This site holds the English translation of Tetsugaku. This English translation was undertaken by me, Natalie Arnold, better known around the internet as Nanani. The site was designed and created by Ilán Terrell.

As of March 19th 2006, this project is complete. Every chapter of the book is availble in English for your reading pleasure. Thank you to all those who helped and supported me along the way.

Before jumping in and reading everything, take note of these RULES :

1)I am not in any way associated with tetsuya, and this is not an official translation in any sense.

2)I am doing this of my own initiative, without checking or assitance, which means there may be mistakes left in the work here and there. Please be understanding.

3) NO STEALING! This is a time-consuming project that I am putting a lot of work into, so do NOT steal my work.

4)Do not repost these translations anywhere. Ever.

5) Lastly, please support tetsuya and buy the book yourself, even if it’s just to look at the pretty pictures inside. Notably, it is available from Amazon.co.jp.

This website was put together and maintained by Ilán Terrell. He also pays for the hosting. Do thank him some time.

The graphics, including the banner above, was made by Myriam. Thank her, since without her services this site would be much uglier. Needless to say, the graphics are not to be taken either.

All the images from the book itself, from the covers through the photo galleries, were scanned by macgirl_13. Many thanks to her for letting me use the scans.

The book you are about to read is really a collection of interviews. Therefore, they are written as conversations. As such, the level of language sometimes slips into the less formal, all the way down into Osaka-ben, tetsuya’s hometown dialect. I’m trying to keep this translation as true to the original as possible, while not making it sound too weird, but it may help to keep the above in mind while reading this.

Writing tetsu in lowercase is not a typo. That’s how he wanted his name written at the time this book was released. Same applies for writting TETSU69 in capitals.

The title, Tetsugaku, is a bit of a play on words. It is written with two kanji. The first, tetsu, besides being in his name, also means philosophy. The second, gaku, means the study of something. Taken together, they are usually read to mean the study of philosophy. The English subtitle of the book reads tetsu’s philosophy, but it could also be taken to mean ‘a study of tetsu’ which is just as telling.

The book was published in March 2004, just before the release of SMILE. This will be useful to know when he mentions things about the upcoming album.

The content has not been updated to reflect his name change. It will remain as printed, with his old tetsu/TETSU69 name.

Occasionaly, the subject will mention something that non-Japanese people aren’t likely to know about. To the best of my ability, I will footnote these mentions to clear things up.

Your humble translator is Canadian, so expect Canadian spellings throughout this translation.