“Yes, but who can we trust?”
“Does that mean you have discovered something?”
Sherlock cleared a bundle of papers from the floor, revealing the original The Complete Work on Russian Natural Sciences, open beneath them. “This is one of the sections where the frequency of what appears to be the subject differs greatly between the original and the translation. It is a section in chapter 56, describing the effect of changes in the salt density of the tides. I attempted a rough translation using a Russian-to-English dictionary, which suggests that when fish are hit by the tide there is a high probability of mass deaths due to the change in salt concentration. The subject word is ryba, which means fish. And the Japanese. Let me see… Where is chapter 56…”
“Perhaps you might endeavor to be a little less disorderly?”
“Here it is.” Sherlock retrieved one of the stacks of paper. The character for fish had been circled. “This character means fish, correct? Judging from its appearance, it is shaped to resemble a single fish on its side.”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“I am already familiar with the character for ‘death,’ it appears frequently in the newspapers. That word is also used frequently, though not as often as fish. The word that appears with the next highest frequency in the original is sea, or ocean water.”
“Umi, in Japanese.”
“I do not know the character for umi, but I used the same process, searching for a character that would correspond in frequency to sea or ocean water. The word that appeared with the next highest frequency, after fish and death, was this.” Sherlock pointed.
Ito didn’t understand. “This is the character for kawa. It means river, not sea. In fact, this whole sentence…”
“Differs from the original? Judging from the appearance of the character, which consists of only three lines, I too assumed it meant river, waterfall or something to that effect, rather than ocean or sea.”
“The word for waterfall is taki.”
“I took less than a minute to ascertain all of this. Almost entirely by intuition, I was able to deduce that although the Japanese translation concerned the death of fish, the premise involved rivers or waterfalls rather than seawater.”
“My god, you are correct.” Ito removed his reading glasses, in agitation. “The cause of death is also different. It says that when the feeding hierarchy is disturbed and one of the species increases by too much, that species will die off suddenly in great numbers… Completely different from the original!”
Sherlock flipped through his copy of the original book. “Chapter 38 explains how trees can wither due to changes in Arctic pressure patterns. In the North American permafrost, forests have withered and died due to water shortages brought about by thawing ground and low rainfall. Forests have also been dying off more frequently in Siberia, despite heavy rains, due to the extreme damp. The gist of the article is that forests are dying in Siberia from too much water, and in Alaska from too little. And here, on the other hand, is the Japanese translation.”
Ito read the section Sherlock presented to him. “This says that underground lava activity robs soil of the nutrient- and water-retention abilities that plants need to grow, so the trees in volcanic regions simultaneously die off. This is different too!”
“You taught me furu, the kanji for old. I deduced that the character combining furu, or old, with ki, or tree, must mean wither. It was clear that the translation also addressed the withering of trees. And yet, although water was involved in the original article, the sanzui element was noticeably absent. I noticed that the character for fire was present instead. It appears together with a different character.” Sherlock pointed to another spot. “Here.”
“That is yama. It means mountain.”
“As I gathered. The character appears frequently in other sections of the book as well, and by comparing those sections to the original I was able to deduce that this meant mountain. In this section however, fire and mountain always appear together. It seemed probable that this pairing referred either to forest fires or volcanoes. Regardless of which, that meaning did not appear in the original.”
Ito was overwhelmed. “And you did this—for all 80 chapters?”
“I am still investigating the remaining entries, but so far I have identified 16 sections that are clearly suspicious.” Sherlock rifled through the pages of the original once more. “I am only showing you a few of the most outlandish examples. In chapter 14 there is an entry detailing the mechanism by which rice blight kills rice plants. It is a type of mold, which occurs under conditions of high humidity. Now look at the Japanese translation.”
Sherlock held out another document, which Ito now read. “When spring water with high levels of hydrochloric acid contaminates paddies, the rice plants will wither and… Wait! These are the discoveries that Kubo was so excited to report to me the first day we visited.”
“Yes, it appears that a great number of unexplained phenomena that have plagued the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce are included in this book, along with explanations of their causes. And yet in the translation the key points all differ from their original. In the Japanese translation for this entry, as well, the character for ‘wither’ is present, and judging from its frequency I assume this character—” Sherlock indicated yet another kanji, “—means rice plant. But the original article describes a pathological mechanism. I knew the character for ‘disease,’ having seen it several times on hospital billboards. I searched for it in the Japanese translation, but it did not appear even once.”
“But why? Mere mistranslations could hardly explain such a drastic difference.”
“At first I suspected the persons in charge of the translation. I even had my doubts concerning top officials at the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. However, when I questioned Mr. Kubo the other day he seemed to lack the vaguest glimmer of information from the original. He was quite modest about his lack of knowledge of Russian, but he seems serious and ardent by nature. I assume he made some attempt to read the original and to compare it to the translation. Doubly so, on those points that had so excited him the day before.”
Ito was surprised. “So you believe that the original possessed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce differs from your own? Why? Did the Russians not wish to teach us about rice blight, or dead fish, or arctic winds?”
“Quite the opposite. They wished very much to teach you the wrong information. The information in this version claims to be the latest scientific knowledge, but the arguments presented within are quite bizarre. Imbalances do occur in feeding hierarchies, but I have never heard of that leading to the spontaneous death of large schools of fish. And of course trees can wither when a volcano erupts nearby and the lava cools and hardens, but that has nothing to do with underground lava. And here, if enough salt had entered a rice paddy to kill off the plants, that should be obvious just from testing the water. Such knowledge would amount to common sense in the natural sciences. Japan, however, is far behind in this field of study, and displays a willingness to trust in Western science uncritically. The Russians took advantage of that innocence.”
“When you put it that way… I have to agree. In hindsight, it seems obvious something is not right about these explanations. In Japan, however, the West seems like a treasure trove of unknown science—and that belief can take precedence over more somber reflection. First we accept, and then we proceed to our own research. That is the Japanese way.”