I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 228 The return of the big devil

The good man Kitagawa Hide, his young wife, and nine little girls who had escaped from the Izuku Circus followed the crowd onto the boat.

Rongji quickly pulled Xunzi over to help carry the luggage, then looked at the girls in surprise, and couldn't help but lower his voice and asked, "Master, who are they?"

"The girls from the Izuku Circus, like you, are going to live with me in Tokyo."

Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko gave them a brief explanation, and then returned to Tokyo. He would ask the touring artist group to take care of the girls.

"This must cost a lot of money, sir. You are such a good man!"

The geisha was filled with emotion, holding Chiyoko and Yuriko's hands, and kept bowing to him to express her gratitude.

"Don't worry, I will take care of these girls and make sure they are well taken care of."

"Auntie is very good at taking care of people." Xunzi has become friends with those girls. They are of similar age and have similar experiences, so they have a lot of common topics.

"Then I'll leave it to you." Kitagawa Hide rubbed the head of the youngest girl, Xiao Mi. She blinked her cute big eyes and was held in Mengzi's arms. Her eyes were full of expectations for the future and the unknown.

"Don't worry!" The geisha held the hands of several girls, and seemed to know everything about their experiences in the Izuku Circus. "You have done a great deed. Good people will definitely be blessed by the Buddha!"

"Ama, Master, I will go and buy the boat and sampan tickets for you first."

Seeing that the ship was about to set sail, Rongji gestured to them, ran to the ticket office like a flash, and helped Kitagawa Hide and the others to buy the tickets.

A sampan ticket is a ticket for a sampan, also known as a ferry ticket.

A sampan is a small wooden boat usually used for short-distance transportation. It was very popular during the Taisho and Showa periods, but has now been eliminated.

Today, sampans are still preserved in some parts of Japan. One reason is to allow passengers to experience the Taisho and Showa styles, and the other is to use them as safety boats. In case a large ship runs aground or hits a reef, everyone can take them to escape quickly.

In other words, this is a special "vehicle and vessel insurance" that is only available to a small number of old ships.

After Rongji left, he whispered to Beichuan Xiu with several burly men dressed as construction workers. After hesitating for a long time, they finally made a decision.

"Sir, are you going to Tokyo? I'm sorry, I overheard your conversation just now.

We trust in your and your wife's character, could you please take this old lady to Tokyo?"

A construction worker came a few steps away from Kitagawa Hide and smiled shyly and helplessly,

"She was a poor person. Her son had worked in the silver mine at Liantai Temple before. He contracted influenza this time and passed it on to his daughter-in-law. Not long ago, both her son and daughter-in-law died, leaving behind three tiny children.

We discussed and decided to let her go back to her hometown in Mito, where there should be some relatives who can take care of them.

Once we get to Linggan Island, please take her to the train bound for Ueno Station. We are really sorry to trouble you! We also want to take her to Mito, but we have to go back to the mine to work, so there is really no other way."

The old lady was dressed very neatly, and her eyes were bright and clear, without any sign of dementia.

She was carrying a breastfeeding baby on her back and holding a little girl in each hand. The younger one was about three years old and the older one was no more than five years old. They looked really pitiful.

"Please, sir, madam, we won't cause you any trouble!" The old lady didn't know the way, and when she saw the kind-hearted Kitagawa Hide and the other man, she felt like she had grabbed her last straw and almost knelt down and kowtowed.

The aunties, geishas and others were already feeling sorry for it, but they knew that the final decision was in Kitagawa Hide's hands. If he was not happy about it, they would definitely annoy him if they went to help others without his permission.

Seeing a bunch of people looking at him eagerly, and then looking at the many lonely and poor people on the ship, Beichuan Xiu sighed and nodded, "This is a small matter, just leave it to me."

"Thank you so much! Good things will be rewarded for your hard work!" Some of the construction workers bowed, some kowtowed, while others smiled shyly and touched the back of their heads.

They are simple and honest, and compared to people in the Tokyo area, they seem to be living in the last era.

"this is nothing."

Kitagawa Hide waved his hand.

The hull suddenly shook violently and it looked like it was about to set off.

Five or six miners hurriedly comforted the old lady and the children for the last time, and then ran back to the shore at the urging of the crew. After the ship started, they still stayed on the shore, waving goodbye to them reluctantly.

Kitagawa Hide grabbed the rope ladder, hugged Yumeko, and watched the scenery of southern Izu gradually disappear into the distance. Mt. Amagi also gradually became blurred.

It was not until the ship sailed out of the sea of ​​Shimoda and Minami-Izu became a small island that he turned around and left with a group of people and returned to the cabin.

Kitagawa Hide bought the best first-class cabin, and the group sat in the sparsely populated luxurious cabin. Yumeko and the aunt geisha took care of the girls and the old lady separately, and chatted with them.

Talking about the experience of her son and daughter-in-law, and the inhuman conditions of the Izu Silver Mine, the old lady burst into tears, and there was simply no end to her suffering. Japan's mining industry is basically monopolized by several large conglomerates, and even the government cannot interfere. These mines exploit miners very severely, and working there is almost isolated from the world, so these construction workers and miners give Kitagawa Hide a feeling of being from a previous era.

Kitagawa Hide just sat on the side and listened quietly. These things will become part of his writing material in the future.

Novels come from life, but are also higher than life.

As a writer, his duty is to write these things down, process them, and then present them to readers, so that they can see and experience the world they have never seen.

The old lady stopped to take a breath after talking about being tired, then enthusiastically took out the seaweed rice balls and salted plums she had made from her big bag and distributed them to everyone as meals.

Kitagawa Hidetoshi likes this kind of country-style snack. He prefers the sour and sweet taste. But when he holds the sour and sweet salted plum in his mouth, his mouth is filled with bitterness.

The news that Kitagawa Hidekazu Yumeko was leaving for Tokyo soon reached the headquarters of various publishing houses.

Not long ago, the Nikkan Sports Shimbun extensively promoted his new book "Killing Commendatore", and for a time the entire Japanese publishing industry was in a state of panic. On the one hand, people were wondering if Kitagawa Hide was going to come up with a new trick, or a big one, and on the other hand, they were worried that this book would seriously affect the sales of their own magazines.

Have no idea.

He is the newly promoted "Number One in the World".

In the past, people could say that he was not qualified enough and did not have the ability.

Now that Kitagawa Hide has been recognized as the eighth "No. 1 in the World", these things can no longer be said openly.

Now all they can attack him for is "unconventional topics".

But this attack was so minor that it could not affect him.

Apart from the literary criticism community, which has long been closely tied to the interests of political parties and certain financial groups, no one else is willing to offend Kitagawa Hide at this time.

Other publishing houses have kept a certain distance from Kawaide Shobo and Bungeishunju to avoid becoming victims of this war.

But they didn't expect that even if they ran away, the flames of war would still burn them!
This time, Kitagawa Hide is going to be expelled from the party and removed from office!

Who can bear this?
It can be expected that a large amount of traffic and readers will inevitably flow into Kawade Shobo as a result.

They feel so miserable.

In order to deal with this, major publishing houses held emergency meetings and formulated various activities in the hope of preventing the outflow of their readers as much as possible.

The news that Kitagawa Hide returned to Tokyo should have been a very ordinary thing, but when they heard it in their ears, it sounded as terrifying as the sound of Sanskrit.

Kitagawa Hide himself had not expected that just a small matter like going to Izu for a vacation to relax would make him feel like the "return of the big devil".

However, the first thing that the "big devil" Kitagawa Hide and his young wife did after returning to Tokyo had nothing to do with the literary world.

The two first took the old lady and her grandchildren to Ueno Station.

But after discovering that the old lady was almost completely in the dark in the big city, Kitagawa Hide simply called Dangi Shirou, who had been doing nothing recently, and asked him to accompany the old lady to her hometown in Mito - he was also from Mito and was more familiar with the place.

After seeing the old lady off, Kitagawa Hide immediately arranged for Kaoru and her group to stay in an apartment near "Peter Cat".

Kitagawa Hide himself had no acquaintances in the Tokyo theater world, but the paparazzi soon discovered that he had brought back a troupe of touring artists with him and was planning to help them through the difficult times.

These paparazzi make a living by exposing celebrity scandals and the private lives of important figures. Anyone who is a little famous in Tokyo basically has three to five paparazzi following him or her around the clock.

But the people these gossip magazines and paparazzi are most afraid of offending are people from the newspaper, publishing and literary circles.

Who made these people the direct superiors that their immediate superiors have to fawn over and please?
Therefore, after the paparazzi learned about this, they immediately sold the news to major newspapers and completely distanced themselves from the matter.

President Ken Matsuyama, who received the message, was even faster than Shizuko Kawaide and called Kitagawa Hide in person to chat, and then intentionally or unintentionally revealed the contact information of several familiar Noh troupe leaders to him.

This is the social status of great writers!
Before Kitagawa Hide had the time to make a phone call to inquire, the directors of the Noh troupes called and said that they could take over the entire troupe of artists - including the nine girls from the circus.

Considering that many girls are not yet eighteen years old, Kitagawa Hide only arranged for Rongji and the aunt geisha for the time being, and would first find a way to send the others to nearby elementary schools, junior high schools and high schools.

These things could not be accomplished all at once, and the school term had long passed, so Yumeko let the girls work part-time at "Peter Cat" as waitresses to help them adapt to life in Tokyo.

After finishing a lot of things, it was already September 1996.

The temperature in hot Tokyo is gradually dropping, and as Kitagawa Hide finished writing the beginning of "Killing Commendatore", the Japanese literary world has involuntarily become hot again!

(End of this chapter)