Kwaidan/Kaidan

[Alexander Jacoby]

I am pretty sure that the Kwaidan spelling is actually based on the way that the term ?? was actually rendered in kana during the nineteenth century. It's about a change in Japanese spelling, not merely an issue of Romanisation. As I understand it, the kana compound ?? represented a sound originally distinct from ?, and hence represented with different kana. By the twentieth century, the sounds had become identical, so postwar spelling reforms eradicated the distinction, rather as the kana ? and ? were dropped since their pronunciation had become identical to ? and ? respectively.

ALEX





----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Anderson <ander025 at umn.edu>
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Sent: Saturday, 6 October, 2007 4:09:13 PM
Subject: Re: Kwaidan/Kaidan

Dear Jim and David,
My impression is that the ?w? before the ?a? in Kwaidan was a common, and nearly standard, practice of transliterating Japanese into roman letters in the Meiji period. The idea seems to have been to force pronunciation of the ?a? following the ?w? as a short ?a? instead of a long ?a? as was often the tendency without a ?w? preceding it. 

Others may have more information concerning precisely how this practice arose, whether or not it acquired a name as a system, and who in particular may have promoted its widespread usage. 
                                                                                                                                    Mark Anderson


David Lewis wrote: 
since Kobayashi's movie is based of Lafcadio Hearn's book, I would say that
Kwaidan is the right rendering in English.
As for Lafcadio Hearn's choice of Kwaidan, I have always thought that it was
simply based on an old (and possibly local?) pronouciation.

David Lewis

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Harper" <jimharper666 at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2007 9:15 AM
Subject: Kwaidan/Kaidan


  
Hello!

I'm sure somebody on here could help me with this- I'm
trying to unravel the origins of the title 'Kwaidan'
for Kobayashi's 1964 film. Obviously the Japanese word
should be 'kaidan', but does anyone know for certain
when the inaccurate title came into use. A footnote in
the Steven Jay Schneider-edited Fear Without Frontiers
suggests that it was western distributor of Kwaidan,
but I have found a 1927 essay- written by H.P.
Lovecraft of all people, who seems to have enjoyed
Lafcadio Hearn's work- that uses the title 'Kwaidan'.
Did this misconception arise with the book's first
publication?

Thanks for any help that can be provided here!

Jim Harper.

http://www.flipsidemovies.com
http://jimharper.blogspot.com


      ___________________________________________________________
Want ideas for reducing your carbon footprint? Visit Yahoo! For Good
    
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/environment.html


      ___________________________________________________________ 
Want ideas for reducing your carbon footprint? Visit Yahoo! For Good  http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/environment.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/private/kinejapan/attachments/20071006/6f767636/attachment.html