‘Moribito’ Heads to America in Print and on Screen

By John A. Sellers, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 7/17/2008

Beginning August 24, Cartoon Network’s [adult swim] will air Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, a popular Japanese anime series, two months after Scholastic’s publication of a newly translated edition of the novel on which the series is based.

The novel is printed entirely in blue ink, and features a cover and three interior spreads by
Yuku Shimizu.

The novel, which shares its name with the anime, is the first in a series of 10 books by author Nahoko Uehashi, and was first published in Japan in 1996 by Kaisei-Sha. The series has gone on to sell more than 500,000 copies in its home market, spawning this 26-episode anime series (based on the first novel only), from which manga titles were in turn adapted. Media Blasters LLC handles the licensing of the TV series, which debuted last year in Japan and is directed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex). DVDs of the anime will also be available in the U.S. at a later date.

Uehashi’s series first came to attention of Scholastic’s Arthur Levine at the 2001 Bologna Fair via the Japan Foreign Rights Centre, but it wasn’t until he learned of the anime series in 2006 that he decided to bring the property to the U.S. “We found out there was this wonderful Japanese television show that was being produced, and that there was a good chance of it coming to American TV,” says Cheryl Klein, senior editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, who is editing the Moribito books. “We took the series forward, and people [at Scholastic] were sort of blown away by all the action in it and the fantasy elements.”

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit follows Balsa, a spear-wielding bodyguard-for-hire, who protects a young prince after his life is threatened. (Balsa’s prowess with a spear can be seen in numerous clips from the anime that are available on YouTube.) Klein believes that Uehashi’s characters, particularly Balsa, are one of the series’ strong suits. “There are not many other 30-year-old protagonists in [children’s] fantasy literature,” says Klein, adding that Uehashi told her (via series translator Cathy Hirano) that many Japanese children relate to Balsa as a mother figure. “They found her really exciting as a person who will take care of you and also, if she needs to, [who] can beat someone with a spear. Maybe it’s a fantasy we all have about our mothers.”

Klein has edited several works in translation for the Levine imprint (“It’s an important part of our mission, introducing readers to great writers from the around the world,” she says). With Hirano, she worked to compensate for passive voice and repetition, which the editor says can be common to Japanese works translated into English, as well as explain aspects of Japanese culture unfamiliar to American readers. (The novel also contains glossaries of characters, places and terms used in Uehashi’s world.)

According to Klein, Uehashi’s academic background—she has a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and teaches at a Japanese university—contributed to the novel’s detail-rich fantasy setting. “She’s imagined it very thoroughly,” says Klein. “She knows what people grow for their food and how that affects the rest of their culture. She has thought about this entire world from its agriculture to its creation myths to its ruling class and warrior class. All those things make it a really rich, deep place to explore.”

The next book in the series, Moribito: Guardian of the Darkness, is due next April. According to Klein, Scholastic, which controls all English-language publishing rights, hopes to publish additional novels and is “working on developing a publishing plan” for the manga adaptations, which use art from the anime. “We’re very committed to being the series publisher.”

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Uehashi, trans. by Cathy Hirano. Scholastic/Levine, $17.99,978-0-545-00542-5 ages 12-up