[identity profile] peggy-2.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] queensthief
I bought the Japanese versions of the books recently and posted some photos of the GORGEOUS art here:

http://community.livejournal.com/sounis/143733.html#cutid1 here: http://community.livejournal.com/sounis/143985.html#cutid1 and here: http://community.livejournal.com/sounis/144330.html#cutid1

[profile] avian_xj has graciously offered to make icons from some of the images, so we've been looking at them quite closely.  Now, QoA and KoA are divided into two volumes each, and most of the images are easy to figure out, but we are stumped as to what the title page of the second KoA volume is a picture of.

Suggestions? Guesses? Is is an instrument, a hairbrush, ????? Give us some ideas : )





and, just because, who else would love to have mwt sign their book with her japanese name?

Date: 10/30/07 11:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] senri.livejournal.com
Eesh, that is very... mysterious. o.O It's shaped kind of like a hand mirror, but I don't think a mirror would have those weird legs. Or maybe it's a perfume amphora in a stand?

Date: 10/30/07 11:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] avian-xj.livejournal.com
I tried to look at it like an amphora, but it doesn't really look like one. It would help to know what the text says there, eh?

Date: 10/30/07 11:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] senri.livejournal.com
Sure would.

You mentioned that the pictures corresponded to the chapters they match up to...? What happens in the chapter with that picture?

Date: 10/30/07 11:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] avian-xj.livejournal.com
I have no idea. I think that's the cover page for the entire book. Plus, as much as I'd like to, I can't read kanji :P

Date: 11/1/07 08:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bluestalking.livejournal.com
I hereby pimps teh Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary by Jack Halprin. It's amazing.

...and my copy is in another country, so I can't help. TT_TT

I have NO idea what that picture is.

Date: 10/30/07 11:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hikari-cyhan.livejournal.com
I can't read kanji, although the first one looks vaguely familiar. The first three characters read "a ka ne."

Date: 10/31/07 12:05 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (black n white)
From: [personal profile] cleo
My guess is that it's a hand mirror sitting on a bronze stand.

Date: 10/31/07 12:06 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
Sitting face down...I think.

Date: 10/31/07 01:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kilerkki.livejournal.com
That was my guess, too. Maybe you wouldn't want to put the mirror flat on the table 'cause it could get smudged/things put on top of it? But then, it is very very tiny if you use the ring as a size guide.

Date: 10/31/07 01:49 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
I thought of that too. Actually, when I first saw it I immediately thought it was a broach or an earring. But it seems clear that it is something sitting on a stand. The shape is perfect for an antique Japanese hand mirror, but the ring size is troubling.

Date: 10/31/07 12:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jesusphreaq.livejournal.com
But why is the ring so big? If it's in the same picture, you'd think it would be to scale. I'm stumped. It looks kinda like an instrument to me though.

Date: 10/31/07 01:03 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
It's a frying pan on legs, of course. :)

~Feir Dearig

Date: 10/31/07 01:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] traboule.livejournal.com
...looks like a tiny mandolin on legs. But where that gets you is entirely unclear.

Maybe a slightly indistinct reference to Dite's songs? Seems a bit of a stretch. Wouldn't you want a sword or something for the second half of KoA?

Date: 10/31/07 01:52 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
In my professional opinion (wait...I can actually say that without joking...weird), it's not an instsrument of Eastern or Western origin. I say this because due to the shape, it would have to be a stringed instrument, and there is no way that it would be placed faced strings down on a stand like that.

Date: 10/31/07 03:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] traboule.livejournal.com
Huh. I had in mind a stringed instrument face up...like you said, there's something that might be bridge detailing. Definitely Western - mandolin or lute or maybe something like a vielle or rebec, but either of those would have a more elongated body, I think; I'm really not a professional, just a busy amateur. Even a bouzouki is pushing it.

I also did have in mind a minature trinket of some kind, thus ducking the scaling problem.

That being said, I think the hand mirror or lamp idea is much more useful.

Date: 10/31/07 03:58 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
I like the mini trinket idea though...something that Gen would steal. Though, it actually resembles a type of Japanese lute in style (the shape of the neck, really).

Date: 10/31/07 04:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] traboule.livejournal.com
Fascinating. I haven't the foggiest what a Japanese lute looks like, but I'll now have to procrastinate a little bit more and find out.

A trinket would be nice, but I'm leaning more and more towards a lamp every time I look at it.

Weird.

Date: 10/31/07 04:07 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
[livejournal.com profile] twtd can see the lamp thing, but I just can't get there. And a Japanese lute looks like a western one mostly...the detailing in the shape is just a bit different. It's a little more angular, and thinner.

Date: 10/31/07 03:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] empmai.livejournal.com
"Maybe a slightly indistinct reference to Dite's songs"

yea maybe in refrence to activities on the wedding night

It seems big for a brooch compared to the ring

Date: 10/31/07 03:59 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] traboule.livejournal.com
*snickers* And don't we all want to know about that? (yes. the answer is yes.)

Still, a poor choice for the wedding night as well - I would have used an ink jar.

Date: 10/31/07 01:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fabricalchemist.livejournal.com
I think it must be a lamp, at a very strange perspective. Failing that, maybe it's the perfume amphora Attolia smashed, that she flashes back to after she cuts Gen's hand off.

I don't think it is a musical instrument; it has no strings.

Date: 10/31/07 02:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] willow-41z.livejournal.com
Maybe it's a stand for the ring. Or it does look like some sort of brooch, even if it has legs. It's face down.

Date: 10/31/07 02:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] willow-41z.livejournal.com
... that was meant to be "maybe it's face down."

Date: 10/31/07 02:10 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
Okay, I did some reasearch on Japanese instruments, and I really do think that we can rule a musical instrument out here. With the size of the ring, it would make it doubtful, but we have no idea if the artist was going for any sort of realism in his (her?) preportions. Also, as I said in another comment, no stringed instrument would be placed on a base or anywhere with the strings facing down. There is always the possibility that it could be unstringed, but there aren't any pegs, holdes, grooves to place strings. It's not a bambo instrument, a flute of any kind. The Japanese did//do use clay instruments, but nothing that looks like this.

Have we considered the possibility that it's just a small piece of sculpture?

Date: 10/31/07 02:41 am (UTC)
cleo: Famke Jansen's legs in black and white (Default)
From: [personal profile] cleo
Okay, so [livejournal.com profile] twtd and I looked at this on her computer (which has better resolution than mine), and we have a suggestion, sinc ehte musical instrument suggestion seems to be haunting everyone. Perhaps this is a representation of an instrument (a mandolin, maybe? There looks to be a bridge in the detailing) rendered smaller for a piece of jewelry.

*shrugs* i think I'm done.

Date: 10/31/07 04:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com
Have we figured out what chapter it corresponds to? In the meantime, my best guess, going off the bent neck, is the "small pin of a musical instrument" thing, even though that still doesn't make much sense...

Date: 10/31/07 04:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] abhyastamita.livejournal.com
So the kanji (in Chinese anyway) says literally book-room which comes out to mean study. Which doesn't seem to help. Anyone know what the Japanese part before it means? The scene referred to I would think is the one where Costis helps Gen take off his ring, but I don't remember any oil lamps/miniature mandolins/whatever else being important in that scene and I don't have my books because I moved to Hawaii and couldn't take much of anything with me.

Date: 10/31/07 04:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] abhyastamita.livejournal.com
Also, it looks kind of like a spoon to me. I don't see how that fits but...

Date: 10/31/07 04:42 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] idiosyncreant.livejournal.com
The kanji there appears to be a publishing name or brand.
I read Japanese very well contextually. ^_^ Sorry, not related to the object, I don't think.

I immediately thought it was a hand-mirror on a stand. I really can't say at all for other ideas, though.

Date: 10/31/07 05:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rosaleeluann.livejournal.com
You could always make an icon that says something to the effect of "Gen stole this little trinket and he has NO IDEA WHAT IT IS."

It looks like it could be sort of hollow, though... COULD it be a sort of ink-holding thingy? That looks really weird/interesting/scary?

That, my friends,

Date: 10/31/07 06:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dawnbluewings.livejournal.com
is some sort of inkwell. My mother had one very similar, until someone stole it.

Re: That, my friends,

Date: 10/31/07 06:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bookaddict88.livejournal.com
that was my first thought as well, though I've never seen an inkwell that looked like that.

Re: That, my friends,

Date: 10/31/07 07:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] aged-crone.livejournal.com
Probably Gen stole it. At the rate he and Attolia go through inkpots, they have to have a steady supply.

I thought it might be an ink jar, too, when I saw it. And it would be appropriate.

Date: 10/31/07 06:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] parron.livejournal.com
I agree with whoever said it was a publishing company - the text reads "あかね房書". Or, "akane bousho," which translates more or less as "madder (http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/assets/organicweeds/sheradia1.jpg) writing room." It's hard to be exact because "akane" (the hiragana) doesn't have an assigned meaning, but madder is the most common.

Date: 11/1/07 12:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mycenaeth.livejournal.com
Dite's instrument! It looks like a guitar/dulcimer like thing, a tribute to Dite's singing and playing?

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