Talk:Horizon:Volume 6B Chapter 42

You sure he's using quinces? European quinces are at least fist-sized, and that's by european standards, so by japanese standards they are way larger than a fist. Even going off-tangent and selecting flowering quinces (Chaenomeles), not only they are all from East Asia (China and Japan), the japanese variant is the smaller of the 3 species in that genus (3-4 cm) and the other variety cultivated in Japan is still 5-6 cm, while the chinese-only variant is the largest one with a pear-shaped (different from the apple-like fruits of the other species) fruit of 10-15 cm by 6-9 cm, and all of the westen-based hybrid cultivars have genome from this last one, so their fruit is larger than the japanese flowering quinces. Regular quinces are 7-12 cm by 6-9 cm (just slightly shorter on average than the only flowering quinces not present in Japan), while the chinese quince (Pseudocydonia) is the largest of them all at 12-17 cm long ovoid apple-thingy. The only explanation I see is that both Chaenomeles japonicas fruit (3-4 cm) and Psudocydonia sinensiss fruit are called 木瓜, but the latter (the way larger one) is also called 和木瓜 (和 often meaning "japanese" as a prefix); the issue here is that the first is read as "boke" while the second as "mokka", and the adittion of the 和 prefix is there to distinguish the chinese quince from the papaya, also called 木瓜 (mokka) among other names, but which is still larger than the "japanese" variant, at 15-45 cm by 10-30 cm... All in all there's no way that a "Eastern quince" is bigger than a "Western quince".

Going by "loquat", however, we get that loquats (Eriobotrya japonic') are plants from East Asia (Chiuna, Korea, parts of India and, as its denomination indicates, Japan) with fruits 3-5 cm long (not quite fist-sized and closer to the size given by Mito-maman) also known as "japanese medlar", and if we check what a "medlar" is, we get that the name is Mespilus germanica (clearly western) and has edible fruits 2-3 cm long, so in this case the eastern species would be larger.

Searching around a bit more, we get that loquat is 枇杷 (biwa), quince is 花梨 (karin) (the fruits are called マルメロ "marmelo" for western quince, [和]木瓜 "[wa]mokke" for chinese quince, [草]木瓜 "[kusa]bokke" for the japanese flowering quince, [真/唐/白/緋/淀]木瓜 "[ma/kara/shiro/hi/yodo]bokke" for different cultivars of chinese flowering quince, and japanese people don't seem to be aware of the west china flowering quince) and medlar is 西洋花梨 (seiyoukarin), which is literally "western karin".

So basically, they are not talking about "quinces", but about "karins", which for those from Hexagone Française meant "medlar" while for those from Musashi meant "quince"; the author, however, seems to not have known that there are big-sized quinces in the west, to the point that the true quince has a portuguese name in japanese.--Kemm (talk)