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Measuring Time in Tellius: The Other Mysterious "Mark"
Perhaps you are familiar with the series's odd way of measuring time within a day. It does not come up often, and although I thought I saw it in other games, I was only able to search up examples in Radiant Dawn. This is the "mark."
Chapter 1-2, Pre-Battle:
Chapter 1-2, Post-Battle:
Chapter 2-F, Post-Battle:
As an English-speaking reader, perhaps you'd think "Oh, marks, like marks on a sundial. It's like an hour. Sure, I get it."
But in fact, the use of "marks" is wholly inappropriate in the English script.
You see, the "mark" (刻) was an actual unit of time used in antiquity in East Asia. It was invented in China where it was defined as one hundredth of a day, and then the concept migrated over into Japan where it meant different lengths of time depending on the time period, eventually falling out of use in the Meiji era under the influence of Westernization.
In other words, in the original script, it served as a member of a "rustic" vocabulary appropriate for tales set in the Olde Tymes, just like the use of the honorific 殿, used for feudal lords in the days of the samurai.
"But marks on a sundial!" you say. "It's plausible!" Yeah, in an abstract way. It's easy to make sense of in your head, which is probably why the localizers shrugged and used it.
In reality "hour" and its cousins were already used as a measurement of time in the western world by the Middle Ages1 (even if it didn't necessarily mean the precise length of time that it does today). And even before the Middle Ages, in Ancient Rome, they called these marks on the sundial... hora. In fact, Western antiquity was (compared to the wild variations in Japanese timekeeping) remarkably consistent about dividing up the sunny day into 12 units, with Egypt and Mesopotamia also deciding on the 12-hour convention. They even split these hours into 60 subunits, like minutes. (Perhaps this shouldn't be as surprising as it is, because Babylon and the civilizations thereabouts generally understood numbers in groups of 60.)
So ye olde knights in ye olde Middle Ages measured time in ... hours. (And minutes. And seconds. Although most of our idioms like "wait a second" are probably much newer.)
Now that it's clear that a "mark" is a different unit of time, and not just olde speake for "hour", you might be wondering how long a "mark" is, anyway.
Well... remember when I said it meant different lengths of time depending on the time period? Yeah...
According to Japanese Wikipedia:
If you're wondering why there's both a 48 system and a 36 system, they both essentially come from a division of a full day into 12 parts based upon the 12 eastern astrological signs. Then it was a question of whether to divide those units into 3 or 4 parts.
So, which one is the "mark" used in Tellius? Or did they merely use the word in place of "hours"?
It's hard to tell from the examples above, but here's one more that only appeared in the extended script.
Chapter 2-F, after starting battle:
Considering that medieval battles only lasted a few hours to begin with, surely she doesn't mean hours. (The Crimean Royal Knights arrive on the 8th turn of this chapter.)
Meanwhile, the "half-mark" of time given by the Crimean Rebel seems too short using the Chinese 100-mark system--that's a little more than 7 minutes. Is that even enough time to unlock Duke Felirae's chains and walk him out of the castle?
There probably isn't enough evidence to say definitively whether Radiant Dawn uses the 30-minute or 40-minute system.
If I had to guess, however, I'd say we're in the 36-mark 40-minute system. Why? Because of this line:
Remember, we got to 36 marks by dividing up a larger unit into 3 pieces. Under the 36-mark system, "3 marks" is nice and round, forming one zodiac-hour--sort of like how you'd sooner tell someone to meet you in "two hours" rather than "an hour and 45 minutes." Meanwhile, "4 marks" seems to be unattested in the script.
Mind you, this is a weak argument because that line by Micaiah is also the only place we see "3 marks". Also, if she were using the 48-mark system, the difference between 3 marks (an hour and a half) and 4 marks (2 hours) is large enough that she could be just choosing to say "an hour and a half." But it's all I've got to work with, considering the relatively small difference between the 36-mark and 48-mark systems compared to the fuzzy sense of time we can glean from the script.
So, there you have it. A mark is a unit of time somewhere around 30 to 40 minutes. In our world, this unit of measurement used to represent this length of time is found strictly in pre-Westernization Japan.
Thanks to the localization declining to interfere2, it is also apparently how they keep time in Tellius.
1 By the way, this is a good example to show that if you ever think "such-and-such is universal because even the Ancient Romans did it!" you may want to consider checking what Ancient China did. Our modern western culture inherits a lot of stuff from ancient western civilizations, so it'd be more accurate to call parts of our cultural inheritance "old" or "timeless" than "universal."
2 "But Ammie, you usually bash them for making too many changes!" I know, right!?
By the way, if you know other places in the Fire Emblem script that refer to a "mark" as a measurement of time, I'd be interested to have those examples.
ETA:
12/14/17 - With thanks to Glueblade: The German version rephrases two of these examples ("It won't be long until we get to Kisca" / "We'll rendezvous at Kunu swamp when the sun is above the horizon") and changes "You have half a mark!" to "You have an hour!"
Chapter 1-2, Pre-Battle:
| Character | Localized | Japanese |
|---|---|---|
| Nolan: | Just a quick half-mark, and we'll be in Kisca. I'd like to stock up there, but... | [ノイス] あと半刻も歩けばキスカの町だ。 食料なんかを 調達しときたいところだが……▼ |
Chapter 1-2, Post-Battle:
| Character | Localized | Japanese |
|---|---|---|
| Micaiah: | Let's rendezvous at Kunu Swamp in three marks' time. | [ミカヤ] …３刻後に… クヌ沼で落ち合いましょう…▼ |
Chapter 2-F, Post-Battle:
| Character | Localized | Japanese |
|---|---|---|
| Crimean Rebel: | You have half a mark! If the duke is not released by then, the girl dies! | [クリミア反乱兵] 半刻待つ！！ それまでに公を解放しなければ… 女を殺す！！▼ |
As an English-speaking reader, perhaps you'd think "Oh, marks, like marks on a sundial. It's like an hour. Sure, I get it."
But in fact, the use of "marks" is wholly inappropriate in the English script.
You see, the "mark" (刻) was an actual unit of time used in antiquity in East Asia. It was invented in China where it was defined as one hundredth of a day, and then the concept migrated over into Japan where it meant different lengths of time depending on the time period, eventually falling out of use in the Meiji era under the influence of Westernization.
In other words, in the original script, it served as a member of a "rustic" vocabulary appropriate for tales set in the Olde Tymes, just like the use of the honorific 殿, used for feudal lords in the days of the samurai.
"But marks on a sundial!" you say. "It's plausible!" Yeah, in an abstract way. It's easy to make sense of in your head, which is probably why the localizers shrugged and used it.
In reality "hour" and its cousins were already used as a measurement of time in the western world by the Middle Ages1 (even if it didn't necessarily mean the precise length of time that it does today). And even before the Middle Ages, in Ancient Rome, they called these marks on the sundial... hora. In fact, Western antiquity was (compared to the wild variations in Japanese timekeeping) remarkably consistent about dividing up the sunny day into 12 units, with Egypt and Mesopotamia also deciding on the 12-hour convention. They even split these hours into 60 subunits, like minutes. (Perhaps this shouldn't be as surprising as it is, because Babylon and the civilizations thereabouts generally understood numbers in groups of 60.)
So ye olde knights in ye olde Middle Ages measured time in ... hours. (And minutes. And seconds. Although most of our idioms like "wait a second" are probably much newer.)
Now that it's clear that a "mark" is a different unit of time, and not just olde speake for "hour", you might be wondering how long a "mark" is, anyway.
Well... remember when I said it meant different lengths of time depending on the time period? Yeah...
According to Japanese Wikipedia:
- In the Tembun era (1532-1555 AD), 100 marks for a full night and day were used by calendrical scholars. (Since this is so specific, I suspect that this was done purely to be compatible with the work of Chinese astronomers.) That works out to 1 mark = a little less than 15 minutes. Unhelpfully, the use of 100 marks for sunny part of the day has also been attested.
- For some unspecified length of time, 48 marks for a full night and day were used. That works out to 1 mark = 30 minutes. Wikipedia says that it became clear in the Muromachi period (1333-1573 AD) that the measurement of these marks varied with the seasons, so presumably this system was predominanty in use before the Muromachi period and during it.
- And finally, another division of 36 marks for a full night and day was used, apparently in concurrence with the 48-mark system because there were longer names used to differentiate the two. This would work out to 1 mark = 40 minutes.
If you're wondering why there's both a 48 system and a 36 system, they both essentially come from a division of a full day into 12 parts based upon the 12 eastern astrological signs. Then it was a question of whether to divide those units into 3 or 4 parts.
So, which one is the "mark" used in Tellius? Or did they merely use the word in place of "hours"?
It's hard to tell from the examples above, but here's one more that only appeared in the extended script.
Chapter 2-F, after starting battle:
| Character | Japanese | My Rough Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Marcia: | 数刻後には、王宮騎士団が この砦に到着します！ | In several marks, the Royal Knights will arrive at this fort! |
Considering that medieval battles only lasted a few hours to begin with, surely she doesn't mean hours. (The Crimean Royal Knights arrive on the 8th turn of this chapter.)
Meanwhile, the "half-mark" of time given by the Crimean Rebel seems too short using the Chinese 100-mark system--that's a little more than 7 minutes. Is that even enough time to unlock Duke Felirae's chains and walk him out of the castle?
There probably isn't enough evidence to say definitively whether Radiant Dawn uses the 30-minute or 40-minute system.
If I had to guess, however, I'd say we're in the 36-mark 40-minute system. Why? Because of this line:
| Character | Localized | Japanese |
|---|---|---|
| Micaiah: | Let's rendezvous at Kunu Swamp in three marks' time. | [ミカヤ] …３刻後に… クヌ沼で落ち合いましょう…▼ |
Remember, we got to 36 marks by dividing up a larger unit into 3 pieces. Under the 36-mark system, "3 marks" is nice and round, forming one zodiac-hour--sort of like how you'd sooner tell someone to meet you in "two hours" rather than "an hour and 45 minutes." Meanwhile, "4 marks" seems to be unattested in the script.
Mind you, this is a weak argument because that line by Micaiah is also the only place we see "3 marks". Also, if she were using the 48-mark system, the difference between 3 marks (an hour and a half) and 4 marks (2 hours) is large enough that she could be just choosing to say "an hour and a half." But it's all I've got to work with, considering the relatively small difference between the 36-mark and 48-mark systems compared to the fuzzy sense of time we can glean from the script.
So, there you have it. A mark is a unit of time somewhere around 30 to 40 minutes. In our world, this unit of measurement used to represent this length of time is found strictly in pre-Westernization Japan.
Thanks to the localization declining to interfere2, it is also apparently how they keep time in Tellius.
1 By the way, this is a good example to show that if you ever think "such-and-such is universal because even the Ancient Romans did it!" you may want to consider checking what Ancient China did. Our modern western culture inherits a lot of stuff from ancient western civilizations, so it'd be more accurate to call parts of our cultural inheritance "old" or "timeless" than "universal."
2 "But Ammie, you usually bash them for making too many changes!" I know, right!?
By the way, if you know other places in the Fire Emblem script that refer to a "mark" as a measurement of time, I'd be interested to have those examples.
ETA:
12/14/17 - With thanks to Glueblade: The German version rephrases two of these examples ("It won't be long until we get to Kisca" / "We'll rendezvous at Kunu swamp when the sun is above the horizon") and changes "You have half a mark!" to "You have an hour!"
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