Y’know, people really misunderstand me.
Oh, I’m Princess Hitei. And that’s a real gem, too. They call me a princess, but I’m not a princess or anything. I haven’t got any of that noble lineage or lofty status. They just call me a princess since I look like one. If you want to be cynical, it’s a kind of sarcasm or irony. Well, part of it’s that I’m calling myself a princess and making myself look like a princess. That’s not anything worth denying. So that’s a double negative.
My real name? Just like that unpleasant woman, I don’t have one. Actually, I don’t know about her. I can’t be sure she doesn’t have a real name. Not that I care. Well, whatever.
Anyways, I really like being called Princess Hitei. I can’t think of anyone with such good taste, so maybe I did think of it myself. Giving myself a title, just like that unpleasant woman. Seems like something I’d do. I’m first-class at self-expression, after all.
Just kidding. Denying, denying, and denying again is my way of life, or like one of my principles. Completely obfuscating the truth and what’s true. No wonder I’d get misunderstood. Yeah, I’m not joking or hassling here—hm well, I’m not really trying to have a serious talk in the first place. There’s no point in expecting me to be serious. Seriousness and sincerity is the complete opposite of my denying way of life, go try that unpleasant woman. Well, it’s not like that unpleasant woman’s really serious or sincere, so yeah, I’m just being a pest. That’s part of it too, but I’ve got nothing to do with the truth in sincerity or the gravity in seriousness, so it just looks insane to me.
This isn’t something I can go shouting around, but there are a ton of geezers in the shogunate that’re confined by the truth, and it’s a real pain. It’s like, jokes don’t get through to them and they’ve got no sense of humor, they’re seriously behind the times. So, just to brag, but I’ve never got mad in my entire life. Hm? Well, probably.
Emonzaemon might go “you’re lying, you princess”, but let’s just deny his whole existence. Anyways, I’ve never gotten angry. Doesn’t getting mad or irritated just show you’re serious? You can’t really imagine someone being mad as a joke, or being mad for fun. Dunno if you’d call it being wound up or wound tight, but it’s a real mess, you know? It’s a short life in the face of history, so you might as well live jokingly like me. I don’t know what people who cling to a purpose and focus their efforts on a single goal are thinking, if they’re even thinking.
Just in my opinion, and put in a denying way. From their point of view, people who live aimlessly like me are probably just idiotic fools. Well, if I don’t fool around a bit, life’s too much of a folly to deal with. You aren’t living if you’re not having fun, right?
Anyways, I don’t have a deep-set goal—well it’s not like I don’t, but that’s not really my goal. I can’t tell you what it is here, but now just what could it be? It’s more like a purpose in life than a goal, and this purpose in life isn’t a reason for living but one for being born. So I’m not too excited to work towards it. Well, I’m not going to throw in the towel, sure I’ll work on it, but playing all the way. I’ll do it as playfully as I can.
Oh, right, I didn’t say, but you know, don’t you? I’ve got this real important job in the Yanari shogunate in internal inspection, and you know what kind of job it is? That’s right, it’s to find traitors. You don’t know how many plans, how many dozens and hundreds of plans I’ve exposed. It’s my job, so I don’t feel guilty about it, but you know, unlike how denying the word ‘traitor’ is, traitors are actually pretty devoted. No matter what orders they’re following from which organization, that kind of conviction is admirable. That’s what makes them worth rooting out.
When you get as stupidly enlightened as me, there isn’t much else you can do for fun. Besides crushing the beliefs of others. Since I haven’t got any deep convictions. Instead of being convinced I doubt, and instead of committing I pretend. So like, Emonzaemon says that I’m full of life when I’m around that unpleasant woman. Can’t say if it’s true, and it’d be weird if it was, so maybe he’s making it up, but that unpleasant woman’s definitely worth picking a bone with. She’s fun to play with, well a fun toy, though she doesn’t seem to think the same.
Well, I don’t have any evidence to say if she’s a traitor, but I’ve got this sixth sense from doing this job for so long, or to use a less exaggerated and embellished word, this women’s intuition, so I can basically sniff it out. The smell of a traitor.
The smell of a traitor’s convictions, whether or not they’re serious and sincere. To put it more simply, hmm… it’s the smell of my kind. The same kind and the same sort as me. Except that unpleasant woman has convictions, and I don’t, and that’s the only difference between us, so maybe that’s why we’re incompatible.
Oh, sorry, my bad. People really misunderstand me, and I don’t even mind. I don’t care what anyone thinks about me, since it just makes them easier to use. Well, sorry. I’ve been saying a lot, but just make sure you don’t misunderstand that I don’t think badly of that unpleasant woman. I definitely hate her. I hate that unpleasant woman from my bones. I, Princess Hitei hate that strategian. With every ounce of my body and every bit of my soul, I deny that strategian. That’s how it has to be, and we wouldn’t be ourselves otherwise.
Traitors should betray earnestly and in the open, as part of their convictions. I’ll criticize them in the open without any convictions, half in fun, half in play, full of curiosity and humor, carelessly and aimlessly, plotting and interfering and joking and messing around. I won’t accept sincerity. I won’t accept seriousness. I deny them. It’s my way of doing things, not the strategian’s. I won’t affirm anything. I won’t even acknowledge myself. I deny reality, the present, fantasy, limits, origins, excess, and the entirety of the world.
Truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction is livelier than truth. And I won’t affirm it. I’ll rip a hole into that lively world. That’s right, I am Princess Hitei, and I deny everything, without exception.
Just kidding. So is this enough?
Translation Notes
Hitei means denial. There was a lot of word play in this. In particular, the words in this list all begin with the same sound in Japanese. “I deny reality, the present, fantasy, limits, origins, excess, […]”
Sword Translations 