e-text version is available. Were I wholly out of my mind, I might attempt to translate it myself.
- Satomi Hakkenden, by Bakin Takizawa, the source for endless movie and anime translations. A partial e-text is also available (in PDF form!)
- Most anything by Yasutaka Tsutsui, especially Paprika.
- And of course, anything by Futaro Yamada, especially Makai Tenshō.
Aw, come on, I'll give you a dollar if you translate Dogura Magura! I've been curious to read it ever since I saw the film. I'd heard (perhaps from your old review!) that it was considered unfilmable, and I could kind of see that from the film. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't nearly as great as Funeral Parade or Shura, both of which blew me away. I think I tend to think of Dogura as a noble effort if not a mindblowing film. Although, I would really be curious as to how the two compare/contrast and whatnot. (Although, apparently, not enough to learn either Japanese or French to find out...)
(by the way, I tried leaving a comment with my LJ login, but it wouldn't go -- it kept requiring the Captcha, but it didn't actually have the captcha box to enter it into...)
A whole dollar...? Sold!!
Just kidding. Actually, yeah, I have taken down the French edition I have and made valiant attempts to read it, but my French simply isn't that good. What few bits I can make out, though, in conjunction with the summaries I've read elsewhere, have been enormously tantalizing.
I've also added the review for the movie back into my archive -- look for it there, you should find it.
Also, last time I tested the LJ login, it seemed to work fine, but I'll try it again with a couple of other users to see if it's still buggy.