I’ve read several books by Japanese authors translated into English in the past year of different genres and keep coming across something I don’t understand: names of places (and occasionally people) that are only represented by a letter then a long dash. eg, from Strange Pictures by Uketsu:
On 21st September 1992, the body of a man was discovered on the side of Mt K—— in L—— Prefecture. The deceased was forty-one-year-old Yoshiharu Miura, who lived nearby. He was a secondary school art teacher.
However Tokyo is written in full earlier in the book. What gives?
by Bad_Combination
3 Comments
It’s usually to protect privacy when the location is tied to real crimes or incidents – Japanese authors are super careful about not accidentally defaming real places or people even in fiction
It’s also when you want the action to take place in some obscure place. Something like Everyville or whatever. In Japanese you usually use kanji to write the names of places and they’re more distinct than, for example, English names. Chosing kanji can either tie the fictional place to a real one unintentionally or give it some sort of meaning that the author doesn’t want to convey.
19th century English novels do this sometimes too to add *~realism~*.