JIHAKU
[Confession]
Gackt
Jihaku is Gackt's autobiography. I first started translating this for the English-speaking Gackt fan community on my Livejournal in September 2003, when it was released. Since then, I've had the opportunity to meet all kinds of people from all over the world who are also fans of Gackt, and I'm very grateful to everything that this project has done for me. Translating Jihaku also has done wonders for improving my reading comprehension in Japanese and building my vocabulary. It is the first real book I ever have worked on, so I'm quite proud of it, though I'm sure in a few years I'll look back and realize that I did a crappy job. XD
Gackt's music is very important in my life, and as with everything I translate, I have tried to do justice to his book. As those of you who have been following this since Sept 2003, his prose writing skills aren't the best (da ga!), and he'll never be an author, but nevertheless, what he has written has touched me and also his other readers far more than he probably will know. But as he himself writes, he hopes that what he does will reach out and affect others and help all of his listeners discover something better about themselves.
In the translations below, I have also included my original translation notes from LJ. Keep in mind that I didn't translate the book in order, so some of the notes reference chapters that you might not have read if you read this in order. If you'd like to access the old LJ archive of these translations in my LJ memories, it's here. These translations are also posted at Cool Like Plastic and Muse.
Special thanks to: Laurel, Ri-chan, Anoni, Maria, Eli and the rest of the Muse staff, Francesca, Sam, Keaxy, Helayne, Incoh, DH, and others of my very first readers, Micchan who inspired me to start this in the first place, Inertia and others who helped me with Japanese grammar, all Gackt fans who have read this and encouraged me, and last but not least, Neesan. I love you.
