Here we are at last. About two months in the making that have been spent on planning, fundraising, and most importantly, translating, I’m finally pleased to bring you all a very special scanlated interview held with Atlus icons Cozy Okada, Kazuma Kaneko, and Satomi Tadashi about the inception and development of the very first Persona game!

There’s a lot to talk about here, so if you’re just interested in the main show, go ahead and start clicking your way through the images. For best readability, make sure to either open the images in a new window or download them to your computer. For the rest of you, we’ll keep talking after the break. (Since additional translation commentary is included after the break, however, I would also suggest coming back here eventually when you’re done to get the most out of this interview.)

Thanks To…!

First, a huge round of thanks is in order. There are too many people to count, but at the very least, I’d like to publicly recognize the following people: p1scans for uploading the original version of this interview; Doc Darius for coming to me with the original request to scanlate this thing (and for offering up much of the necessary money!); eirikrjs for helping me plan the fundraiser, hype it up, and also proofread and edit the final interview; and finally, the generous group of people who contributed money and social media support to help make this all possible. It’s nice when I don’t have to choose between staying afloat financially and working on what I love and you all made it possible in this instance. Here’s to more of that in the future!

The Actual Meat and Potatoes

Okay, let’s talk about the interview itself. This thing originally ran in the Persona World book, a publication that was published a year after Persona 1’s original Japanese release. As is common with many Atlus games these days, it’s a supplemental book full of extra material for diehard fans to pore over in the event that they haven’t had enough of the game already, with this interview obviously being a big highlight.

Much of the content of the interview itself should be straightforward, though I added in-text notes in italicized brackets here and there when the guys talk about things that might not be entirely familiar to many English-speakers. There are a few topics in particular that are worth elucidating on further, which I’ll cover in the next section. But for now, those references aside, this should otherwise be more or less comprehensible if you’ve played the game. Ideally, you should have cleared it prior to reading, as there are spoilers, but I won’t judge either way.

There are, however, a few circumstantial things worth noting that affected the translation of this interview. To be civil, parts of the original Japanese are transcribed very poorly. There are times when, for instance, the names of characters from works outside of Persona have their names written in the wrong kanji. At other times, the guys’ words have been seemingly misheard outright, but can still be salvaged from context. (The original Japanese hilariously invents an imaginary new branch of science at one point because of this.) But there are a handful of occasions where the original Japanese answers to questions make so little sense that I can’t help but question the competence of whoever committed the original answers to writing. Virtually every instance of the first two problems have been resolved with clever research; however, there are a few instances of that third problem that, even after consulting myriad outside sources, I’m left drawing blanks as to what the original line was really supposed to mean. These are as follows:

On page 3 of the interview, Kaneko seemingly mentions Zhuang Zhou as having made golems of some sort. This is almost certainly not the case, not the least of which because golems are derived from Jewish folklore, but even after attempting to do hours of fuzzy searches for similar sounding words that Kaneko might have actually said, I’m completely stumped.



have actually said, I’m completely stumped. On page 5, Kaneko and Satomi discuss what Ambrosia in Persona actually looks like. The suggestion Kaneko gives, mochi, is ordinarily the correct reading of the kanji provided, 餅. However, the interview explicitly indicates that the word is meant to be read as hei. This is technically valid (Japanese link), but it’s extremely rare to see that reading used for that kanji outside of a compound word in conjunction with other kanji. So much so, in fact, that not even the kanji dictionary I turn to as a last resort for figuring out obscure characters lists it as a valid reading in isolation. The only Japanese dictionary description I’ve linked to (and the only native dictionary I could find that gives hei its own entry) describes it as “foodstuffs made from kneaded and baked flour,” but in practice, its used predominantly as part of other words like 煎餅 (senbei, the rice cracker given to deer at places like Nara). I have decided for the time being to presume that mochi was meant after all because it does have some importance within Shinto traditions as I’m simply lost as to what else it could otherwise mean.

Other translators are, of course, free to examine the original Japanese pages themselves and offer suggestions as to the intended meanings of those lines. As a fundraised effort, I apologize for failing to definitively uncover the nuances for every last line, but I feel that disclosure is of the utmost importance here given that people paid for this. Should my understanding of these lines change, I’ll update the translation and post an announcement accordingly.

Beyond that, I stand by the content of the rest of the interview, especially after vetting it by my good friend eirikrjs, who is more knowledgeable about early Atlus games in general than I personally am.

Additional Food for Thought (AKA: the Translation Notes I Couldn’t Cram into the Scans)

As I mentioned earlier, there are a handful of concepts raised in the interview that bear deeper exploration and can’t be adequately covered through a few italicized lines of bracketed text inside the interview itself. Here’s a list of what I consider worth exploring in greater detail, along with links to articles that I feel do a better job of explaining them than I can:

Toryanse (the London Bridge-esque song): http://tokyoscum.blogspot.com/2012/08/creepy-kids-songs-part-1-toryanse.html



Ushiro no Shoumen Daare (the children’s game based on the song “Kagome Kagome): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagome_Kagome

Kokkuri-san: http://www.scaryforkids.com/kokkuri-san/

Araya Shrine’s Buddhist origins (the name specifically comes from the Japanese Buddhist term araya-shiki): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Consciousnesses#Consciousness

Mochi and Shinto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagami_mochi

Philemon’s appearance in Jung’s dreams: http://www.philipcoppens.com/jung.html

In general, I would also suggest reading up more on Jungian psychology, particular the concept of archetypes, should you not be familiar with that work already as a fan.

That’s it!

I think that’s more or less everything I have to say here. It’s been a grueling couple of weeks juggling this translation, which at times progressed at a snail’s pace, on top of normal work commitments, but I’m very gratified to have seen it through to the end so you all can now read it. Thanks again to those of you who supported in whatever way you can and while I have nothing to announce at this time, you can expect more drives like the one behind this that will allow you to support translation efforts of things you all want to see me tackle. But for now, I’m going to finally catch up on sleep and enjoy some brief down time before work commences again.

Catch you when I do!

-Pepsiman