I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 148: Teacher Beichuan, please don't let everyone forget us

When the suicide notes and autopsy reports of Tomomi Muramatsu and Rinko Matsubara were sent to him, Kitagawa Shusai finally understood what they had been through in the past two years.

In fact, middle-aged people of their age have always been the main group engaging in extramarital affairs in the post-bubble era.

This question has to start from the background of the times.

The people who are now in their forties and fifties were born just after Japan's defeat in the war.

Their childhoods were mostly spent in poverty and pain.

In order to offset the huge economic impact of the defeat, these people had to work hard for the country in their twenties and thirties. They were called "Showa men" and were passionate and enterprising, but they also had many psychological problems due to the high-intensity work.

After the Plaza Accord in 89, Japan entered a bubble era that shocked the whole world. With the rapid economic development, the per capita wealth increased dozens of times. At that time, they were in their prime and held senior positions in various companies, and happened to reap the most abundant dividends of the bubble era.

They work selflessly when they are young and have financial freedom in middle age, but the price they pay is that their marriage is basically arranged, and their personal emotional life and spiritual world are extremely empty.

Then no one expected that the prosperous bubble, like a fragile dream, burst within a few years.

They, who originally had high net worth assets and made large investments, have become the biggest victims.

In recent years, the number of unemployed people in Japan has increased, and work has failed to bring people a sense of security. Men have begun to bring their emotions into their marriage life, resulting in a greater proportion of sexless marriages in Japanese families. Some women who have not received comfort in their marriage life have also begun to enter society.

It can be said that Tomomi Muramatsu and Rinko Matsubara are the epitome of the gender dynamics of middle-aged Japanese couples.

At first it may have been just a brief moment of pleasure, but gradually the two found the long-lost sense of love and marriage in each other.

There are still countless such "couples" in Japanese society today, but most of them have been living together due to the huge cost of divorce, or like "Hatsu" and Shimamoto in "Border", they finally live happily and forget each other.

If Kodansha had not become the last straw that broke the camel's back for Muramatsu Tomosuke, they probably would not have made up their minds so quickly and embarked on a path of no return.

Judging from the suicide notes they left for Kitagawa Hide, things had come to this point because they underestimated the price of "giving up everything in pursuit of love."

"Teacher Kitagawa, do you know? The moment I put the divorce agreement into the mailbox, I felt like I had unloaded a huge burden, with an unprecedented sense of relief.

In any case, I did break free from the shackles of family and became a free bachelor again.

From now on, Rinko and I can go anywhere arm in arm where no one knows us, without having to worry about being pointed at.

But only now, as I write this letter to you, do I understand.

After gaining unlimited freedom, I also completely lost everything I had in the past - my wife, children, parents, relatives and friends.

For the first time, I gained freedom, but also for the first time, I felt constantly alienated and abandoned by society.

Rinko was also abandoned by everyone.

We thought this new life would be happy, but when Rinko's father was going to hold a 49-day memorial service and her mother didn't even agree to let her go home to visit the grave, we suddenly realized that in the eyes of others, we had already committed an unforgivable sin. "

Kitagawa Hide held Pete and continued to read the long suicide note. Combined with the cold autopsy report beside him, he seemed to be able to see the feelings of the two when they died.

They are happy, they are confused, they are at a loss.
It is not as easy as they imagined to completely break away from their past life and start a new life under huge financial pressure and sense of gap.

After the initial happiness faded, long-lasting pain came quietly.

Muramatsu Tomoshi soon could not stand the work at Kyoeisha and resolutely chose to resign.

In his description, it was like someone who originally lived in a bustling metropolis, waking up one day to find that he would have to stay forever in a mountainous rural area where there were no flush toilets, but only dry toilets everywhere.

After leaving their jobs, the two stayed in the house from morning till night, slept whenever they wanted, and sometimes even forgot to eat.

When he wakes up in the morning, he always subconsciously wants to go to work, but after a while he remembers that he doesn't need to go.

Every time this happened, Muramatsu Tomoshi felt deeply the joy of freedom, but in an instant he was filled with the loneliness of being abandoned by society.

Every morning, when he looked out the window at the crowds of people rushing to the subway station to go to work, his heart would be filled with anxiety.

No matter what, as long as you join that torrent, at least you can ensure that your family will have enough food and clothing.

Only then did he realize the magnitude of what he had lost.

During the peaceful yet uneasy days, the two continued to live their lives as usual, but gradually they discovered that an emotion arose in their hearts that absolutely should not exist.

"We regret it. Teacher Kitagawa, within just one week of leaving Tokyo, we both felt a hint of regret."

Kitagawa Hide silently read all the contents of the two suicide notes. He was overwhelmed with emotion and didn't know what to say.

In his previous life, when he was a graduate student, the housing prices next door fell from a high point, and a terrible plague swept the world. During those years, Kitagawa Hide first saw how wonderful the world was and how magical society was.

When he was in high school, the price of housing in his hometown was only three to five thousand yuan per square meter, but his parents felt that he would definitely go to a big city to work hard in the future, so there was no need to buy a house in his small county town.

Then when he went to college, housing prices soared to more than 10,000 yuan per square meter, which was already unaffordable for Beichuan Xiu's family. But his parents still had the same logic: there was no need to buy a house because it was not worth it.

Then, before he went to graduate school, housing prices soared to 18,000 yuan per square meter. Those who bought houses became rich instantly, earning more money than most people could earn in their entire lifetime just by buying a house.

Housing prices in big cities are even more outrageous.
At this time, no one expected that a plague would cause the economy to suddenly fall from its peak.

When Kitagawa Hide came to his senses, he found that he, a poor guy who didn't catch up with the era of buying houses, had escaped by luck. Instead, those who were still hoping for rising housing prices, or those who had been hoarding houses and were only ready to sell them now, began to line up on the rooftop.

After this experience, Kitagawa quickly adapted to post-bubble Japan.

The economy is bad, society is generally sluggish, there are all kinds of messy contradictions and pressures that are suffocating, and there were also cults causing chaos before.

He had never felt much about it, and had never imagined that such a society could cause such a terrible blow to contemporary Japanese.

It's true that you never know what the straw that breaks the camel's back will be.

Kitagawa Hide thinks that the love suicides of Muramatsu Tomoshi and Matsubara Rinko were actually more because they found that the price of pursuing so-called pure love was too high and they could not afford it, so they began to regret the sunk costs and finally went down the path of no return.

It's pitiful, regrettable, lamentable, sad and hateful.

If they could call him first, Kitagawa Hide would definitely tell them.

There is nothing in life that cannot be overcome, but once you die, you are really dead, and there is no possibility of coming back.

Kitagawa Hide made no comment on their affairs, saying that extramarital affairs themselves are a challenge to public order and morality.

To people outside the circle, they deserve to die, but to themselves, they just want to pursue pure love.

It is true that the two of them did a lot of outrageous things that hurt others.

But as a spectator, whether you criticize or agree with them, just keep it in your heart. If you insist on judging them from a moral high ground, then no one can say for sure that one day, such a boomerang may hit you on the head.

The love story of the two reminded Kitagawa Hide of a book he had read a long time ago.

Paradise Lost.

"Paradise Lost" is a masterpiece by Jun'ichi Watanabe that was serialized in the "Nikkei Shimbun" in 1995. Later, Kodansha bought its copyright and released a single volume.

In 1997, the single volume of Paradise Lost was released. Despite no one being optimistic about its success, sales exceeded one million copies in just a few months, causing a huge response at home and abroad. It was hailed by the Japanese literary world as "a groundbreaking masterpiece that shocks the soul."

But this book is different from all the books that Hide Kitagawa has plagiarized before.

It has a strong flavor of "mono no aware literature", and the whole story is about abnormal extramarital affairs that challenge ethical morals, as well as a death ending that is very targeted.

The reason why it was so popular in this era in the previous life was, firstly, because of the problem of extramarital affairs among middle-aged people arising from the background of this era, and secondly, because people were naturally curious about this kind of pornographic book.

Jun'ichi Watanabe's original intention in writing Paradise Lost was to use such a poignant story to warn people not to be alienated by the materialistic society, but to find ways to resolve these contradictions in their own way.

Blindly abandoning everything to pursue love will most likely result in a tragic ending, or even the cost of your life.

However, after the book was released, he was constantly criticized by the literary world, and finally, like Haruki Murakami, he became a best-selling writer who was popular in the market but not well-received.

If he only wanted to make a lot of money and didn't consider social impact, literary status and other people's evaluation at all, Kitagawa Hide would have many better works in his arsenal than "Paradise Lost".

There is absolutely no need to take such a big risk to copy it.

But at this moment, looking at the suicide notes of Muramatsu Tomoshi and the other man, and the same words they wrote at the end, "Teacher Kitagawa, please don't let everyone forget us," Kitagawa Hide fell into deep thought again.

If one wants to write their story and show the public the feelings they have experienced along the way, then "Paradise Lost" is the best reference template.

But copying Paradise Lost as in the past is obviously not an option.

Kitagawa Hide estimates that the plot will be changed a lot. He may even have to go to Yamanashi Prefecture to see the place where the two committed suicide, and to the places where they lived and collected information.

If it were more than half a year ago, he would definitely give up such a difficult thing in order to seek stability and wealth.

But when he looked at the words "Number One in the World" written by himself on the honor display cabinet at the back and thought of the last request from Muramatsu Tomoshi and the other, Kitagawa Hide's heart gradually became firm.

Let’s challenge it!

It's time to take a new step!
(End of this chapter)