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I have a couple of Japanese novels and textbooks that have the kanji 上 ＆ 下 on them. Now, intuitively, I would say that the 下 kanji would be the book I start with. Whereas the 上 would be the one I finish up with. But I'm not sure.
This is an example of what I'm asking about:
Where do I begin? I appreciate your help.
The opposite is true: 上篇{じょうへん} is the first volume and 下篇{げへん} is the second, corresponding to the traditional writing direction.
If there's a third volume, they will be labelled 上、中、下 in order.
I often find that novels that I'm familiar with here in the US are split up in to 2 or 3 parts, leading to these 上 and 下 volumes. Patrick Rothfuss has a great blog entry as to why this happens. His example involves German to English translations, which he says are 30% - 40% longer, and I believe the same is true for Japanese translations. Once books get to a certain size, they get really hard to bind durably so that they don't physically fall apart.
