I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 213: "The Strange Bird Chronicle" and "Assassination of the Knight Commander"

Kitagawa Hide finally chose to "eat" his young wife first.

The two took off everything and embraced each other as they walked into the small hot spring on the inside of the room.

Skin to skin.

"Hideki~" Mengzi's cheeks were flushed, tears were about to drip from her eyes, and her body was like a soft snake, tightly wrapping around Kitagawa Hide.

graduated!
After more than fifty years of single practice in two lifetimes, I finally graduated!
Kitagawa Hide hugged Mengzi tightly in his arms, his eyes full of love.

After one hour.

In the room filled with hot spring mist.

Yumeko was curled up in the quilt and sleeping soundly, while Kitagawa Hide was sitting at the desk in a blue bathrobe, typing away on the typewriter.

There were still two days left before the marathon, and seeing that Mengzi was not in a good condition to go out and play, he simply used the typewriter he brought with him to work on his new book.

After establishing the anti-war theme, Kitagawa Hide listed a dozen well-known anti-war novels.

There are very few truly anti-war novels in Japan. Most are pseudo-anti-war or anti-defeat political novels disguised as anti-war novels.

After careful consideration, Kitagawa Hide turned his attention to his old friend, the great Haruki Murakami.

Today, when I was listening to the radio and watching TV, many programs and news mentioned that Hide Kitagawa won the Goncourt Prize.

Thanks to Shizuko Kawaide's advance hype, and the fact that Tetsutaro Mori has been using literary reviews to popularize the value of the Prix Goncourt to the public in recent days, today, everyone from Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to kindergarten children playing dodgeball in the community park knows that Kitagawa Hide has done something that no one in the history of Japanese literary world has ever done!
The title of "the best in the world" firmly rests on his head.

The book he is about to write will be his "debut work" after he became "the best in the world".

Since we started with Haruki Murakami's "Hear the Wind Sing", let's find another book of his to start a new journey, which can be regarded as a connection between the beginning and the end!
Moreover, Murakami Haruki's writing style is very easy to recognize. After "Border", there has been no plagiarism of his books for a long time. It is estimated that readers are also eager to learn Kitagawa Hide's most skillful and popular "Hide Kitagawa style".

The most important thing is that Haruki Murakami is one of the few well-known writers in the Japanese literary world who dares to face that battle in his works, reflects on the aggressiveness of the war, and is unwaveringly against the right wing and war!

Mr. Murakami's anti-war remarks and actions have been solemnly reported by the official media and official news next door.

Coincidentally, among his vast collection of novels, there are also two such purely anti-war novels.

The first one is "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle", which is familiar to almost all Murakami fans.

The second part is "The Assassination of the Grand Master of the Knights Templar", published in 2017, which focuses on reflecting on the Nanjing Massacre.

In terms of literary quality and timeliness, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is better than "Killing Commendatore" and is praised by many literary practitioners as Haruki Murakami's masterpiece!

The People's Daily Online next door even gave an incredibly high evaluation: "The novel has the magic power to reach the core of life consciousness, the mystery of fate and the mystery of the universe."

However, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" also has its weaknesses.

Compared with Haruki Murakami's previous novels with astonishing sales, this book had relatively poor sales and failed to create any waves in the popular market.

The funniest thing is that this anti-war novel with poor sales allowed Haruki Murakami, who had always been unpopular in the Japanese literary world, to win many domestic awards in succession and was rarely praised by the giants of the Japanese literary world.

This really echoes Haruki Murakami's previous comment on the Japanese literary world:

What they value is not the literary quality of the novel, nor the thinking contained therein. They are simply dissatisfied with the fact that other people's novels are selling well while their own novels are not.

So as long as it sells well, it must have no literary value and must be commercial garbage produced to cater to the masses!

On the contrary, if your novel has poor sales, it means that the novel has certain literary qualities, but the general public just can’t understand it!

What a speechless logic!

The Japanese literary world's self-contained behavior is even more exaggerated in this parallel universe.

The unfair treatment Kitagawa Hide received before was even more outrageous than that of Mr. Murakami.

As for "Killing Commendatore", to be honest, this book has lost the "aura" and stunning feeling that Haruki Murakami had when he wrote it in his early years.

However, from the release of his debut novel "Hear the Wind Sing" in 1979 to the writing of "Killing Commendatore" in 2017, the 39 years of precipitation have made Murakami Haruki's writing style and writing style perfect. It can be said that it is a masterpiece of the post-Murakami era. Therefore, the reputation of "Killing Commendatore" is not very good, but it is very popular in Japan and its neighboring countries.

Especially in Japan, the book sold an astonishing 70 copies on the first day of its release, breaking the long-standing record for first-day sales of physical books, once again demonstrating the value of the name Haruki Murakami.

Kitagawa Hide didn't think too long about which book to choose.

Only children do multiple-choice questions, adults say they want all of them!

After deciding on the book to plagiarize, Kitagawa Hide's terrifying ability to take action was immediately revealed.

"The Strange Bird Chronicle" is divided into three parts: The Thief Magpie, The Prophecy Bird, and The Bird Catcher. Each part has about 14 words, totaling 42 words. It is a long novel that can be considered very large in pure literature.

It is easier to plagiarize this book than the previous ones because it is based on a fictional world view and there are not many things that need to be modified.

But because the plot of the novel involves the Battle of Nomonhan, Kitagawa Hide had to go to the library to check various materials in detail to see if there were any differences between this battle in this parallel time and space and the original history.

The Battle of Nomonhan, also known as the "Khalhin River Incident" and the "Nomonhan Battle", was an armed provocation launched by the Japanese army in Outer Mongolia.

Compared with other battles in World War II, this battle is just an unknown war. Many readers may not know about such a battle before reading "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle".

However, it had a profound impact on the development of the situation in World War II.

The result of the Battle of Nomonhan completely thwarted the Kwantung Army's attempt to invade westwards, which in turn forced the Japanese army to abandon its "Northward Policy" and choose the "Southward Policy", which ultimately led to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, declaration of war on the United States and final defeat two years later.

In Japan, this battle was not included in school history textbooks because it was Japan's "biggest defeat" during World War II and an "unbearable shameful memory" for right-wing elements, so both historians and politicians chose to subconsciously ignore this battle.

I have to say that Murakami is really brave to choose this taboo as the entry point for writing an anti-war novel!
Back to the plot of the novel.

"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" tells a fantasy story with a rather fantastic color. Before this, Haruki Murakami rarely wrote this kind of novel disguised as fantasy.

But just when everyone thought that he could only write romance novels, he suddenly came up with such a big job for the readers, which surprised and delighted them!

The protagonist of the novel is a middle-aged man named Okada Toru.

Tired of working at the law firm, he quit and stayed at home unemployed.

His wife Kumiko came from a bureaucratic family, and his brother Noboru Wataya was a well-known economist. He later entered politics and had a successful career, even becoming a member of parliament.

Due to family reasons, Kumiko rarely interacted with her brother after marrying Okada Toru.

One day, the cat at home is suddenly lost, and Kumiko asks Okada Toru to find it. In the process of looking for the cat, Okada meets the sisters Ghana Malta and Ghana Crete who have super powers, as well as the next-door neighbor May Kasahara and the strange woman who called.

During the cat-hunting journey, Okada unexpectedly met Honda, an old man who had witnessed the Battle of Nomonhan.

After Honda's death, Okada met his comrade-in-arms, Lieutenant Mamiya, who told him the story of how he escaped death on the battlefield.

At that time, he was trapped at the bottom of a well, and the experience of basking in the sunlight for a short period of time every day left a deep impression on Okada Toru.

After that, Kumiko suddenly disappeared, and Okada Toru began his journey to find his wife again. Later, Okada Toru vaguely discovered that his wife's disappearance was related to her brother Watani Noboru.

So he followed Honda's instructions before his death and went down into a dry well, where he magically entered the evil world of Wataya Noboru, and finally defeated Wataya Noboru with a baseball bat.

After defeating Wataya Noboru, the dry well he was in began to gush out fresh water, and he eventually returned to the real world, waiting for Kumiko to return.

Judging from the plot of the novel, readers could easily mistake it for a poorly written fantasy novel.

But in fact, the novel adheres to Haruki Murakami's consistent style, and more vividly displays the theme of "searching" that he has gradually developed since the "Youth Trilogy".

The novel attempts to incorporate various fantasy elements, blends historical events, and for the first time adopts a "double narrative" that is rare in pure literary novels:
The reality line is about Okada Toru's search for his missing cat and wife, and the historical line is the Battle of Nomonhan and the Pacific War.

Then, in the process of searching for the cat and his wife, Okada gradually unearthed Japan's historical problems in World War II, exposing Japan's inherited violence and the aggressiveness of the war.

This is a groundbreaking writing technique, and even many years later, the Yomiuri Literary Prize was awarded to "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle".

After briefly going over the general plot in his mind, Kitagawa Hide's hands flew like a rocket, and while Yumeko was sleeping, he typed out the first chapter of the Thief Magpie Bird chapter, "Tuesday's Wind-up Bird, Six Fingers and Four Breasts," in one breath!

(End of this chapter)