Japanese Sci-Fi Galaxy Interview

An Interview of Mizugi Kenjitsu, typed up without permission by Chris Rednour




[Excerpt begins]

"We had just finished translating Pierre Boule's MONKEY PLANT when we were
told that the president had signed a deal to do translations of DOCTOR
WHO.  Doctor Who, however, had never been shown in Japan, and its unlikely
it ever would since we had enough shows with old geezers wandering around
with nubile young girls of questionable legality on TV.  But the producer
had been assured that these books would be a hit, and in the end, I had a
job to do.  But to make it more marketable to our audience, we changed the
Doctor from the old man to a young, well-bred woman.  It turns out it was
just the first of many subsequent changes that were necessary for the book
to work for a Japanese audience.

Anyhow, I sat down with the first one we got, The Curse of Paddington
[translated as Toy Death Bear Cursed World] and read it.  It was utter
tripe, but that's to be expected.  Right off the bat there's all this stuff
about the Doctor being exiled to Earth for stealing a time machine, and
then the novel turns right around and has these Time Lords moving the
Doctor through time and space to the planet Paddington.  Well this was all
cut out.  The Doctor and Jo Grant just arrive at the planet and are
immediately supposed to be the "American Galactic Technocratic Federation
Of Pure Evil And Greed" which we just translated as "the Americans".  I
mean who thinks up this stuff?

On Paddington, the other delegates arrive and we take the alien Narcturus
and make him into this smoky, wispy tentacle creature.  If its one thing I
know, nothing sells a book like flipping through and finding a tentacle
beast ravishing young women.  So with the change to the character, we also
added a subplot that one of the delegates is suspected of ravishing the
pretty young maidens of Paddington, so we've got a dual plot, a murderer
and a rapist on the loose.  And the Doctor suspected of one and a
potential target of the other. This was beginning to get interesting.

We pushed the Ice Cream Vendors to the background, making them a mostly
silent, samurai like race that quietly assists the Doctor.  The subterfuge
in the book relies on continuity that while spelled out in painstakingly
boring detail in the book, wouldn't make sense to a Japanese reader who's
never seen the Ice Cream Vendors before.  I think this was for the best.

The end of CURSE OF PADDINGTON is a real cop-out as well, the Doctor
exposing Narcturus and then Paddington Bear just refuses to act and he's
caught.  So we changed it to a hand to hand combat confrontation, where
the Doctor shows up with guards to arrest Narcturus after proving to King
Paddington that the murder was its plot, only to be just in the time to
save Jo Grant from being ravished by the perverted tentacles of Narcturus.
They fight and for suspense the Doctor comes close to being ravished
herself before defeating the evil fiend.  Jo Grant's emotional thanks to
the Doctor here sets up the often hinted at undercurrent of lesbianism in
the blue box they traveled in which I felt would appeal to our audience.

The final scene was added at the last minute.  The publisher wanted to
have a set up for the next book, which would bring the extremely popular
Dustbins to Japan for the first time...

[Excerpt ends]