Hoo boy here it is, Division Chief Shima Kōsaku Volume 2. This volume was EXTREMELY difficult and hugely mentally exhausting to work on and I’m so glad it’s done. I remember when I first read through the Division Chief series and I got to this part and thought “oh shit when I get to this it’s going to be murder once we get to it”. And it was! Year-and-a-half-ago me was pretty on the ball.

So I gave an overview of the Division Chief arc here when we released volume 1. But Division Chief starts out as a series of one-shots similar to how the beginning of Section Chief started. The difference being that there’s actually way less, averaging around one chapter every 6 months. The first two chapters of this volume are that same sort of thing. But then after that it starts to become a weekly series again. Also the number of pages goes down to 16-ish per chapter rather than fluctuating from 18 to 32 pages per chapter before then. So the volumes starting next volume are about 13 chapters per volume. Also starting in chapter 18 the chapters no longer have the prefix “Series #” and then a roman numeral after the title, they go back to just being called “Step #”. And it starts at Step 18 because it’s the 18th chapter of Division Chief. This continues for the whole rest of the series.

So now in just a couple short volumes, we’ve made it to the golden age of 1999. Remember 1999? I hope you do if you’re reading this manga about a 50 year old salaryman. Anyhow for those unaware, Japan’s economy was in a massive bubble in the late 80’s and then had a huge recession. This is typically called the bursting of the economic bubble. And that is now what’s examined at this point in the story starting this volume. In fact the Nikkei, the Tokyo Stock Exchange index, has only JUST NOW NEARLY gotten back to the all time high from 1989.

The period after the economic bubble bursting was called the “lost decade” or “lost decades” plural depending on who you ask. The way the Shima Kōsaku series works is it somewhat reflects current events in the real world Japan. So while the Section Chief arc took place during the bubble economy with Japan businesses doing great, Division Chief starts right as its bursting and now we’re at the point in history where there’s been a recession going for years. So anyhow, I hope you’re up for that. When you put it that way it sounds kind of depressing, doesn’t it? It’s really not a depressing story, but the macro-scale real world events are always percolating in the background as Shima goes about his daily life and carrying out whatever role he’s currently serving.

So you’ll notice a difference in the story as it jumps from one-off stories to more of a continuous story again. Some major characters that will be around for a long time are introduced in this volume. Also this volume starts a story arc that lasts until the middle of volume 4 which is about the wine importing industry. As a result this volume was exceedingly mind-numbingly difficult and laborious to translate at times. There’s tons of stuff about the technicalities of winemaking, the wine business, how the grapes are grown, and different roles different people in the business play. All of which is difficult to understand at the best of times and I had to make sure I had all the terminology correct so it would sound familiar to an English speaker. That’s in addition to needing to figure out all the French words. I hope that comes through in the translation, because goddamn is there a lot of research required to make sure I understood and conveyed everything properly.

Anyhow, enjoy, everyone. This volume was a huge undertaking and it’s not gonna get too much easier from here. Until next time.

Oh also if anyone would like to volunteer to help out with checking/editing/cleaning/typesetting any of that for this project, please feel free to email me at kewl0210@gmail.com about it. We could always use more help on this series because of how much gosh-darn stuff there is in every single volume.

Also, we have a new Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Division Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 2 (Ch11-20)
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