I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 185 The only person who can break my record is me
Invited by the Goncourt Prize jury to attend the award ceremony, Kitagawa Hide's "Paradise Lost" has already gained a certain popularity in France.

Although being nominated does not mean winning, this type of award generally has its own unspoken rules.

If you are a million miles away from winning the award, the jury will not allow you to fly all the way from Japan to France to be a spectator.

If this is the case, the jury will call you privately and tell you that although your novel has been shortlisted, the probability of winning is extremely low, suggesting that you don't want to make a wasted trip.

This is also the reason why when many awards are given out abroad, very few people actually fly around and attend award ceremonies.

For overseas awards like the Prix Goncourt, industry insiders will understand as soon as they hear that they can be invited to the ceremony.

You have definitely made it to the finals!
Even if you don't win the award in the end, they will still spare no effort to recommend your work, allowing you to get a huge amount of traffic.

Kitagawa Hide and Saito Rena smiled at each other after walking out of the cinema, and the long-lost joy appeared in each other's eyes.

Before they knew it, the two had been partners for almost a year and a half.

At first, Kitagawa Hide was a young man in debt wearing a security uniform and hanging around outside the Kodansha headquarters building.

At the beginning, Rena Saito was a young editor with no hope of promotion who suffered from performance pressure, sexual harassment from her boss, and gender discrimination in the workplace.

Going around in circles.

Today, Kitagawa Hide has stepped on countless "upper-class writers" and has almost achieved financial freedom through writing, and is heading towards becoming "the best in the world."

Rena Saito has become the second most recognized female editor in the industry (the first is Reiko Higashi, deputy editor-in-chief of Shinchosha), and in the future she is expected to become the first female editor-in-chief of a major publishing house in Japanese history.

It’s not easy, it’s really not easy.

After the group came out of the cinema, they had a rare chance to relax. Dangui Shirou suggested going to an izakaya for a drink and then going to a KTV to sing some songs.

Recently, in order to get the new book published smoothly, Kitagawa Hidekazu and his three disciples worked day and night to write and revise the manuscript, and it really took a long time.

However, Kitagawa Hide has always been a workaholic who will not rest until the last step.

He waved his hand to decline several invitations and prepared to go home to continue writing "Confessions" - the second supplement on June 6 would serialize another 20 words. Excluding the 10 words to be serialized, he only had less than 10 words left.

How can this amount of stored manuscripts make people feel at ease?
Write, must continue writing!
At the end of the month, I will fly to Paris, France with Rena Saito. This trip will take at least three to five days. I might not have time to write a book, so the more manuscripts I have in reserve, the better.

Since Mr. Kitagawa refused to relax with them, Keigo Higashino and others were immediately under great pressure.

When they thought about their master secretly working hard on his writing while they were out eating and drinking to their heart's content, the playful spirit that had just arisen in their minds immediately dissipated.

"I have to go back early to take care of my beloved son, so I won't go." Mayumi Aso is a single mother and a mature woman of the same age as them. She always deliberately avoids such drinking parties that last until late at night.

With Kitagawa Hide in front of her, her polite refusal wouldn't be annoying.

She glanced at the teacher, her eyes full of gratitude.

Saito Rena stood silently by and watched them talk, feeling a surge of emotion in her heart.

Once upon a time, these people were losers struggling at the bottom of society, living a precarious life, but now, everyone is talking and laughing, and has a stable life and goals worth pursuing throughout their lives.

Moreover, in the process of following Kitagawa Hide, he was gradually "transformed into Kitagawa" and gradually grew into an equally outstanding writer!

The next day.

The first-day sales of the June 1996 issue of the "Wenyi" supplement are out.

斋藤玲奈一大早就忍不住打来电话给北川秀报喜——6月10日《文艺》增刊全国真实销量约9.7万册，一举打破了之前连载《国境》完结章的3月号《文艺》正刊保持的8.3万册首刷日记录！
This new high is also the highest record for the first print run of pure literature magazines in the past thirty years.

What shocked and amazed the publishing industry the most was that this was a supplement, not a main publication with a lot of other interesting content.

The last time a supplement created a miracle was when it serialized "Pinball in 1973" in "Group Portrait".

At that time, in order to give space in the main issue to Hikaru Oshima's "Tokyo Past 1973", "Ball" was forced to be serialized in the restarted supplement. It was under such desperate circumstances that "Ball" created a shocking record that is worth remembering by everyone.

Nowadays, those supplements of "Gunzo" have been sold at a sky-high price of around 5 yen each on the black market, and there is still no demand!
Now, Kitagawa Hide has once again proved his market appeal and his writing ability that dominates the Japanese literary world with his absolute strength.

For this record-breaking feat, Shizuko Kawaide spent a large sum of money to invite several well-known TV stations to do special interview programs.

She worked so hard to promote "Confessions" on the one hand to make profits for the company, and on the other hand to build momentum for Kitagawa Hide.

The book "Confessions" was not written just to make money and break records!

While Kawaide Shobo was working hard to promote "Confessions", the first-day box office data of the movie version of "No Longer Human" was also released.

As expected, this masterpiece, which was produced by Toei with huge investment and starred by popular star Takuya Kimura and super popular singer Shizuka Kudo, broke the 3 million yen box office mark on the premiere day!
According to the normal movie box office curve, the final box office of "No Longer Human" should be between 30 billion and 60 billion yen.

After seeing so many movies next door making billions of RMB at the box office, Kitagawa Hide doesn't really feel much about this data.

But as soon as the first day's box office data came out, Yoshiaki Kobayashi, the film's chief supervisor, and Shunji Iwai, the deputy supervisor, called one after another. From the tone of their voices, it was clear that they wanted to recognize Hide Kitagawa as their godfather.

Only then did he wake up.

This is a parallel universe Japan in 1996.

It is Japan, a country with a total population of only 1.25 million.

The highest-grossing movie so far this year is "Godzilla vs. Destoroyah" directed by Takao Kawahara, with a cumulative box office of 30.4 billion yen.

If you ask Hide Kitagawa why he remembers it so clearly, it’s because he is a big fan of the “Titan Monster Universe” movies!

When this movie was released, it was translated as "Godzilla: Century Killing Array" in Hong Kong and "Dinosaur Empire" in Taiwan. This film is the best and final work in the Heisei Godzilla series.

When the film was released not long ago, the promotional poster announcing "The Death of Godzilla" aroused great response from fans of the series and was said to have appeared in American newspapers.

Compared with this phenomenal IP movie, "No Longer Human" is definitely a niche movie. But it is such a niche novel adaptation movie that is expected to break the box office record of this year's Japanese animation movies just set by "Godzilla VS Destoroyah".

How could Yoshiaki Kobayashi and Shunji Iwai not be excited?

Especially the latter.

In order to help film "Akudatsu", he was directly fired by Nikkatsu and needed a lot of works to prove his ability.

Now that the second work is another phenomenal hit, how can we not be happy?

After calming down the two excited people, Kitagawa Hide quickly came out of his joy.

He doesn't care about breaking records or box office data.

Instead of thinking about these things, it’s better to use a calculator to calculate how much money the movie "No Longer Human" can get.

Assuming the box office is only 30 billion yen, his dividend ratio is 18%, that is
"The calculation is five point four."

An electronic female voice came from the calculator.

Kitagawa Hide nodded with satisfaction.

The royalty income from the film and television adaptation of "No Longer Human" was only 2.5 million before tax, but the box office dividend is guaranteed to double, which is pretty good!

And judging from the reputation and trend, the box office is likely to exceed 50 billion, and the dividends will jump from 5.4 million to 9 million!
No wonder so many famous writers go to the film and television industry to be screenwriters and write original scripts.

Even Kitagawa Hide was a little tempted by this profit!

He shook his head, not letting the money blind him.

The reason why he can get so much dividends is mainly due to the popularity of the original novel "No Longer Human" and the reputation he has accumulated through one good book after another.

If you really want to switch to the film and television industry to do script writing, you will be picking up sesame seeds and losing watermelons, which is a huge loss!

Kitagawa Hide put down his calculator and continued to devote himself to the creation of "Confessions".

The original work of this book uses POV writing technique throughout, which looks messy and it is obvious that the writing skills and plot control ability are not enough.

Kitagawa Hidetsugi, the original author of Kanae Minato, had read it many times when he was a graduate student.

To be honest, both the Chinese translation and the original Japanese version are too stiff to swallow.

But this is the current situation of Japanese literature.

The text quality of pure literature and popular literature is actually not as good as that of detective literature. The terrible texts were saved purely by god-level adaptations.

Kitagawa Hide previously plagiarized the works of great writers such as Jun'ichi Watanabe and Haruki Murakami. In the public's perception, his writing skills are far superior to most authors in the current Japanese literary world.

Therefore, when copying "Confessions", he had to abandon Kanae Minato's writing style and try to write in the style of Haruki Murakami.

This also meant that even with the dual reference materials of the original work and the movie, it was still very difficult for Kitagawa Hide to write.

Fortunately, his writing skills have improved significantly after he wrote Paradise Lost and Border. Judging from the first serial issue, readers like his writing style very much.

While he was busy writing and revising, June 6th arrived quietly.

The latest issue of "Wenyi" was released as scheduled. Although it did not contain the latest chapter of "Confessions", it did contain new works by three emerging writers including Mayumi Aso.

Previously, readers' attention was attracted by "Confessions".

Kawaide Shobo had promoted Mayumi Aso and others' new book ten days ago, but readers paid no attention at all.

"Wenyi" is now on sale.

The first work that caught the eye was "The Wandering Blade", which is also related to juvenile offenders, and immediately aroused the interest of the hungry readers.

If you don’t have “Confessions”, the meal replacement written by Kitagawa teacher’s disciples is also good!

In this way, although the early publicity did not achieve the expected results, it gave readers a big surprise.

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Headquarters Building, Office of the Superintendent General.

Hara Bunbei, who had arrived early and sat down in the boss chair, picked up the coffee poured by the secretary and saw the particularly eye-catching "Literature and Art" on the table.

"The Wandering Blade. The daughter of a former detective was murdered, and the law enforcer became the executioner on a tragic path"

Hara Bunbei, who had been a policeman for decades, was instantly attracted by the protagonist's identity and the slogan.

He opened the magazine curiously and started reading the novel.

Hara Bunbei himself is not a pure literature reader, but he is the third in command in the police force, with only the Deputy Director of the National Police Agency and the Commissioner of the National Police Agency ranking above him.

How could he have time to read novels?

However, recently, due to the popularity of "Confessions" and the help of Kitagawa Hide in diverting his attention, he gradually became interested in pure literature magazines.

To be precise, he became interested in "Wenyi" where Kitagawa Hide worked.

After reading "Confessions", Hara Bunbei discovered that the pure literary novels that he had always thought were boring could be so good!

Therefore, he decisively asked his secretary to subscribe to a year's edition of "Literature and Art".

Hara Bunbei was not aware of the distinction between main publications and supplements, and he felt regretful that Kitagawa-sensei's "Confessions" was missing this time. But after flipping through "The Wandering Blade", the regret in his heart instantly disappeared.

This meal replacement seems to taste very good!
(End of this chapter)