TRANSLATION: The Edo Scroll
The first English publication of the second volume of Naruto Hichō
As the third release in our weekly translation schedule, we have completed the official English translation of 鳴門秘帖 江戸の巻, or THE SECRET SCROLLS OF NARUTO: The Edo Scroll, by Yoshikawa Eiji, who is best-known in the West as the author of MUSASHI. The ebook has already been sent out to the paid subscribers. For those who are not paid subscribers of this site but are interested in the new translation, the ebook is now available on Kindle, KU, and audiobook.
EDO NOIR FROM THE TOKUGAWA ERA
Edo, the 1760s. A junk dealer works his way through the back streets of Surugadai in midwinter, calling out for old rags and broken crockery. He is not a junk dealer. He is Mankichi, the Tenma detective from Osaka, and he has traced a missing woman to a shuttered house with a changed nameplate and bars on the windows. What he finds inside is worse than he imagined — and the people who put her there are already coming back.
The second book of The Secret Scrolls of Naruto shifts the action from the open roads and waterways of the Kamigata to the warren of Tokugawa-era Tokyo, where the conspiracy runs deeper, the villains are closer, and nobody can be trusted. Two killers strike a deal over saké: one will murder the swordsman-monk Gennojō, the other will claim the woman he has been hunting since Osaka. Underground chambers, a great urban fire, a swordfight in total darkness on a plum-scented path, a deathbed confession that transforms a pickpocket, and a midnight ambush at Sensō-ji temple — this is the book where Yoshikawa Eiji earns his reputation as the Alexandre Dumas of Japan.
There are more threads in motion here than in any single volume of The Three Musketeers, and every one is pulled tight and tied off by the final page, when the heroes slip out of Edo under cover of darkness with the villains hot on their trail.
This is the first English translation of Naruto Hichō, the serialized six-volume novel that made Yoshikawa Eiji the most widely read author in Japanese history. Written exactly 100 years ago and never before available to English-language readers, it is the book that created the modern Japanese adventure novel. The Edo Scroll is the second of the book’s six volumes. The third volume, The Kiso Scroll, will be released next week.
Every Monday, Castalia Library will release a new original English translation in ebook format. Many of these works have never been translated into English before, or in some cases, are only available in outdated, abridged editions. Paid subscribers to this site will receive the weekly ebook in their email.
The Library Translations
Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki
The Kamigata Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa
The Edo Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa
The Kiso Scroll by Eiji Yoshikawa