Hello! Did the team happen to use any references regarding the magic and acrobatic tricks in 17-04? I had seen another episode featuring Satoimo Gyouja and tried looking into genjutsu, but I'm having trouble finding non-fiction information relevant to the time period. In general, I'm curious what the research process might look like whenever you come across unfamiliar historical topics in Nintama.
Thanks for all the work you do!
Hello! It's Duck the translator here.
For 17-04, it's all pretty much a straight translation, so for everything regarding the magic tricks and acrobatics I didn't check any reference. ...Now I hope I didn't miss anything!
Notable things translation wise for this episode are, on top of my head, mostly found in Kyuusaku's lines. When he talks about teleportation, he doesn't use the modern word テレポート terepooto borrowed from English, but the more classical 瞬間移動 shunkan idou, also "teleportation" but very literally "instant movement".
His speech borrows a lot from kabuki theater with over the top theatrics in an attempt to catch the audience's attention, notably with the expression 東西 touzai which he repeats a lot. It literally means "east and west", and it's a way to call the entirety of the audience in a theater, so "come one, come all!", or "ladies and gentlemen!". Another expression he uses twice iirc that was a bit difficult to put as in in the text is 千番に一番の兼ね合い senban ni ichiban no kaneai, literally "1 in a 1000 balance", meaning a task so difficult that it has 1 in a 1000 chance to succeed. So, Satoimo Gyouja's "most difficult trick to pull".
If you find the topic of circus shows during this time period interesting, I'll write an info post with a list of cultural and historical references for this episode on my sideblog later.
In general, if you can, I suggest searching keywords in Japanese rather than in English. It'll spare you all the Naruto wikia results. If you don't have a Japanese keyboard, you can type words in romaji on dictionaries like Jisho for example and it will give you the Japanese spelling. In general, just googling notions mentioned in episodes is enough to get basic information, but sometimes it's pretty niche stuff that you'll find Nintama fans asking questions on Yahoo! answers in the results lol. The worst case scenario is when something is so obscure that the only source available online is... Amako Soubei herself. It has happened to me a few times and it's frustrating not being able to find out is something is of her invention or from a very obscure history book she owns haha.
So yeah, sorry I don't have much advice beyond googling things in Japanese, then fall into rabbit holes of 40 open tabs... I guess I could add that it's good to find multiple sources because especially with things like ninjutsu even in Japanese you'll get results that feed into the sensational image of ninja from popular imagination or claims from "new" schools of ninjutsu...
Anyways, again I'll try to write about it later but here are notions you can look up related to genjutsu and Japanese street performance arts:
幻術 genjutsu, magic
果心居士 Kashin Koji, aka 七宝行者 Shippou Gyouja, an illusionist of the Muromachi period to whom such spectacular feats are attributed we're not even sure if he was a real person or not. Satoimo Gyouja's name comes from him.
散楽 sangaku, circus/street performances brought to Japan in the Nara period. It traveled from North Africa, Europe, throughout Asia via the Silk Road before China brought it to Japan. This is probably what you want to look into the most.
軽業 karuwaza, acrobatics, a more general term but it appears multiple times in Nintama too.
蜘蛛舞 kumomai, the Spider Dance mentioned in 17-04. Ahuhuhu~
