Hello, everyone. Today I will begin publishing my translation of the eleventh volume of Asakihara Shinobu's こちら秘封探偵事務所 or 'This is the Hifuu Detective Agency.' You can find the original version of this story on the author's website, along with the rest of the works in this series and stories by other authors, most of which are touhou-related (though as a warning, not all of them are SFW.) I encourage you to check it out.
This volume is the story of Touhou Shinreibyou ~ Ten Desires and to be honest, its a volume that I have been low-key dreading translating to a certain extent. The reason for this is not due to this being a bad story, but rather because of a structural difference in the way that English and Japanese handle pronouns. In Japanese, referring to people by names and titles in sentences is commonplace in a way that would sound awkward if directly translated to English. Pronouns other than first-person pronouns don't usually have the same gendered connotations to them, nor do many titles. As such, in Japanese it's entirely possible to talk about the character of prince Shotoku / Toyosatomimi no Miko without really gendering them. In English, that's much more difficult.
This is compounded by the nature of the mystery in this story, which, without giving any spoilers, calls into question whether or not Miko really is who she says she is. As such, I had to decide on which pronouns to use when referring to both Miko and the legendary figure of prince Shotoku, who may or may not be the same person. I decided to go with she/her pronouns for Miko and he/him pronouns for Shotoku. This choice is a result of the quirks of these two languages and should not be taken as either any indication as to the relationship of the characters nor as any sort of commentary on the question of prince Shotoku's gender in the context of touhou. Personally, I think when ZUN created the character of Miko they were very clearly intending that she be read as a transfeminine character and Renko's questioning of Miko's connection to prince Shotoku somewhat undercuts that. In general, Renko's reasoning here avoids most of the pitfalls of gender essentialism you might be worried about in a story like this, but still doesn't do much to address the possibility of the motivation behind Miko transing her gender potentially being 'because she wanted to.' I feel like for a character who's supposed to be from 2085, her views are a bit tellingly mired in 2018, the year this story was originally written.
With that said though, other than some less-than-progressive views, this story also contains mention of corpses, suicide, bodily defilement, casual electrocution played for laughs and some questionably consensual seduction. As usual, there's nothing graphic in any of this and the tone generally remains light-hearted throughout.
With those warnings out of the way, I will now step back and leave the rest of the storytelling up to our narrator. I hope that you enjoy the tale to come.