I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 255 "The Strange Bird Chronicle" was selected into the high school textbook!
"Great writer, please give your comments on this newly released book, "The Bird Catcher"~"

On Christmas Eve, in a luxurious villa in Shibuya District.

Chihaya Ruri, wearing a brand new Christmas dress, lay on the super-large soft bed that was several meters wide. Her long white legs slapped her butt rhythmically, and she stared at Kaoru not far away with a smirk on her face and said.

Kaoru was also wearing a brand new Christmas dress, and was fiddling with the deer antlers on her head and the red miniskirt that made her feel a little embarrassed.

What she feels now is regret, great regret.

I shouldn't have agreed on impulse to have Liuli-chan come to her house for Christmas!

Otherwise, I wouldn't have been fooled into wearing the same Christmas dress as hers.

You should not say such shameful nonsense as "I want to be a great writer like Mr. Kitagawa!" in a fit of excitement at school!

This is just great!

But Liuli-chan grabbed her pigtails and started to beat her hard!
Holding the book "The Bird Catcher" which she had just finished reading, Kaoru's head was almost stuffed into her collar.

Mr. Kitagawa's novels are undoubtedly super good.

But with her limited literary appreciation ability, how could she comment on "The Bird Catcher"?

Chihaya Ruri looked at Kaoru with a smile, and seeing that she wanted to dig a hole in the ground and crawl into it, she finally stopped teasing Kaoru and turned the topic back to Kitagawa Hide's book.

"In short, Japan looks more like a strange country swirling in a vortex of violence, a deformed and empty house, an empty center, and a premature baby born under the oppression of power and conglomerates."

Chihaya Ruri, who is still in high school, actually cannot deeply understand what Mr. Kitagawa wrote at the end of the novel.

When she first read it, she just thought it was a "very high-end" quote, and if she said it out loud, many people would admire her.

But after reading for a long time, combined with all the contents of the trilogy "The Strange Bird Chronicle", she suddenly felt that what Mr. Kitagawa said was absolutely right.

The Chihaya family is also a small consortium. In Kitagawa's book, they are the big villain like "Watani Noboru".

The novel narrates the Battle of Nomonhan, which has been forgotten in history, from the perspective of "I", and also indirectly describes what "consortium" and "politicians" are like in the eyes of ordinary people.

Looking at these things from the perspective of the eldest daughter of the Chihaya family, she can understand many things that ordinary readers cannot.

Mr. Kitagawa's description of the consortium class was very accurate, and many of the details amazed Chihaya Ruri.

Therefore, when the novel ended with the final summary of this chaotic Japan, Chihaya Ruri was more deeply moved the more she read.

"It's so well written. It's hard to believe that such a heavy novel like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was written by Mr. Kitagawa."

Chihaya Ruri couldn't help but let out another sigh.

Her first work was "Pinball in 1973". At that time, Kitagawa's writing style was still very "fresh and simple", and the words were filled with the romantic feelings that little girls like her liked.

In just over a year, Mr. Beichuan's writing style has become more profound and his subject matter has become more realistic.

If it weren’t for the publication of another book, “Border”, she almost thought that Mr. Beichuan was suffering from schizophrenia!
"Yeah! But Mr. Kitagawa is really amazing! His recent short stories are also very good!" Kaoru sat down on the bed, and when she mentioned her idol and benefactor, she immediately started talking.

The two girls immediately sat together and started chatting about "The Dancing Girl of Izu". As the topic moved towards the short story, the night gradually enveloped the entire city of Tokyo.

The final chapter of "The Strange Bird Chronicle", "The Bird Catcher", unsurprisingly became a hit throughout Japan.

"The Strange Bird Chronicle" is the first war literature written by Kitagawa Hide. It was also when he was writing this novel that he first put forward the concepts of pseudo-anti-war and anti-defeat.

Originally, the subject matter and content of this book were rather heavy, and the writing style was not as light as before, so Kitagawa Hide didn't actually have high expectations for it.

He only hopes that through it and "Killing Commendatore" he can awaken the dormant history, allowing more citizens to recognize the true history, to face it, to confront it, and to reflect on it.

Unexpectedly, the novel was interrupted by Arima Yoshiyoshi's "The Harp of Burma". With the contrast of its peers, the novel's popularity continued to rise, and each part of the trilogy became more popular than the previous one.

Now, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has not only broken many historical records, but the final chapter has also brought a perfect end to his literary journey in 1996.

12月25日首刷日当天，《奇鸟行状录》创下了28.8万册的销量新记录，把之前《失乐园》刚创下的27.3万册记录硬生生又提高了1.5万册！

Relying on such a huge social influence, Machimura Nobutaka, who is now the Director-General of the Cultural Affairs Agency of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, insisted on including the chapter "Damaged Man, Ripe Fruit" from "The Bird Catcher" into the "High School Chinese A" textbook!

This move caused great controversy in society. Many high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Education and right-wing elements frantically attacked Machimura Nobutaka for this crazy behavior, saying that he was "an unrepentant lackey of Kitagawa Hide."

The reason why Machimura Nobutaka's approach caused such a big controversy is that the chapter "Damaged People, Ripe Fruits" is full of real details of the Battle of Nomonhan, which contains many inhumane behaviors of the Japanese army. The image of the army is very different from the image promoted by the Ministry of Defense today, which has already touched the bottom line of these vested interests.

Even so, Machimura Nobutaka remained unmoved. He would rather bear the infamy of being "Kitagawa Hide's running dog" and swear to the death that the Ministry of Education at all levels will carry out this matter to the end and never compromise!

He is not only the head of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, but also a full-fledged member of the Diet and a direct confidant of Ryutaro Hashimoto. Therefore, he is really determined to do this, and no one can stop him unless the Prime Minister's cabinet opposes it.

The Prime Minister's Cabinet had just issued a notice praising Kitagawa Hide, and this time because "The Dancing Girl of Izu" became a hit, they wrote another notice overnight praising Kitagawa Hide for stimulating economic development in poor areas and exposing the truth about the bottom of society.

If we follow the right-wing elements in criticizing Kitagawa Hide now, wouldn't we be slapping ourselves in the face?

Therefore, even though the inclusion of the textbooks was extremely harmful to the Liberal Democratic Party, Hashimoto Ryutaro still endured the pressure and remained silent, refusing to come out and discredit Mr. Kitagawa.

After half a week of hustle and bustle, The Bird Catcher became more and more popular, and The Dancing Girl of Izu maintained a fairly high level of exposure. More than ten days after the release of Literature and Art on the 18th, it was still selling well in major bookstores, and its popularity remained unabated.

Seeing that the December 1996 issue of "Bungei" was about to reach the ultimate record of 12 million copies, Shinchosha, which had been eyeing it covetously and wanted to suppress Kawaide Shobo with the help of Naoki Hyakuta, was completely silenced.

A group of entertainment reporters were hanging around the headquarters of the two major publishing houses every day. They thought that the sales war between Kitagawa Hide and Momota Naoki would last for several months like the previous one, allowing them to have good performance for the New Year. Unexpectedly, before Kitagawa teacher could make any effort, Momota teacher fell!
This is just great.

The performance was going to be bad and the year was going to be difficult. These people suddenly became anxious and focused their attention on the Tanizaki Award Ceremony to be held at the Tokyo Hotel on December 12.

According to past practice, the Tanizaki Prize will announce the nomination list fifteen days in advance, and then announce the winners and winning works the day before the award ceremony.

The Tanizaki Prize is recognized as a major award in the pure literature community, and it has always been proud to believe that it does not need to deliberately leave suspense at the end to attract traffic like other awards do.

It is the biggest traffic source, so it always announces the answers in advance without any tricks. But this time, not only did the Tanizaki Award not announce the winners and winning works, it did not even release the list of nominees.

Could it be that the Takeda family, which operates the Tanizaki Award, also wants to use "hunger marketing" to attract readers' attention?
But if that's the case, why not just hide the winners? Why hide the list of nominees?

Exposing the nomination list and hiding the winners, this is the best way to arouse readers' expectations, right?

Many entertainment reporters with a keen sense of smell immediately realized that something might have gone wrong with the Tanizaki Award, and they all waited at the entrance of the Tokyo Grand Hotel early on December 12th, wanting to find out what was going on.

Tsuneyasu Takeda, who arrived at the Tokyo Grand Hotel with his father in a Mercedes-Benz, was startled as soon as he got out of the car by the reporters who were blocking the hotel entrance.

He remembered that when the Tanizaki Prize was awarded in the first half of the year, the number of entertainment journalists who came was less than one-third of the number now. How did this abnormal popularity of the award come about?

If it were in the past, Takeda Tsuneyasu would definitely be grinning from ear to ear. After all, a lot of the Takeda family's income comes from the Tanizaki Award, a super IP in the literary world. The more popular the award is, the more they earn.

But now, he just hopes that the entire literary and art world will disappear from Japan for a day today and stop paying attention to this Tanizaki Prize!
In the past few days, Takeda has traveled all over the Japanese literary world, hoping to find some influential celebrities to persuade Kawaide Shizuko and Kitagawa Hide to attend the award ceremony.

But these two guys are really tough guys. If they say they won’t come, they won’t come. No matter who goes to their house to talk them into coming, it’s useless!

In order to avoid the various writers who came for the Tanizaki Prize, Kitagawa Hide suddenly took Yumeko back to her hometown in Osaka yesterday.

Nowadays, except for Rena Saito and others, no one can contact this "Tianxia No. 1996" who was popular throughout .

This is also the reason why the Tanizaki Award has been reluctant to disclose the list of nominees, winners and winning works.

It would be totally unjustifiable if this award was not given to Kitagawa Hide, but he didn't even come, and his publishing house directly rejected the nomination invitation, so how can you announce it?

In Japan, copyright control is very strict.

Without Kitagawa Hide's authorization, they cannot use his name, works and portrait at will.

If they use the copyrights of the well-known "Tianxia Yipin" like Kitagawa Hide without permission, the infringement fees they have to pay will be astronomical!

"President Takeda, why didn't you announce the nominees and winners of the Tanizaki Prize in advance like in the past? Will the winning work this time be The Dancing Girl of Izu? Can you reveal it in advance?"

Reveal your mom in advance!

Takeda Hengtai was so angry that his teeth were itching.

The award ceremony is about to begin!
Do you have to ask me this kind of question at this time?!
Seeing that he didn't respond, the reporter who asked the question still didn't give up and handed the microphone with the NHK logo printed on it forward again.

Takeda Tsunekazu, who was standing by, also had a bad look on his face. He was also pestered by countless reporters and asked many questions about Kitagawa Hidekazu's "The Dancing Girl of Izu".

no way.

Kitagawa Hide's collection of short stories was so popular that even many gossip reporters who had nothing to do with the literary world came to join in the fun.

The more silent the two were, the more curious the reporters became. In the end, they could only briefly answer questions from a few TV stations that they could not offend, and then quickly slipped into the Tokyo Hotel under the escort of bodyguards.

At this time, Kitagawa Hide, who was sitting in front of the TV with Yumeko's family watching this scene, wanted to laugh but didn't dare to. He could only sit straighter and pretend to be more like the so-called "great writer".

Originally, he wanted to take Yumeko to the warm south to spend the winter and hide from the large group of lobbyists who came to his house, but Yumeko suddenly had an idea and wanted to take Kitagawa Hide home to celebrate the New Year this year.

Considering that he had no relatives or friends in Tokyo, and that the New Year would be lonely once Yumeko returned to her hometown, and that it was indeed time for her to meet her parents, Kitagawa Hide agreed.

Unexpectedly, he encountered such an embarrassing thing on the first night of visiting his parents-in-law's house, which made Kitagawa Xiu feel like a social death.

My father-in-law is named Agatsuma Eikichi. He runs a private clinic in Osaka. He is fond of Chinese poetry and literati paintings. He is a typical Japanese uncle and a good man.

My mother-in-law is named Agatsuma Gen. She is the eldest daughter of the Kuroda family. Because of her poor health, she has always been a housewife at home and rarely leaves the house.

After dinner today, my wife Rongji wanted to take the opportunity of a family gathering to carefully consider this son-in-law who has become famous all over Japan -

After two days of contact, he was actually very satisfied with his rich son-in-law, Kitagawa Hide.

This kid is good-looking and rich. He is also a high school classmate of Mengzi. He has a good personality and good temper, and he doesn't have the airs of a great writer at all.

But as a person who has been through this, he knows very well that when the other half is too outstanding, the two of them are not a good match and it is easy to have many disagreements and disputes.

He couldn't guarantee that Kitagawa Hide would accommodate his daughter like his wife accommodated him, so he decided to observe Kitagawa Hide carefully.

I never expected that the TV program I just turned on as background music would turn out to be the Tanizaki Prize ceremony!

Now all four of them were very embarrassed.

At this moment, on the TV screen, as the Takeda father and son fled into the hotel in a panic, the camera following them also came to the award ceremony venue.

Countless celebrities gathered together. Under the giant chandelier made up of nearly ten thousand artificial crystals, those who came to watch the ceremony walked across the red carpet and sat down in their respective seats according to the instructions. Before the ceremony began, they chatted freely with each other.

According to previous procedures, multiple cameras in large hotels would scan each table of guests one by one, and take a few long shots to advertise those celebrities who have invested money.

But this time the cameraman seemed dead, and he just filmed one table of people. The multiple cameras became just for show. Even the ordinary audience who didn't know much about these intricacies were puzzled: "Why just film them? Is the cameraman an amateur?"

The spectators at the grand hotel could understand the situation very well.

The table in the center of the venue is reserved for the winners and the staff of their publishing houses.

At this time, the table was empty, not even one person was there.

If the cameraman wants to capture a panoramic view of the venue, no matter how he adjusts the camera position, he will be 100% sure to capture the people at that table.

Originally this was an invisible benefit for the winners, but now it has become an extremely embarrassing scene.

Therefore, the cameraman had to pretend that he was not there. He would rather be scolded for being unprofessional than to photograph an empty table and lose his job!

(End of this chapter)