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Help us get the first onmyoji novel translated!

This character!
http://imageshack.us/a/img268/9720/mysterycharacter.jpg

Shiba Ryōtarō though...didn't he write mainly historical fiction?

which visual adaptation of Teito Monogatari would you recommend to someone unfamiliar with the novel?

(the debate was actually called the "trash debate" iirc).

Yes, he wrote mainly historical fiction. But his Saka no Ue no Kumo is so famous and good that people who write novels (including fantasy/science fiction) which are set in the Meiji period and feature real-life persons cannot disregard it.

I have not watched the live-action film Teito Monogatari.
In view of anime and manga's becoming popular also in non-Japanese countries, I think both the anime version and the Fujiwara Kamui version are not bad as an introduction to/abridged version of Teito Monogatari.

Maybe you are referring to the Trash SF Debate.

I would go with the Fujiwara Kamui version because of it's accuracy. It's a shame it hasn't been translated into English yet.

The anime version I am always very hesitant to recommend to Westerners because of the added racy content (the phallus shaped fukuchumushi, the rape subplot, provocative nightmare scenes, etc.) A lot of English speakers who watch it get offended very quickly.

You're familiar with it! Please...what can you tell about it?

Good luck on the project, but having read the first book of the series, I don't think it is a good candidate for translation unless you combine the first and second books into one volume, and I also think Aramata has a good point. A company is not going to translate a book because it is an important cultural phenomenon. They're going to do it because it'll sell. A scholar might translate something because it is important culturally, however.

To be honest, I found the relative lack of story advancement and the amount of historical infodumping in the first book to be fairly bothersome.

Personally, I feel Yumemakura's or Kyogoku's works would be much better candidates for translation.

...do we really need detailed explanations about the nature of an atom??

I can understand some people want the story advancement to be fast-paced, but also the 'atom' scene may have some significance.

1. Since Professor Nagaoka's Saturnian model of the atom is famous, it is interesting to time-travel to Meiji 40 and witness the Nagaoka Hantarō lecturing on it at the College of Science of Tokyo Imperial University, at least for persons who are knowledgeable about things in the Meiji period.

2. The 'modern Western science' scene makes an interesting contrast to the Oriental supernatural, which plays a significant part in the novel.

And pedantry is an important factor in Teito Monogatari in the first place.

I just came across this thread, and must say it's been very interesting reading. I've had these books in my backlog for ages (I went through a phase where I was hunting used bookstores for anything that had won the Nihon SF Taisho), but have only read the author's foreword so far.

>The anime version I am always very hesitant to recommend to
> Westerners because of the added racy content...A lot of
> English speakers who watch it get offended very quickly.

I'm glad to hear this because I'm one of these, actually, and seeing the anime did knock these books down several notches in my backlog. If the books are less nasty -- as you've said they are -- that does make them more attractive to me.

Most daunting now, though, is learning about all the references in them. I almost hate to start reading without a better knowledge of these people who are referenced in it are first.

I tried to list as many of the historical characters as possible in the Wiki page, so you can start there too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teito_Monogatari

執筆乙です。 Thank you for taking trouble to write/revise the Wikipedia articles.
Are you going to also write English Wikipedia articles about Nishimura Makoto, Ōkōchi Masatoshi, Hayakawa Noritsugu and Kon Wajirō?