By Any Other Name
One aspect that makes the Kamigawa block stand out from previous Magic sets is the Asian-sounding names on many of the cards, like “Kusari-Gama,” “Brothers Yamazaki,” and “Isao, Enlightened Bushi.” According to Brady, earlier plans for card names were far more grandiose.
“Originally, we were going to put card names in normal English, then put the anglicized Japanese names below them, almost like subtitles.” For example, a card might be called “Fearsome Ogre,” but it would have a second, smaller name line underneath it with its Japanese title, “O-Bakemono.” While such a plan would certainly thoroughly convey the Japanese theme of the set, the card real estate necessary to implement it was a sticking point. Creative pulled back a bit, and tried using the theoretical subtype line a little more sparingly.
“We almost gave a lot of the legends really long titles that would have taken two lines,” said Brady. “Ryusei, the Falling Star would have been something like ’Ryusei, the Falling Star, Lord of the Sokenzan Heights’” with the second half of the name going on a second name line. The idea was to instill some grandiosity, splendor, and history into the card names themselves, but names that long were tough for the rest of R&D to swallow.
Once Brady and the rest of the creative team were committed to the tried-and-true single name line on the cards, Brady tried to squeeze as many Japanese words into card titles as he could.
“I deliberately start high,” he said, referring to the placeholder names he gives to each card to help steer the artists in the right direction. “Japanese seems like an easy language to pronounce… where every word is almost like a series of mono-syllabic bits. I toyed with the idea of getting the word ’kishinsuhaisha’—’demon servant’—on a card, claiming that it wasn’t that hard to say. But no one believed me.” Brady’s ambitious naming scheme was pushed back upon from many directions. “The super-high-concept version of any set gets diluted naturally during normal processes. Stuff I want to use gets rejected by the naming team, flavor text writers don’t use it, editors won’t tolerate it…” The regular R&D playtesters will often comment on card names that seem jarring to them as well; I can remember complaining about a card called “Swallowing Plague,” which was eventually changed to something my unrefined American larynx could manage more easily.
The very name of the plane itself—Kamigawa—was born from pronunciation difficulties. “The original name was ’Inreikai,’” Brady explained. “The reikai is the ’spirit force,’ and the prefix in- means ’dark’ or ’shadow.’ Our Japanese partners loved that name—it was very cool to them—but English-speakers really struggled with it. Our backup name was ’Kamigawa,’ which means ’spirit river’ or ’river of the gods.’ Not as cool to the Japanese.”
引用元
THE CREATIVE SIDE OF KAMIGAWA Posted in NEWS on February 18, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/creative-side-kamigawa-2005-02-18
トップダウンデザインである神河において、どのように日本らしさを演出するか。
その開発経緯における工夫を打ち明けた記事です。
《鎖鎌/Kusari-Gama》《山崎兄弟/Brothers Yamazaki》《悟りの武士、勲雄/Isao, Enlightened Bushi》など、英語名も日本語の読みに合わせたものになっていますが、元々は少し違っていたものでした。
通常の英語名「Fearsome Ogre」をカード名として与え、その下に「O-Bakemono」という日本語の読みに合わせた名前を書くと言うものです。
『イコリア：巨獣の棲処』でゴジラシリーズ・カードが二段組のカード名欄になっていたのと同じようなスタイルでしょう。
また、《降る星、流星/Ryusei, the Falling Star》は、《霜剣山高原の主、降る星、流星/Ryusei, the Falling Star, Lord of the Sokenzan Heights》（私訳）のように、長い名前にすることで壮大さや歴史を表現しようともしていました。
前者はスペースの都合で、後者は他のメンバーからの不評で、没になりました。
次元の名前は、第一候補が「Inreikai = In(陰) + Reikai(霊界)」でした。
日本のパートナーには好評だった一方で英語圏の人には不評だったため、第二候補である
「Kamigawa = Kami(神) + Gawa(河)」になったと言うことです。
今度は逆に日本人からの受けが悪かったようです。
こうしてみると、日本らしさを表す上で、名前も重要視されていたことがわかります。
しかし、英語との折り合いは決して簡単では無かったようです。
2021/09/08追記
この記事（など）への反響に言及した記事がありました。
MAIL ON THE STACK Posted in Latest Developments on April 8, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/latest-developments/mail-stack-2005-04-08-0
読者曰く、日本風の発音しにくい名前よりは、二つ名の方で読んでいるとのこと。
記事の筆者からすると、それは悪いことではないそうです。
というのも、伝説のクリーチャーに二つ名をつける理由は２つあり、１つはそのクリーチャーがどういった存在なのかを端的に説明するためであり、もう１つは呼び方を「５マナ2/4」みたいなものでなく「曇り鏡」のようにしてほしいためである、とのことです。
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