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Subject: Kohaku

Author:
Dena

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Date Posted: 08:01:15 08/27/03 Wed
In reply to: silveruby 's message, "Re: Tokyopop and horrifying thoughts..." on 20:57:25 08/26/03 Tue

>In the Japanese version, Kohaku is genderless. There
>is a Japanese term for describing genderless people
>and another term for 'it'. Since in English there
>isn't a genderless term other than 'it'. TP had to
>pick between he and she. I think it would be insluting
>to call Kohaku 'it' more than a 'she'. Because
>technically, Kohaku could be a female. Most of the
>unsatified readers are proably yaoi fans. Heh.

That's not the way it was explained in the place I read about it, but considering that it was a Yuki Kaori/Angel Sanctuary/Count Cain fanboard, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a bunch of frustrated yaoi fans in the crowd... ^_^

My understanding is that there isn't really "a Japanese term for genderless people" so much as there's kanji used for a single person which doesn't specify the person's gender, and those ways of talking about people (-nin/-jin/-sha/-mono) are different from the kanji used for single non-humans (sometimes also -mono but usually with different kanji). In English you can talk about multiple people without specifying a gender; in Japanese you can do the same for a single person-not-animal, but not in English.

Considering they were talking about angels and not humans to start with, I wonder which one they used...

And I do still think it would have been more accurate to specify "it." I mean, angels AREN'T humans, and that would have kept the sense of otherness more clearly than either "he" or "she" would have...

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