New Potter Wizard School Info
January 30, 2016 7:26 PM   Subscribe

J.K. Rowling has recently released some information on international wizarding schools. We already knew a fair amount about Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. But she also discusses Mahoutokoro, the Japanese school that actually has day students; Uagadou, the African school carved out of a mountainside; and Castelobruxo, the Brazilian home of Bill Weasley's ear-shrivelling penpal. She gives no information about Ilvermorny, the "North American" school. (There is not even a mention of the Salem Witches' Institute.)
posted by vogon_poet (95 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
No love for Vincent Clortho Public School either. Typical.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 7:31 PM on January 30, 2016 [45 favorites]


the "North American" wizarding school? We all know what that means -- it's in Canada.
posted by crazy with stars at 7:38 PM on January 30, 2016 [19 favorites]


She's punishing the US for "translating" her books, while we Canadians got the proper versions (which was a HUGE PAIN when I was in the US during the release of book 4 and wanted to read it immediately but wanted the books to match).
posted by jeather at 7:40 PM on January 30, 2016


The Japanese description gives me strange feelings, and I always am skeptical of JK Rowling's worldbuilding abilities regarding ethnicity and culture. (I mean, she literally only had two British-Indian students in the same school, plus they were twins. Really? Plus she named the main British Chinese girl "Cho" which is...not something anyone Chinese could name their kid because that can translate to 'smelly' sooooo...)

Jade is something that is highly prized in China because of several large stores that are located, and it dates back to thousands of years. I'm not so certain if in Japanese culture there is such a same reverence, and I would like to be informed if there is.

I am worried that she gave in to a pan-Asian conflation, when really, each culture is incredibly different even if there are some shared canon. Looking up 'mutton fat jade' brings up this particular article that is worth looking at for context, in terms of the area in China that it is mined from.

NY Times - Jade from China's West Surpasses Gold in Value
posted by yueliang at 7:49 PM on January 30, 2016 [22 favorites]


Whatever Ilvermorny turns out to be notwithstanding, in my headcannon the Canadian Wizarding School is an intensive 10-month wilderness residency.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 8:02 PM on January 30, 2016 [17 favorites]


I mean she does mention lots of small, poorly-regulated, transient magic schools, so my headcanon is that the Clortho Quidditch players are still bravely flying their Swiffers even though the school has lost accreditation.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:08 PM on January 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


Ilvermorny might be TBA because it's probably going to be discussed at length in "Fantastic Beasts" -- it appears to be in the North Eastern part of the US (perhaps New York). The Salem Witches' Institute was (I believe) referenced in "Goblet of Fire" whilst the Trio are exploring the tents surrounding the Quidditch World Cup so it's possible that it's not necessarily a school so much as it's a coalition of magical peoples for North America, though it would be fun if it were an actual academy in addition to Ilvermorny. Personally I'm hoping she'll tell us that the remaining TBD schools are from India, Central America, the Carribbean, and the Pacific Islands and that there will be a sorting ceremony process for all the schools once released so we can be sorted at each of the 11 major schools and know our true selves once and for all.
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:08 PM on January 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


There is not even a mention of the Salem Witches' Institute.

BULLSHIT. We have at least two Harry Potter stores here in Salem. For JKR to leave them in the lurch after realizing that a lazy, off hand mention of Salem and witches means that she is condoning the senseless murder of outsiders back in the Hysteria is madness.

Speaking of witch

we still have miskatonic

ho ho ia ia
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:19 PM on January 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


Someone posted about Mahoutokoro on my Facebook today. MAHOU. TOKORO. *slow head shake*

Okay, let's take a look. Nice pronunciation error there, lol. I guess I don't really have any objections to the rest, but when you start off with a name that stupid and then fuck up the pronunciation, there's no coming back.

yueliang, to the best of my knowledge, jade has no special significance in Japanese culture.
posted by sunset in snow country at 8:29 PM on January 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


The wand is a European invention, and while African witches and wizards have adopted it as a useful tool in the last century, many spells are cast simply by pointing the finger or through hand gestures. This gives Uagadou students a sturdy line of defence when accused of breaking the International Statute of Secrecy ('I was only waving, I never meant his chin to fall off'). At a recent International Symposium of Animagi, the Uagadou School Team attracted a lot of press when their exhibition of synchronised transforming caused a near riot. Many older and more experienced witches and wizards felt threatened by fourteen-year-olds who could turn at will into elephants and cheetahs, and a formal complaint was lodged with the International Confederation of Wizards by Adrian Tutley (Animagus: gerbil).
This will affect a lot of the fanfics where Harry "studies hard over the summer" and outshines everyone by doing wandless magic and becoming an Animagus.
posted by Rangi at 8:30 PM on January 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


To elaborate, "Mahoutokoro" means "magic place." It's just a really dumb-sounding name. It's kind of funny because I'm often charmed by the utter literalness of Japanese words (one that I actually discovered from reading Harry Potter in Japanese - "hedge" is "ikegaki," meaning "living fence"), but when it comes to proper names for things I feel like you could get a bit more poetic than that? Like, come on.

And then on Pottermore the pronunciation is "Mah-hoot-o-koh-ro," but it's not "hoo," it's "ho" as in ho ho ho. Geez.
posted by sunset in snow country at 8:33 PM on January 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


@sunset in snow country - thanks for the chiming in and validation, what you mentioned about 'Mahoutokoro' is just painfully, awfully triple bad. So much orientalism and exoticism, JKR! Don't live up to your colonial literary ancestors!!! /shakes fist/

This just adds to my list of frustrations, because this is the same author who made Dumbledore gay after he died (is he supposed to be a 'tragic queer?' 'Queers don't get to live' is its own freaking trope!') and had Ron/Hermione as end game, and that ending. uuuugh. All of this is so painful, especially because there is a lot to like about the Harry Potter universe. More research and consciousness PLEASE.
posted by yueliang at 8:35 PM on January 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yes, authors should definitely do more research into the fictional worlds and characters that they have created.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:45 PM on January 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


Authors should do more research into the actual world they live in before writing fiction set in places they clearly know very little about.
posted by town of cats at 8:48 PM on January 30, 2016 [37 favorites]


Just realized that Castelobruxo means "wizard castle".

I'm kind of already coming up with a headcanon where the actual name of the school is kept secret for magical purposes and these dumb names are just for outsiders.
posted by vogon_poet at 8:50 PM on January 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


Americans mistook the Salem Witches' Institute for a school because they didn't catch the reference to the Women's Institute movement.
posted by mayhap at 8:54 PM on January 30, 2016 [15 favorites]


Rowling definitely reads tweets and Facebook posts sent her way and Pottermore is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, YouTube, Vine and Soundcloud. The content's being released for our benefit -- let's tell her and her team that rather than delighting us it's alienating and disappointing instead.
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:58 PM on January 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


"Cho Chang" is not a proper romanization, so there is some leeway in the actual Chinese. The Taiwanese and mainland editions have 张秋 Zhāng Qiū. (I don't know if there's anything from the books, however, that rules out her being Korean.)
posted by zompist at 8:58 PM on January 30, 2016 [7 favorites]


Once upon a time I got to wondering what was going in North America while all this Voldemort stuff was going on, which morphed into wondering what sort of Hogwarts-esque schools our continent might have. That, in turn, quickly led to the realization that the Indian genocide, not to mention the whole African slavery thing, were huge challenges: the muggle history must be unchanged, but how could so many wizards, equally powerful, on three continents, allow such a thing?

So of course I had to come up with a whole alt-hidden-history thing about the four-way conflict between Native wizards, Native muggles, colonialist European wizards, and colonialist European muggles; the separatist vs. integrationist factions, the "who cares about muggles" faction versus the interventionist faction (and that interventionist faction was itself divided into separatist and integrationist camps, which helps get the muggle-world outcome the same as our recorded history, by balancing the wizardry powers). It's not a very happy headcanon but at least I think it works out to at least be consistent between her world and known history.

And it leads to the public, more well-known modern North American wizarding world being extremely Mestizo, not just in ethnicity but in language and magical techniques. There remain separatist, and now rather isolationist, enclaves scattered around the country.

In short I ended up with a school in New England, built by Hogwarts alumni to serve the muggleborn colonist-born wizards whose numbers were growing and were getting increasingly reluctant to be taken to England. It tends to be more white and more Hogwarts-esque, and in my mind maybe resembles Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted.

There's another one out toward the West Coast that is much more distinctly American, and mixed in its languages and curriculum and culture. I'd also like to put some smaller ones in the South, especially thinking a Voodou-ish school would be nice, but I have to do some more thinking on the slavery-with-wizards alt-history to work that one out.

Oh, but yeah, I share the idea that North American wizards would have little regard for the boundaries muggles kept creating or moving around between "Canada", "USA", and "Mexico".
posted by traveler_ at 8:59 PM on January 30, 2016 [26 favorites]


Um, like f'rinstance, maybe put the school that's in "Africa" in a specific country in your little descriptive blurb? Mountains of the Moon is apparently an actual place in Uganda, so I assume that's where it is, but given how many actual humans think Africa is a country I feel JKR could have used this as a teachable moment.
posted by town of cats at 8:59 PM on January 30, 2016 [10 favorites]


*and by tell, I really mean continue to tell her because LBR this is not the first time she's produced content that's based in stereotypes and people have been relaying that feedback to her since the books were first published and she still needs to hear it because it matters.
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:01 PM on January 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


traveler_, if you like fanfiction or think you might want to check it out, I strongly encourage you to google "Alexandra Quick".
posted by town of cats at 9:01 PM on January 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Wagadu was an indigenous name for an early empire in West Africa; nowhere near Uganda, to boot.
posted by Earthtopus at 9:03 PM on January 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm not surprised at the comments here because my first thought with JKR's non-British canon is always to wonder if I'd need to wince.
posted by immlass at 9:08 PM on January 30, 2016 [5 favorites]


So, is "London" in the Rowling novels the same place as the actual physical city? Or is it an invention of the author's, using some of the same place names and landmarks? People wanting more "research" from an author might investigate why they are so desperate to limit the creative mind of an artist. If only Michangelo could have had all of David's measurements!
posted by Ideefixe at 9:08 PM on January 30, 2016


If the best the creative mind of an artist could come up with was MAHOUTOKORO, I don't think she needs me to limit her, bro.

(In case people are reading my comments as extremely offended, I feel the need to clarify that I am somewhere between annoyed and amused, and think it's no skin off my nose if JK Rowling is determined to look like an idiot. Love Harry Potter, haven't revisited it in a while, feel a bit embarrassed for JK that these additions read like a twelve-year-old's bad fanfiction. That's all.)
posted by sunset in snow country at 9:12 PM on January 30, 2016 [17 favorites]


In what way does research limit a creative mind?
posted by Earthtopus at 9:13 PM on January 30, 2016 [6 favorites]


Why do you need regional wizard schools in the first place? You're fucking wizards! You can teleport and cast spells and shit! Surely you can use your magic chimney and/or magic teleportation boot thing to transport students from other continents to Hogwarts? Language barriers are a thing too, but surely there's a potion or a spell for that?

This conveniently allows the wizards to stay away from historically bad catastrophes like the War for Independence and the Trail of Tears, etc.
posted by axiom at 9:19 PM on January 30, 2016


Um, like f'rinstance, maybe put the school that's in "Africa" in a specific country in your little descriptive blurb? Mountains of the Moon is apparently an actual place in Uganda, so I assume that's where it is, but given how many actual humans think Africa is a country I feel JKR could have used this as a teachable moment.

Perhaps it's in the Rwenzori Mountains? That would be a pretty nice place for a wizarding school, actually. There's immense climatic variation, from tropical to alpine, there's an astonishing wealth of flora and fauna; it can give a sense of magic. Oagadu sounds an awful lot like Ouagadougou, on the other hand, which is actually the capital of Burkina Faso, which is about 3,000 miles away. Sort of like the distance between Lisbon and Finland.
posted by clockzero at 9:21 PM on January 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


traveler_, some of your headcanon lines up with what I've had in mine. I had an American wizardry school as the direct descendant of the lost University of Henrico (near present-day Richmond, VA). In my world, the school was built instead of being wiped out in 1622, but what ended up was not a university as we know it. The survivors of the 1622 attack by the Powhatan were English wizards that ended up living among the Powhatan, with wizardry skills being combined from both the European and Native American schools of thought. Because of the power inherent with wizardry of such a syncretic nature, the university sparked fear and dread among both populations, so its presence was hidden. The University of Henrico exists slightly out of time and space, but it is definitely American in nature.

(There's also some wibbly-wobbly nature going on whereas access to Henrico only came about through seemingly abandoned buildings that connected you to another place on the continent. The only two examples I have are the Moulton barn in the Grand Teton Mountains, and the California ghost town of Bodie. Enter one of those buildings, and if you happen to be in the right place, you'll be able to pass through to the university. When you leave the university grounds, you can easily end up in Wyoming, or California, or somewhere else entirely.)
posted by stannate at 9:38 PM on January 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


London the actual place seeped into Rowling's very bones, then came out through her pen, transformed into magic. Even where it's not the real place it's informed by a very deep experience with the place. Really all of the Harry Potter series is a very British story, even having the almost mandatory ebullient descriptions of food.

A sort of charmed revisioning of grounded reality is one of the cornerstones of Magical Realism, and her Harry Potter books are great at it. But I think the fear is, well, Neil Gaiman was able to write Neverwhere and American Gods. It's hard enough to really grok even two places to be able to transform them like that. And it's sounding, worryingly, like Rowling hasn't eaten and breathed enough of the truth of these other places to really write a transformation of them.
posted by traveler_ at 9:40 PM on January 30, 2016 [11 favorites]


What do you suppose the practical reason for all this might be? Maybe it's for future J.K. Rowling books, but I can't really imagine she'd be willing (or able, frankly) to transplant the same old wizard school stories into different countries. I think it's more likely for future J.K. Rowling® books and toys and shit, like she's saying, "O, btw, all this new stuff is totez legit canon kthxbye," just to lend legitimacy to future lucrative international spinoffs written by random shmoes that keep the Harry Potter brand alive and her cheques rolling in.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:50 PM on January 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's now my personal headcanon that the girls from Hausu were all students at the Japanese wizarding day school, which retroactively makes it the first Potterverse movie.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:04 PM on January 30, 2016 [16 favorites]


The Taiwanese and mainland editions have 张秋 Zhāng Qiū

that's actually pretty interesting. I may almost have to read those. otherwise it's definitely generally-irresponsibly-romanized into Chan/Chang, where it's actually more like really Jeng'/Cheng/Zhan/Zheng, yeah.
posted by dorian at 10:12 PM on January 30, 2016


Why do you need regional wizard schools in the first place? You're fucking wizards! You can teleport and cast spells and shit! Surely you can use your magic chimney and/or magic teleportation boot thing to transport students from other continents to Hogwarts? Language barriers are a thing too, but surely there's a potion or a spell for that?

Despite airplanes having been a thing for quite a while in the muggle world, most people go to post-secondary school in the country of their birth / citizenship. Wizards are shown as being subordinate to the muggle world - the Minister of Magic reports to the prime minister. So presumably wizards have some level of respect for muggle border or they have their own more-or-less-the-same borders.

And honestly, any book written by an English author is pretty much useless unless we can tell the character's moral dispositions by their accents, so translating spells are straight out.
posted by GuyZero at 10:19 PM on January 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


What do you suppose the practical reason for all this might be?

Rowling is rich, has time to kill and is the actual author of the Harry Potter books?
posted by GuyZero at 10:20 PM on January 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


otherwise it's definitely generally-irresponsibly-romanized into Chan/Chang, where it's actually more like really Jeng'/Cheng/Zhan/Zheng, yeah.

Check your Mandarin/pinyin privilege! Okay, I'm joking about that, but seriously, Chang is a common romanization of Zhang in Taiwan. In Malaysia and Singapore, the ethnic Chinese romanize their names based on their respective dialect groups, so Zhang for 張 is really rare in the region, but you get Cheong (Cantonese), Chong (Hakka) and Teoh (Teochew/Hokkien) instead.
posted by peripathetic at 10:21 PM on January 30, 2016 [9 favorites]


Yeah the Japanese "magic place"... I don't even know what to say. And then you take the romanized version of your stupid name and give it a pronunciation that wouldn't exist in Japanese... Why bother if you're not even going to try?
posted by teh_boy at 10:24 PM on January 30, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wouldn't you kinda have expected an established North American wizarding school to be somewhere the Mayan or Aztec civilizations existed? Are wizards supposed to have participated in the genocide(s)?
posted by XMLicious at 10:26 PM on January 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Cho is a viable name in Singapore and Malaysia.

Yeah, the NA school is most definitely going to get built on in the Fantastic Beasts movie.

A bunch of us who write/wrote Potterverse fic that covers Asia and the Global South were super excited over the Uagadou writing in particular because we had built this collective headcanon about wands being a colonial invention and this pretty much made our work canon.
posted by divabat at 10:37 PM on January 30, 2016 [12 favorites]


There's no magic in America. It's not a natural resource, it's an accumulated cultural artefact.
posted by Segundus at 11:05 PM on January 30, 2016 [1 favorite]


And it's sounding, worryingly, like Rowling hasn't eaten and breathed enough of the truth of these other places to really write a transformation of them.

Yeah, I think that's why I am being so knee-jerk critical. She's in the process of making a movie set in wizarding America and this is how far she's gotten with non-Hogwarts wizarding schools? Yeesh. I feel like literally every single fanfiction treatment of HP-verse foreign wizarding schools I've ever read is more exciting than these.

Just...lowering my expectations pretty drastically for Fantastic Beasts. Which is disappointing, because the premise sounded like it had potential. I really want to know about wizarding America and it makes me sad that it seems like canon wizarding America might not be very compelling.
posted by town of cats at 11:20 PM on January 30, 2016 [2 favorites]


Check your Mandarin/pinyin privilege!

lol this becomes even more hilarious since I'm not even capable of Mandarin.

(ok, no, I sort-of-am, but this basically becomes offensive from the only way I'm able to speak it.)

the only way I know how to romanize is from like Hakka and Cantonese, so, yeah, I will basically bias/mess-things-up 99% of the time.
posted by dorian at 11:26 PM on January 30, 2016


The American Continent situation is interesting.

The three most common langauges in the Americas are Spanish, English and Portuguese.

The English speakers get an English langauge school, the Portuguese get theirs, the Spanish speakers are screwed.

How could this happen? If one googles the most common language in South America, the answer is Portuguese, by a tiny margin, followed by Spanish with around 200 million speakers each. But then one would have to remember that Mexico is in North America geographically speaking, but culturally it is a Latin American country. This means there are rougly 300 million Spanish speakers in the Americas, to 200 million Portuguese.

Once again Mexicans get scrwed by being so far from God and so close to the United states.

In my head, the best schools are oral tradition in indigenous languages, and our potions do really fucking work. Just ask any muggle who's tried ayahuasca, peyote or etc....
posted by Doroteo Arango II at 11:29 PM on January 30, 2016 [11 favorites]


Going by the description and location, the Japanese magic school is influenced by the dragon palace in Urashima.

As for the name, it will always be Shiritsu Mahou Gakuen ~ Eien no Memory to me.

(There are four schools she hasn't described yet, so I'm saving my annoyance about the locations/languages until they're all revealed.)
posted by betweenthebars at 11:37 PM on January 30, 2016 [3 favorites]


You don't remember how the Pilgrim Fathers were all oppressed squibs? How the 'godless art of magic' was banned in the Constitution? How Ben Franklin said it was inherently aristocratic? How you made a particular point of exterminating Native American wizards? You've forgotten what Abraham Lincoln said about a nation that needs no magic but the honest magic of labour and the god-given fertility of the earth?

You're the land where muggles breathe free, dudes, you're Muggletonia. You've got magic schools the way you've got a royal college of heraldry.
posted by Segundus at 11:57 PM on January 30, 2016 [24 favorites]


the only way I know how to romanize is from like Hakka and Cantonese, so, yeah, I will basically bias/mess-things-up 99% of the time.

My apologies, I didn't mean to cause offence. Mandarin is an imperialistic language, and Mandarin chauvinism is very real in the Sinosphere. Since you're a non-Mandarin speaker, surely you'll see that there are many ways to romanize Chinese names and Rowling did nothing irresponsible. Ever since Harry Potter was published, I've seen so many well-intentioned but ignorant objections to Cho Chang's name, objections assuming that JK Rowling made it up because she didn't use pinyin (or Wade-Giles for that matter).
posted by peripathetic at 12:04 AM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ever since Harry Potter was published, I've seen so many well-intentioned but ignorant objections to Cho Chang's name, objections assuming that JK Rowling made it up because she didn't use pinyin (or Wade-Giles for that matter).

@peripathetic - I would be very interested if you could point to any detailed critiques of that, or if you would be interested in writing more about it. I'm someone who grew up as a barely conversational Mandarin speaker, but in America nevertheless, and I also was like, 11. No idea how to search up different viewpoints about it or had the tools or analysis about it, so I'm veeery curious.
posted by yueliang at 12:14 AM on January 31, 2016


XMLicious: Are wizards supposed to have participated in the genocide(s)?

In my aforementioned headcanon there were a small number who wanted to use their magic to support it, and another group that wanted to use magic to oppose it. Both were opposed by a larger group that wanted to avoid a wizarding war over the issue, which itself was divided between factions that believed there was a legitimate cause there but felt avoiding a war was a higher goal, and those who believed it was purely a muggle problem and wizards oughtn't get involved.

I see a long period of skirmishes, arguments, wizarding laws, lawbreaking, arguments about that, and so on. But ultimately, Rowling's stories seem to show pretty strongly that muggles shape the world and wizards just go along for the ride: muggles invent radios, wizards make magical versions of them. Muggles make national borders, wizards accept that the London-based Ministry of Magic has authority over the somewhere-in-Scotland Hogwarts. Somehow and seemingly magically, the wizarding world shadows the muggle world and reflects it as if subconsciously.

So in my version the entire multiple-century process of the Indian Genocide is a period of stymied inaction by the wizarding world that can't agree enough on what to do about it to do much of anything about it, and it just happens in the meantime. Despondency over that leads some factions to retreat into isolationism, maintaining a thread of contact with certain societies among the muggle Native communities and cutting themselves off from the rest of the wizarding world. But the majority of the North American wizarding world ended up with more of a blasé "shit happens" attitude to what they consider ancient history.
posted by traveler_ at 12:25 AM on January 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


More Chinese name pedantry, since I made a mistake the last time. :(

"Cho Chang" can't be pinyin, and "Chang" is the older Wade-Giles romanization of 张 Zhāng. I'd thought that Cho wasn't proper Wade-Giles, so it was something informal.

In fact Cho is Wade-Giles, for pinyin Zhuo. This can be a woman's name; possibilities include 卓 and 茁. The translators presumably chose 秋 Qiū as being sufficiently close in sound and having a nice meaning ('autumn').

For a Chinese school of magic, how about 杖林院 Zhànglínyuàn? This is intended to evoke 翰林院, the Hànlín Academy, but with 'forest of wands' instead of 'forest of brushes'.
posted by zompist at 12:37 AM on January 31, 2016 [9 favorites]


Martin Luther King:

In the charter of its institution, this nation set aside forever the magic that sets man above man. Let us redeem that pledge in full. Let us abjure not only the magic of the broom and the wand, but the ignoble magic of the chain and the whip.
posted by Segundus at 1:24 AM on January 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


The English speakers get an English langauge school, the Portuguese get theirs, the Spanish speakers are screwed.

I'm kind of sad that she didn't choose Castelo das Meigas (school motto: "habelas, hailas").

As for the Japanese school, it's so awfully pedestrian in its description, taking into account that she could have used Studio Ghibli tropes at least (and it's not like Miyazaki didn't do a movie about a witch that flies around on a broom) and all the anime about boarding schools EVER. It depresses me because the thing I liked most about Harry Potter 10 years ago were Japanese fanarts.

I hope they at least have a student council, because srsly.
posted by sukeban at 1:37 AM on January 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


(If someone wants to read a manga about kids in a magical school fighting demons, Blue Exorcist hits many of the notes of Harry Potter. Amusingly, they have a chapter in which the protagonists have to exorcise a school restroom that is equal parts Moaning Myrtle and Toire no Hanako-san)
posted by sukeban at 1:46 AM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


See, in Potter, magic is not meant to be taken as a straight metaphysical reality. It's merely a metaphor for the privilege bestowed by class and inherited wealth. The story relates how our hero escapes the horrible lower middle class land of three bed semis (such awful vulgar people) by being sent off to a decent boarding school. It justifies privilege by telling us that within the ruling class which has been arbitrarily handed vast power, the decent Guardian-reading Weasleys will eventually overcome the Telegraph loving Malfoys. Without the class system the world would be ruled by Dursleys.

See, the Dursleys - that's you, that is.
posted by Segundus at 2:34 AM on January 31, 2016 [26 favorites]


I see all of you people making fun of the name "Mahoutokoro" but my degree in Studying for Four Years from Learnschool University says maybe you should cut Rowling a little slack
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:34 AM on January 31, 2016 [17 favorites]


If you're interested in Indian wizarding history The Postmodern Potter Compendium's got you covered.
posted by divabat at 5:18 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I mean, British Wizarding names are equally as silly. I'm reminded of the conversation between Harry and Ron in the Half-Blood Prince:

“An Unbreakable Vow?" said Ron, looking stunned. "Nah, he can’t have.... Are you sure?"
"Yes I’m sure," said Harry. "Why, what does it mean?"
"Well, you can’t break an Unbreakable Vow..."
"I’d worked that much out for myself, funnily enough.”



I guess I just assumed that Wizarding names are amazingly literal in general. Or just dumb (Mould-on-the-Wold).
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:53 AM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


And then on Pottermore the pronunciation is "Mah-hoot-o-koh-ro," but it's not "hoo," it's "ho" as in ho ho ho. Geez.

Leviosa.
posted by radwolf76 at 7:28 AM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


It's not like the English language butchers the pronunciation of even European place names (Munich or Florence for instance), or even just makes up its own name for places (neither China nor Japan are called by those names in their respective languages). So I figure it is just an English name for the school that is poorly pronounced.
posted by Literaryhero at 7:52 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


There's no magic in America.

Google search on (harry potter castaneda don juan fanfic) returns 3000 hits.
posted by bukvich at 7:59 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


So, is "London" in the Rowling novels the same place as the actual physical city?

Not really. Taking the obvious and iconic Platform 9 3/4 the description is of Euston not Kings Cross, there's no barrier between plaforms 9 and 10 on either station, platforms being paired odd/even (and in Kings Cross 9 and 10 are in another building rather than near the main platforms), and the whole thing is generally wrong.

And "Hogwarts"? Other schools aren't sillier.
posted by Francis at 8:08 AM on January 31, 2016


While we're on the subject of "things that sound wrong", I'm still stuck on "no-maj". I can believe it for a slang term but not something official. It sounds like the sort of thing that someone who doesn't really know Americans would think Americans would say.

There's an American fannish term that corresponds to Muggle that would suit perfectly well for official terminology, and that's what I'm personally headcanoning in: "mundane".
posted by immlass at 8:20 AM on January 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


ive always gone the other way with the question of American wizards - involved in the Indian genomie? Hell yes, enthusiastic supporters of. Manifest destiny written on their hearts. The American magical schools are full of leagcy Yale alums quick to remind you they took the country by force. It's thier land to rule, everyone else just lives in it.
posted by The Whelk at 8:40 AM on January 31, 2016 [9 favorites]


I always assumed Cho Chang was Korean. Additionally, immigrant names have a pretty long history of being misspelled. Both syllables of my family name are not spelled like they are pronounced, because English doesn't have the right vowels and grandpa, who didn't speak English, guessed at the "proper" spelling. My favorite changed name is Allum-poon, 19th century Chinese immigrants to Trinidad. Unless I had been told by a descendent, I would never have guessed the name was of Chinese derivation.
posted by wobumingbai at 10:36 AM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


As a native of the western half of the Americas, I'd be way more interested to see:
-a Haida school where students learn how to work the power of totem poles and totem animals
-or an Anasazi school where the great magic of invisibility is thoroughly explored
-or a Voudon school where students get beyond dolls and needles into a true syncretic understanding of magic
-or an Aztec school where students learn about blood sacrifice magic but thoughtfully discuss the ways that it should be used in the modern era

than another US East Coast school of magic that is culturally more tied to Western Europe than the actual Americas. We have a great wealth of mythologies that would form fabulous bases for magic to be reinterpreted in a non-European lens.

In terms of the current schools, I was hella disappointed with the Africa school. Please take a look at Timbuktu and tell me that you don't see that being an awesome school of magic. And over the years, with no International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy yet in place (Timbuktu is way older than 1689), the wizards there have been preserving Muggle and magical history alike. They are under threat now in the Muggle world but ancient protections far older than Hogwarts' four founders keep the magical core of the school intact.
posted by librarylis at 10:50 AM on January 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


While we're on the subject of "things that sound wrong", I'm still stuck on "no-maj". I can believe it for a slang term but not something official.

Well yeah. Everybody knows the correct term would be "no-majayjay".

Seriously, didn't Rowling do ANY research?
posted by happyroach at 11:27 AM on January 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


As a native of the western half of the Americas, I'd be way more interested to see:
-a Haida school where students learn how to work the power of totem poles and totem animals
-or an Anasazi school where the great magic of invisibility is thoroughly explored
-or a Voudon school where students get beyond dolls and needles into a true syncretic understanding of magic
-or an Aztec school where students learn about blood sacrifice magic but thoughtfully discuss the ways that it should be used in the modern era


Gross. I mean, yeah, maybe it would be neat to see the old "ooga booga" magical primitive tropes of RKO serials get the intelligent postmodern subversion treatment, but...J.K. Rowling.

Also, I can't really see a way around the very real and very recent and very terrible history of Native people in religious boarding schools.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:35 AM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


> If someone wants to read a manga about kids in a magical school fighting demons, Blue Exorcist hits many of the notes of Harry Potter.

For something that depicts Japanese magic, more specifically Onmyōdō, I'd suggest Tokyo Ravens. The rivalry between famous historical onmyōji Abe no Seimei and Ashiya Doman is a major element of the universe. And no, the students at Onmyo Academy do not use wands or brooms. Shikigami of various forms, including a dragon, and ofuda feature prominently.
posted by needled at 12:58 PM on January 31, 2016


I grew up with CLAMP's Tokyo Babylon, but Inariya Fusanosuke has also written a rather confusing BL-ish manga or two about Abeno Seimei and other hijinks. I'm on team onmyouji too :D
posted by sukeban at 1:17 PM on January 31, 2016


I'd say that Kekkaishi is another worthy series about kids doing Japanese magic stuff (lots of shikigami and inugami too), but I lost track of the manga during a particularly long narrative arc and didn't finish reading it.
posted by sukeban at 1:20 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Evidently in Dutch the name of Hogwart's is ‘Zweinstein modified from zwijnsteen = "pig rock" while simultaneously referencing Albert Einstein’.
posted by XMLicious at 1:32 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


It also occurs to me that Cambridge and Oxford both have incredibly stupid literal names. Not even counting names like New College and University College. Maybe charitably that is part of the inspiration?
posted by vogon_poet at 2:20 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Someone should let her know that her British school actually means Hog Wart, which is like a pimple thing on a pig animal.

No one's criticizing "Magic School" for being a set of nouns, they're saying it's a deeply unimaginative name for a magic school. Hogwarts is magical-sounding because it evokes English culture associating witchcraft with warts and odd animals - eye of newt, etc - and gives you a pleasantly mysterious and curmudgeonly feeling.

"Mahoutokoro" is magic-sounding only to people who don't speak Japanese, and to whom anything in Japanese ergo feels interesting and mysterious. It's the literary equivalent of this Japanese tattoo. It might look really cool if you don't speak Japanese... but it actually just says "this is a tattoo."

If you give the Japanese character in your novel that tattoo, or give the Japanese school in your book that name, of course actual Japanese people are gonna be like, the fuck?
posted by Solon and Thanks at 3:25 PM on January 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


I'm not the only one that keeps reading that as "Livermorny", right?
posted by madajb at 4:00 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


OK, I think I see the problem here - people are thinking we're complaining that it's literal in the sense that it is exactly what the name describes. But it's not that, it's that it's a literal translation from one language to another, like you would get from a dictionary or Google Translate, without taking into account idiom, nuance, sound, or usage. It sounds very clumsy and off. "Magic Castle" (Mahoushiro) is an example of an equally literal name that would have sounded somewhat plausible, at least to this gaij.
posted by sunset in snow country at 4:09 PM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


While there are magical schools rumoured to be in India, they clearly haven't signed up to the International Gematriac Certification School Examination (iGCSE) standard, and therefore subscribe to the local version. That said, there are many tutoring schools in Kota that coach you for admissions at Hogwarts and other international magic schools.
posted by the cydonian at 5:08 PM on January 31, 2016


"Mahoutokoro" is magic-sounding only to people who don't speak Japanese, and to whom anything in Japanese ergo feels interesting and mysterious.

The least she could have done is call it "Mahouyama"...which she could place the next valley over from "Ninjayama". They could have rides, concession stands, etc..

It's the literary equivalent of this Japanese tattoo. It might look really cool if you don't speak Japanese... but it actually just says "this is a tattoo."

I would totally get that tattoo. Of course I also want to get a tattoo that would be a square of blue ink, with yellow block letters spelling out TATTOO. I'm just odd that way.
posted by happyroach at 7:36 PM on January 31, 2016


vogon_poet: "It also occurs to me that Cambridge and Oxford both have incredibly stupid literal names. Not even counting names like New College and University College. Maybe charitably that is part of the inspiration?"

Yes, but they have stupidly literal names in the British style. It's why you wouldn't blink an eye to find a British town called "Moorplace" but you would think it really strange to find a place called "Moorlocation".

"Maho Gakuen" (Literally "Magic School") would be stupidly literal but also completely natural.

(Also, "Maho" means "magic" and "Tokoro" means "place", but when you put "tokoro" after something in a compound word it becomes "dokoro", so even if you were to go with "tokoro", you should end up with "Mahodokoro")
posted by Bugbread at 10:46 PM on January 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


@qcubed, I would be interested if JKR really was trying to do that, but I have a feeling it might be more her white gaze. The color white has meaning outside of white people, and I think there's a stronger argument that JKR's mixing together the concept that 'white = death' or 'white = ghost' with some ideas of a 'shame culture' that Japan has. I'm not even sure if shame culture is the proper way to translate it, or if it's an actual concept in Japan, my own NA-centric gaze is making it hard to see. Interesting link below I found, when trying to find more clear information on this:

What is the white kimono Japanese ghosts wear?

^The above link reminds me very much of the great work being done by the ATLA fandom in pointing out great cultural accuracies, while also singling out the awful movie adaptation, The Last Airbender. The original show paid careful attention to the 'left over right' folding of the robes, while the movie poster showed 'right over left' aka the method of folding robes for the deceased.
posted by yueliang at 10:46 PM on January 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


@Bugbread - thank you, I think I'm gonna name the next school in my never-to-be-written fanfiction as "Moorlocation," where all the wizards practice echolocation and tamper with old GPS devices.
posted by yueliang at 10:51 PM on January 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


While I'd love to believe JKR was commenting on whiteness in the way qcubed says, I suspect it's actually that somewhere she heard that brides in China wear red instead of white because white is unlucky in "Asia". And the color-changing robes was a bit too "karate-school belt colors" for me. I was wincing and gritting my teeth thinking, oh god, please don't let the most awesome robe be black.
posted by town of cats at 10:56 PM on January 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


You're the land where muggles breathe free, dudes, you're Muggletonia. You've got magic schools the way you've got a royal college of heraldry.

In my own head canon, there exists a secret government branch, the Magic Affairs Bureau, which was a descendant of the Puritan witch hunters of yesteryear. A devilish combination of Puritans, Texas Rangers, and other government forces. Dedicated, until recent years, to the death of any wizard on the North American continent.

Witches, even modern times, don't seem that reactive to small arms fire. "They have a muggle version of a wand!" How cute.
posted by zabuni at 10:57 PM on January 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


@qcubed - it took me a few reads before I got what you were doing, but HAHAHA when I got it, for a second I thought you were FOR JKR's white gaze. Now I get how Stephen Colbert got invited to be the speaker for the White House Correspondent's Dinner - it's all a sleight of hand.
posted by yueliang at 11:17 PM on January 31, 2016


@qcubed - I have so much headcanon to share in reply, but sleep beckons. I will return!
posted by yueliang at 11:35 PM on January 31, 2016


I'm pretty sure I read somewhere (will have to see if I can dig it up later) that the 11 schools are the great wizarding schools and that there are smaller, less prestigious ones that people could go to based on geographic and language preferences. My guess is that the Salem Institute isn't one of the great schools.

From about halfway through Deathly Hallows through present day, every HP related writing JKR has produced reads like fanfic. I think she enjoys releasing bits of information online so she can watch the reaction.
posted by toomanycurls at 1:21 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


So, not being a huge Potter fan, but always curious about universe building, do real world events affect the magic world?

I ask, because in China's instance the whole country was upended in the last 150 years by various events. So, would something like the fall of the Qing Dynasty or the Cultural Revolution have any affect on the hypothetical Chinese school of magic?
posted by FJT at 2:09 AM on February 1, 2016


FJT: In one of the books the Minister of Magic talks to the British Prime Minister, and JK Rowling has said that the rise of Grindlewald (the series's version of Hitler pre-Voldemort) coinciding with the rise of Muggle Hitler and WW2 was deliberate.
posted by divabat at 2:32 AM on February 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Pottermore is a perfect, wonderful gift to fanfic writers everywhere to leap off what is now canon, to create new headcanons. Do the students of Mahoutokoro play on go board where you have soldiers dressed in black and white fighting to the death? Do their shogi boards have cannons that fire only when there are footsoldiers in front?

Go is so old-fashioned. These days, Japanese wizarding kids just summon their patron-emon and battle them in gyms. It's super effective!
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:05 AM on February 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


If, when writing, Rowling ever has a choice between creating a serious fantasy world and inserting a goofy childish joke or pun she's going to go with the joke every time. It's just how the Potterverse works. The werewolves are basically named Wolfy McWolferson, the professional civil servants tasked with keeping nonmagical humans unaware of the existence of a hidden population of thousands of wizards don't know what electricity is or how to dress properly, and the bank has a roller coaster in it for no obvious reason. For anyone who wants a more consistently realized secondary world there's headcanon and fanfiction.

Now, let me tell you about the magical school hidden beneath The Cloisters in Manhattan, and how it ties into my (alas unwritten) Hamilton/Sleepy Hollow/Harry Potter crossover fanfic idea.
posted by Wretch729 at 6:49 AM on February 1, 2016 [9 favorites]


You Can't Tip a Buick's excellent comment on storytelling vs. worldbuilding is apt here as well.
posted by Etrigan at 6:54 AM on February 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


I should clarify that I'm not saying there aren't meaningful messages/themes embedded in the text of the Potter books! The silly names don't take anything away from reading the social issues faced by Potterverse werewolves as an analogy to the AIDS epidemic for instance. I'm just saying the worldbuilding is consistently silly, prioritizing comic relief and satirizing British culture and leaving the serious stuff to the main plot. (And thanks Etrigan for pointing out YCTAB's comment which I hadn't seen.)
posted by Wretch729 at 7:02 AM on February 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


These days, Japanese wizarding kids just summon their patron-emon and battle them in gyms. It's super effective!

Surely you mean oversoul.

(Shaman King was an interesting manga, but with awful ethnic stereotypes everywhere and a tournament arc so stretched I lost interest halfway through)
posted by sukeban at 7:33 AM on February 1, 2016


Let's not forget that L’Academie Beauxbatons is French for “Prettysticks Academy.” I think Rowling was going for “beautiful wands,” but a magic wand in French is une baguette magique (which always makes me giggle even more than “prettysticks” because I cannot stop myself from envisioning wizards waving loaves of bread).
posted by mbrubeck at 9:53 AM on February 1, 2016 [9 favorites]


I mean, come on. Rowling named a House Elf Dobby, a set of brothers after stars (the one named after the Dog Star...turned into a DOG as an animagus), and the Professor who was a werewolf was named Lupin for heaven's sake. The jokey naming thing isn't a new thing for her.
posted by cooker girl at 10:08 AM on February 1, 2016


The jokey naming thing isn't a new thing for her.

The elf and werewolf communities really fell down, not calling her out for those.
posted by Etrigan at 10:13 AM on February 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


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