In the era of the story in Japan, people counted their age differently from the way how we usually do now. Currently, one becomes “one year old” when one year has passed since she or he was born. In contrast, in the era of the story in Japan, one was already one year old when she or he was born, and one became two years old on the New Year’s Day of the following year, regardless of one’s birthday. This way of counting people’s age is called “Kazoe-doshi” in Japan and is still used in some traditional events. For example, when people organize events for “Shichi-go-san” mentioned in the story (to celebrate their children becoming three, five or seven years old), most people do so according to this traditional way of counting age.

So, if I want to write my story in a truly “realistic” and historically correct way, I must use this traditional way of counting age, especially when characters in the story speak. However, I thought that it would be too confusing for the readers from outside Japan if this traditional method of counting age was used in the story without proper explanation, but it would be too cumbersome to add proper explanation on the way of counting age in the story. After all, apart from this historical realism and historiographical correctness, the merit of using the traditional method of counting in the story is not so large. So, I decided to use the current way of counting age consistently in the story, including the direct quotes of the characters. Please interpret my practice as follows: the understanding of “age” of the characters is translated from the traditional method to the current method when the language is translated from Japanese to English.