With Kanoe’s story, there were a couple things that I didn’t feel I was able to translate into English properly, or in a way that would make sense.
The first is the term kagura which has come up in the other stories form Kuyou. I opt to not translate this as it doesn’t translate well into English. A kagura is a traditional Japanese dance often associated with Shinto rituals. In Kanoe’s story, he mentions the Kagura Hall, referring to the large dance area where kagura are typically performed. This is viewed as a sacred space.
The other term is yosakoi, which I note in the chapter itself, but I wanted to mention it again. This is a different type of dance but a very common one in Japan. Yosakoi is performed at festivals, usually in very large groups of both men and women, as well as people of a variety of ages. The dance is incredibly high energy and is designed to build excitement among the participants. There’s often resounding drums that accompany the beat of the dancers.
Finally, related to that, while Kanoe and his team is performing in the end of his story, he chants out ‘sore sore sore sore!!’ which I left in Japanese. While ‘sore‘ on its own means ‘that thing’, that’s not how it’s being used here. Instead, this ‘sore‘ is used as a kind of counter to help people stay on beat while also using the vocalization to build energy while dancing. I couldn’t think of a good way to translate that out into something that made sense in English, so I’ve left it as-is.