I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 251 Recognition from the World's Number One (Two in One)

The winter rain drops into the pond in the courtyard, creating ripples like blooming cherry blossoms.

The fish at the bottom of the water swam happily. When it saw the fat bait, it twisted its body, but finally couldn't resist the temptation and couldn't help but bite it.

"Tear--"

With a gentle pull of the fishing rod upwards, a fresh little fish was thrown into the bucket beside him.

After fishing for a whole afternoon and finally getting some fish, Takeda Tsunekazu did not smile.

With so many things weighing on his mind, he had no interest in enjoying the relaxation that fishing brought.

He turned his head and looked into the house through the bamboo window.

Teacher Ichiro Tanizaki was still concentrating on reading the book "Literature" that he bought this morning.

Based on his understanding of Mr. Ichiro Tanizaki, if a novel in his hand was not well written, the teacher would throw it away quickly so as not to let useless words occupy his precious time.

in contrast.

If the novel is very interesting, the teacher will put down all the work at hand and spend a lot of time reading and studying it.

Even though he is over 70 years old, the teacher's attitude towards studying and doing research is still extremely rigorous, which is one of the reasons why he can always stand at the top of the Japanese literary world.

So, the new book written by Hide Kitagawa is likely to be another masterpiece?

Takeda Tsunekazu rubbed his temples with a headache. This was the thing he least wanted to see.

His own son, Takeda Tsuneyasu, had a grudge against Kitagawa Hide, who was also clearly not on the same side as the right-wing political parties.

In addition, in the first half of the year, the Tanizaki Award openly "blackened" Kitagawa Hide once, and in the second half of the year, Kitagawa Hide responded by "refusing to accept the award" to show his attitude.

The conflict between them has long been irreconcilable.

For both public and private reasons, it was impossible for Takeda Tsunekazu to give the second half of the Tanizaki Prize to Kitagawa Hide.

Since we can't be allies, we can only be enemies.

The more powerful the enemy is, the more uncomfortable he will feel.

Outside the window, Tsunekazu Takeda was still thinking about how to deal with Kitagawa Hide's refusal of the Tanizaki Award, while inside the house, Ichiro Tanizaki was completely immersed in "Wenyi" and couldn't extricate himself.

To be precise, he was obsessed with Kitagawa Hide's books and couldn't extricate himself.

an hour ago.

Out of curiosity, Ichiro Tanizaki opened the December issue of "Baijutsu" and read Kitagawa Hide's new work.

The title is like a third-rate erotic novel, with eccentric characters like dancers and geishas that would only be featured in ancient novels, extremely compressed words, and strange chapter titles.
Before watching "A Scene from the Festival of the Spirits", Ichiro Tanizaki had already felt a dislike for the up-and-coming star Kitagawa Hide, thinking that he was not much better than the sensationalist Arima Yoshiyoshi and the unscrupulous Momota Naoki for sales.

Until he finished the first paragraph.

All these bad first impressions were shattered, and replaced by surprise and shock.

Ichiro Tanizaki has read at least 800 novels with the theme of the Obon Festival. Most creators like to use folk legends about gods and ghosts as the entry point, only thinking about attracting readers' attention without considering any connotations that should be contained in the novel.

Over time, this theme has been tied to vulgar popular literature and has no connection with pure literature at all.

But this "Scene from the Festival of Requiem" is completely different!
Kitagawa Hide uses the private circus common in rural areas as the starting point, and the story includes the greedy head of the circus, the innocent and scheming Mitsuko, the bright and beautiful Sakurako, and the poor supporting characters of all kinds.
At least ten vivid characters were easily condensed by Kitagawa Hide into a length of three to five thousand words.

The layman looks at the excitement and the insider looks at the doorway.

Ichiro Tanizaki, who was also good at writing about characters, saw Kitagawa Hide's extraordinary ability in writing about characters at a glance.

The same is true for the later works "Life Insurance" and "People in the Mine".

His writing about people and events is superior, and his expression of emotions and ideas is very vivid!

Judging from the previous five short stories, Kitagawa Hide's writing skills are at least 30% stronger than that of Momota Naoki!

This is Ichiro Tanizaki’s most intuitive feeling.

In the past two years, many people have been talking about this rising star in his ears, saying that if his achievements were listed one by one, it would be very likely that his position as "the best in the world" would be shaken.

Every time he heard such words, Ichiro Tanizaki just smiled, and his heart was calm.

After experiencing several major upheavals, Japanese literature has been lagging behind Western literature.

In the hall of world literature, the distinctive Japanese literature has always been relegated to a corner and cannot be accepted by most people.

It was in such a difficult environment that Ichiro Tanizaki, while bearing the pressure from the government and the malice of world literature, took steps towards the Nobel Prize in Literature.

His masterpiece, "Devil's Tattoo", is the purest Japanese literature. Even though the content involves images such as the Yakuza and tattoos that are not easy to convey to teenagers, it was finally approved by the Ministry of Education and included in all Japanese language textbooks for universities, high schools, and junior high schools!
To be honest, Ichiro Tanizaki is probably the first and only writer in Japanese literary world who has truly competed with the great writers of world literature.

Even though we lost miserably, it was still an honorable defeat!

Even though he had not written for many years, he had never doubted his leading position and his ability to dominate the entire Japanese literary world.

Therefore, even though the outside world praised Kitagawa Hide to the sky, he was too lazy to pay attention and had never read any books written by him - he had so many works by world literary masters on hand that he couldn't finish reading them all, so who would have time to read those low-level works from China?
But now.

The idea that had been so firm in my heart actually began to waver a little after I read those five novels.

To be fair, these five short stories are indeed better than the three by Naoki Momota.

But there is no qualitative difference.

If Naoki Momota was given 80 points, Kitagawa Hide would be 88 points, which is not even the excellent line of 90 points.

The additional 8 points are mainly given for deeper ideas, more realistic text and unique aesthetic.

Ichiro Tanizaki could feel that Hide Kitagawa was trying to write a completely new style of novel.

But because it is still in the exploratory stage, writers who are not at the same level cannot feel this.

He also made sure that the new style was based entirely on a "unique aesthetic".

Just like how he insisted on incorporating the most traditional Japanese elements into his novel despite outside doubts.

Kitagawa Hide is also doing something similar, trying to convey a never-before-seen "Japanese aesthetics" to readers.

pity.

The final results of these five novels were not satisfactory.

"But he is only 24 years old this year." Ichiro Tanizaki looked at himself in the glasses.

With white hair and a weathered face, he is already in his twilight years. Now, his writing skills are at least one level better than Kitagawa Hide.

But that’s because there’s a fifty-year gap between the two of them!
Ichiro Tanizaki remembers that when he was 24 years old, he just graduated from the Faculty of Literature of Kyoto University.

At that time, I still had a youthful smile on my face, and I was both curious and confused about literature.

Not to mention the writing skills of these five novels, just in terms of writing ability, he is far behind the "upper-class writers".

"The Dancing Girl of Izu. This is the name of the collection of short stories. It seems that he is most satisfied with this one."

At this time, Ichiro Tanizaki had put aside his previous disdain for the title of the book.

His wrinkled fingers gently flicked the pages of the book, and he couldn't wait to read on.

"The beautiful Amagi Mountain, the dense forests, the clear spring water, the rich autumn colors, the curling smoke from cooking fires—"

"It was an Indian summer in southern Izu, spotless and crystal clear, absolutely beautiful. The rising river below the bathing pool was receiving the warm sunshine."

"The colors of the mountains and the sky give people a sense of southern scenery."

"The rain stopped and the moon came out. The autumn night washed by the rain is exceptionally bright and silvery."

Ichiro Tanizaki recited the sentences from the novel softly.

This article "The Dancing Girl of Izu" can further prove his previous guess.

Kitagawa Hidezai tries his best to use plain words to convey that unique beauty.

The whole novel is permeated with a vague sense of sadness from beginning to end.

Kitagawa Hide proposed "mono no aware literature" before. Professor Takeuchi Osamu, who compiled this new concept into a book and systematized it, said: "I think what Mr. Kitagawa calls mono no aware literature is the ultimate combination of sadness and beauty. It is more tranquil and peaceful than sadness."

This statement hits the core of "Kitagawa-style mono no aware literature".

Ichiro Tanizaki also discovered that after the student "I" in the novel met the dancer, neither of them ever expressed love to the other from beginning to end.

The two of them seem to be aware of and yet not aware of their feelings for each other.

He couldn't quite describe this vague feeling of love.

In fact, in later generations, there is a saying that summarizes it very accurately: more than friends, but less than lovers.

However, this popular phrase has not yet been proposed, and literary schools such as the Misty School and the New Sensational School have not appeared in Japan, so even Ichiro Tanizaki could not summarize it accurately.

But as a writer, he keenly discovered that Kitagawa Hidezai consciously diluted the emotional tone of this kind of emotion that seemed like love but was not love, and made it more aware of itself, making the encounter between the two people a farewell, and the farewell a farewell forever.

It highlights a sense of sadness that everything is over before it even begins.

At the end of the story, "I" boarded the ship alone and left. When waving goodbye to the touring artist group, "I" vaguely saw the figure of the dancer. Then the scene of the two of them crying at the same time made Ichiro Tanizaki's heart tremble.

"Has anything unfortunate happened to you?"

"No, I just parted with someone else."

The last questions and answers between "I" and the boy traveling with me on the boat played over and over in Ichiro Tanizaki's mind like a magic sound.

He could clearly feel the reluctance and sadness in my heart, but when all the emotions came to my lips, they only turned into a bland answer.

This is probably the feeling of a dead heart!
After carefully reading "The Dancing Girl of Izu", Ichiro Tanizaki closed the book silently, and had no interest in his subsequent works at all.

Now, his mind is full of the strong style of Hidefumi Kitagawa.

Compared to the slightly awkward and groping attempts of the first five parts, "The Dancing Girl of Izu" has made great progress in all aspects.

He was just thinking in his heart that the final results of the first five articles were not satisfactory, but the sixth article slapped him in the face.

If the time interval between their creations is not long, then Kitagawa Hide's growth potential is too high!

It is almost certain that when Ichiro Tanizaki wrote "Scene from the Festival of Revenge", this style of writing was only a rudiment in Kitagawa Hide's mind.

However, by the time of "The Dancing Girl of Izu", this style of writing had become quite mature and could even be called the beginning of a new school!

"Naoki Momota will also become his stepping stone." Ichiro Tanizaki tapped the cover of "Wenyi" with his fingers and fell into deep thought.

The next morning.

Kitagawa Hide was invited to Kawaide Shobo to sign a batch of freshly-released copies of The Strange Bird Chronicle: The Bird Catcher.

As soon as he showed up at the headquarters of the company, a bunch of fans came running to him with magazines and asked for his autograph.

After finally dealing with these employees, Kitagawa Hidemasa was about to take a break when he bumped head-on into Saito Rena, who looked excited and walked with great vigor.

"Beichuan, you're here just in time! I just got the first day's data from yesterday!" She waved the data sheet in her hand, and her festive smile said it all.

"Haha, it looks like good news." Kitagawa Hide smiled and was also looking forward to the first-day sales of the December issue of "Wenyi".

Unlike his previous works, the short story collection "The Dancing Girl of Izu" took him a lot of effort, and most of the materials in it came from what he saw and heard in this world. At the same time, the content of the copied novels also has many differences from the original works.

If it is a great success, it will mean that Kitagawa Hide's own writing ability has also improved a lot.

On the contrary, if "The Dancing Girl of Izu" does not receive a good response, he will have to stay away from the public for a few months and try to find a new way to reach the pinnacle of Japanese literary world.

Saito Reina took a deep breath and said forcefully, "The data far exceeded expectations! The actual sales volume on the first printing day was 31.4 copies! This does not include sales in remote areas such as Shikoku Island!"

This number slightly surprised Kitagawa Hideto, who was usually as calm as a rock.

After working in the publishing industry with Rena Saito and others for nearly two years, Hideya Kitagawa gradually gained a certain understanding of the pure literature market in Japan.

The historical record of monthly sales of pure literature magazines is 580 million copies, which is a full 200 ​​million copies higher than his previous life - the reason is that there are more pure literature readers here and the literary dissemination is stronger.

The historical record for the first day of sales was also set by "Devil's Tattoo", which was about 36.5 copies.

Even in Japan, where the number of readers is growing, this historical record is still out of reach for everyone and no one wants to break it.

Only after "Wenyi" was released last month and sold 25.7 copies on its first day of printing did people recall this perverted record from ancient times.

But there is a difference of 25.7 between 36.5 and 10.8!

You have to know that other pure literature magazines can’t even see the tail light of 10.8 copies when there are no hit works serialized!
The 31.4 copies sold this time not only broke the 30-copy mark that everyone thought would never be broken, but also did not include sales in several remote areas!
"According to previous statistics." Kitagawa Hide couldn't help but ask.

Saito Reina smiled and nodded at him: "They can at least contribute another 3 copies of first-day sales!
Beichuan! We might actually be making history!"

(End of this chapter)