I am having immense difficulty in getting the best spelling of the surname of an Avar warlord who was assassinated in Baku in 1997.
So far I’ve been told Antsukski, Ansukhskii, Ansuthsky, Antsusky, and various modifications on the theme.
Of course the problem is that the Avar alphabet is being transliterated either into the similar Russian alphabet and then into the quite different English alphabet or else coming into English via the completely inappropriate Azeri transliteration.
I thought to myself, I’ll try Googling to see if I can identify an academic expert on the Avar language (or магIарул мацI as they like to call it). Found one who looked ideal, a Dutch woman working in Berlin. But on closer examination she turns out to be no use for my purposes because she died last year.
Not that many people will notice.
I guess it depends on how fast the Japanese males die off – if fast the Dutch at Dejima will be both worried by the disappearance of the Japanese guarding the bridge to Nagasaki, and would in time (I think) start pushing for a more ‘deeper’ trade relationship. That would have a knock-on effect with the other trading companies in the area.
A slow die off, and by slow I mean at least a few years so that the Dutch aren’t tipped off by either the smell of rotting corpses or mass funeral pyres could be do-able. Guards could then be replaced either by some surviving males, or by female impersonators.
However, there was also trade with China, Korea and the Ryūkyū Kingdom – so I guess it would be unlikely that all three of them would not notice the changes. They, and the Dutch would also definitely notice the impact on trade. At the very least piracy and raiding would occur.
If the plague is racial in it’s make-up, as suggested by the plague not affecting other countries, then the Ainu of Hokkaido, and those still possessing significant Ainu genes might be a significant problem for the Japanese.