I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 260: "The Dancing Girl of Izu" was rejected for the Nobel Prize in Literature?!

The next day, when Kitagawa Hide woke up, he found himself sleeping in the room, but his memory was interrupted at the computer desk.

He remembered that at the beginning of last night he was typing on the computer with three disciples, but his memory became increasingly vague.

After thinking for a long time, he really couldn't remember what happened last night, so he simply stopped trying to recall it and got up and walked out of the house.

As soon as he left the room, Kitagawa Hide smelled a strong aroma of food. He came to the dining room and saw Mengzi wearing an apron and a bun, making breakfast.

There were still three used bowls and chopsticks on the dining table. It seemed that Mayumi Aso and the other two had finished breakfast and left.

Hearing the noise outside, Mengzi asked loudly while cooking: "Xiujun, are you up? Wait a moment, breakfast will be ready soon~"

"Okay." Kitagawa Hide leaned against the kitchen door and peeked at Yumeko's busy back. He felt that the scene was very family-friendly and couldn't help but chuckle.

In a blink of an eye, it has been almost two years since he traveled to Japan. When he first became "Kitagawa Hide", he was hungry and cold, and he racked his brains every day thinking about how to survive.

Now, I finally have my own big house and car, a lovely wife at home, a group of like-minded friends outside, and my literary career is also booming.

He cherishes such little days and is more determined to go further and higher on this literary path!

Just when Kitagawa Hide was lost in thought, Mengzi came out with a steaming hot breakfast.

Mengzi knew that Kitagawa Hide was not used to the most popular omelette rice and sashimi dishes in Japan, so she made meat-filled fried dumplings and miso soup according to his preferences.

The sight of the golden fried dumplings made Kitagawa Hide's appetite growl. In his previous life, his favorite breakfast was pot stickers and fried noodles, but unfortunately these two meals could not be found in Japan at all. Japanese fried noodles usually use udon noodles, and he could not accept the greasy texture.

"Have Mayumi and the others left?" Kitagawa Hide picked up a fried dumpling, blew on it, and immediately put it into his mouth. The overflowing soup almost burned his tongue. "Wow, it's hot, hot, hot!"

"Yes, it was dawn. They had a simple breakfast and left. They said they wanted to take the newly written manuscript to Sister Lingna for review. They really work hard."

Mengzi didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she took out her handkerchief and wiped the corners of Beichuan Xiu's mouth. Then she stood up to serve the rice.
"The dumplings are very hot right out of the pan. Eat slowly. I'll serve you some rice."

"Hmm." Kitagawa Hide didn't expect that these three guys were more anxious than him. Judging from the "workaholic" attribute, the four masters and apprentices are of the same lineage. "Let them do whatever they want. It's better to show it to Saito as soon as possible. After all, it will definitely need to be revised more than a dozen times before publication."

Mengzi smiled and handed the rice to Kitagawa Hide. She discovered during her internship at Kawade Shobo that most authors' manuscripts could not be approved in one go. There were often more than a dozen scraps between the draft and the final product.

Therefore, editors are extremely troubled by those authors who like to delay submitting their manuscripts until the deadline. If the manuscript is not good, both of them will have to stay up late and work overtime together to finish the manuscript!
Writers like Kitagawa Hide, whose manuscripts are always accepted and who don't even need editors to bother them to submit them, are simply the greatest blessing for publishing houses and editorial departments. If they are put on the market, they will be snapped up by everyone.

Kitagawa Hide picked up the rice bowl and took a few bites. He actually couldn't understand why the Japanese ate dumplings as a side dish and then ate them with white rice.

In his impression, dumplings with soup are soup food, dry dumplings are snacks eaten with vinegar and mashed garlic, and fried dumplings are breakfast. How can they be eaten as a dish!

However, after staying in Japan for a while, I was influenced by the environment and started to think that fried dumplings are also good with rice!

Humans are indeed animals that are easily affected by the surrounding environment!

No wonder after "The Dancing Girl of Izu" broke the circle, with various marketing efforts by the local government and travel agencies, a large number of tourists flocked to Izu, and many people even went to check in at Mount Amagi and the hot spring hotel mentioned in the novel.

Kitagawa Hide didn't know whether they had really read the original novel, but these people really followed the trend and created a lot of economic income for Izu City!

A few years ago, the governor of Izu City made a special phone call, hoping that Kitagawa Hidetoshi would serve as Izu's tourism and cultural ambassador - he didn't have to do any work, just write some travel notes during the holidays, and help promote Izu's beautiful scenery and food on the Internet.

Kitagawa Hide originally had no intention of taking on such a side job, but Izu offered a contract fee of 1000 million yen a year and promised to promote "The Dancing Girl of Izu" as a literary book promoted by Izu City.

Considering that this month is the recommendation period for the nominees of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kitagawa Hide agreed to it just to be on the safe side, so that "The Dancing Girl of Izu" can become more popular in the local area.

While having breakfast, the two of them briefly talked about each other's work situation, and then returned to their computer desks to start a busy day.

The second half of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" also has six novels, namely "Bonfire", "Celebrities Attending the Funeral", "Quiet Rain", "Hot Spring Inn", "Crystal Fantasy" and "Lyrical Song".

These short stories were originally novels included in the collection "The Dancing Girl of Izu", but their overall fame is not as good as Kawabata Yasunari's several famous works, and few people know them outside of Japan.

However, although they are not well-known, they are all works after Kawabata Yasunari's writing skills reached their peak. They can be used as masterpieces alone, and there is no need to worry about the quality of the novels.

For example, "Bonfire", which tells the story of the ambiguous love between a man and a woman, uses very beautiful brushstrokes to fully depict the heroine "Michiko's" longing for love, as well as the various delicate emotional changes throughout the entire love process, which makes people empathize and sigh.

In particular, Kawabata Yasunari's unique Japanese aesthetic writing style is fully displayed in the following six short stories, and readers can clearly see the growth curve of his writing from them.

With the short story collection "The Dancing Girl of Izu" as a foundation, readers would not feel it was too abrupt when Kitagawa Hidefumi copied "Snow Country" in the future.

Without the distraction of worldly affairs and with nothing important happening recently, Kitagawa Hide was wholeheartedly immersed in literary creation and learning. He soon sent the complete second half to Saito Rena on January 1 at an efficient speed of one article a day.

Because of the revision of "Wenyi", Rena Saito had been worried about whose novel to use to fill the expanded space. Now that Aso Mayumi and the other three have published books together, the extra forty pages have been filled up at once, and the entire "Wenyi" editorial department has breathed a sigh of relief.

It was also on January 1 that Rena Saito finally sent the repaired Nobel Prize in Literature nominee's self-recommendation letter to the headquarters of the Japan Literary Society.

In fact, even if he had not sent this letter of self-recommendation, Kitagawa Hide's "The Dancing Girl of Izu" should have been sent to Sweden and Norway. In the Japanese literary world in 1996, it would be impossible to find a book more worthy of nomination than "The Dancing Girl of Izu".

But just in case, she still wrote a cover letter carefully and asked Shizuko Kawaide to arrange connections in the literary world.

Anyway, no matter who receives the confidential documents from the Nobel Prize Committee and becomes a nominee, the final list of recommenders must be sent out by the Japanese Literature Society. Although those old stubborn people don't like Kitagawa Hide, they won't lie like Ichiko Sadaji and the others, right?
The nominee for 1995 was Arima Yoshiyoshi, who generally met the qualifications for the Nobel Prize. It is understandable that they did not choose Kitagawa Hide and insisted on letting a "top-notch person" win.

But 1996 was undoubtedly "Hidetoshi Kitagawa".

No matter from which angle, such as sales volume, fame, status, social influence, etc., Kitagawa Xiu is the one that stands out and there is no reason not to be recommended.

That night, Saito Rena called and told Kitagawa Hide about the matter. Both of them felt that it was not a big problem, so they did not discuss it in detail, but shifted their focus to the next new work.

This is the tacit understanding they have had since their collaboration - never let readers get in front of them!

However, after discussing this time, neither of them had any good ideas, and the phone call lasted until 1 a.m. without any result. In the end, they could only turn the topic to the future development path of "Wenyi".

The big boss must have been encouraged by last year's outstanding performance. After defeating "Qun Xiang" and "Literary World" in succession, he is finally ready to compete with the industry leader "Xinchao".

Now Kitagawa Hide's "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is competing with Momota Naoki's "Eternal 24". If nothing unexpected happens, the sales of "Wenyi" should be able to surpass "Shincho" in the next few months.

Shizuko Kawaide obviously wanted to press on with her victory and take advantage of the opportunity to expand the magazine's page size to grab some market share from Shinchosha in one fell swoop.

This is actually a good thing. Having a big boss who is brave and daring is a blessing for the employees below.

But the time had come to 1997. Although Kitagawa Hide had little knowledge of finance and business, he knew clearly that there would be a terrorist storm sweeping across many countries in Asia this year.

He was not quite sure about the specific circumstances, but the incident started when financial tycoon Soros' team attacked the Thai baht, bringing down Thailand's monetary system and economy. Then the entire financial storm swept across neighboring Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.

Kitagawa Hide is not quite sure how severe this financial crisis is.

But he knew that after the 97 financial crisis, Japan, which had a chance to emerge from the shadow of the bubble burst, completely withered. South Korea was even worse off, being directly hit to pieces. The chaebols collapsed, American capital intervened, and it was forced to borrow from international financial organizations.

He couldn't tell these things to Saito Rena and the others now. He could only mention them casually when they talked about the future development of "Wenyi", and then told her not to invest her savings in the near future.

Rena Saito didn't know much about finance, but she was quite superstitious about Kitagawa Hide's intuitive judgment. It was Kitagawa Hide's prediction that saved Jabami Rei's life in the Tokyo subway gas incident two years ago. Thanks to Jabami Rei's various exaggerations, this matter has now become a miraculous story in their circle.

After hanging up the phone, Kitagawa Hide was worried that Kawaide Shizuko would really insist on her own way. If she invested a large amount of capital in expanding territory and conquering cities, the capital chain would be broken and she would be unable to make ends meet, then she would be doomed.

After all, he was one of the shareholders of Kawaide Shobo, and the boss had been very kind to him. After thinking it over, Kitagawa Hide decided to find a time to invite the boss to dinner to talk about this.

The next morning, Kitagawa Hide took the opportunity to go to Kawaide Shobo to sign the publishing agreement for "The Dancing Girl of Izu" and solemnly invited Kawaide Shizuko to have lunch together.

This made Shizuko Kawade very happy.

The icy beauty hummed a song while dressing up in the office, putting on eye shadow, eyebrows, stockings, high heels, and making reservations at a high-end Japanese restaurant, making the dinner with her idol a full of ritual!

Just as the two were about to get in the car and leave the company, Saito Rena suddenly came running like sparks and lightning and stopped the started car!
The driver, Kinoshita, slammed on the brakes, then rolled down the window and poked his head out in confusion: "Editor-in-Chief Saito, is there something urgent?"

"Yes! Yes! Are Sister Kitagawa and Sister Shizuko in the car?" Saito Rena felt that she had never been so anxious in her life.

Everything was going on as usual today. She was arranging the typesetting work for the January 1997 issue of "Wenyi". The first issue of the year is like the first print run of magazines and novels. As long as it is successful, this year will be half successful and must be taken seriously.

But while she was working on it, she got a call from the Japanese Literature Society that completely stunned her.

After repeatedly confirming the authenticity of the news, Saito Rena, as if struck by lightning, ran quickly to find Kawaide Shizuko. When she learned that she was going out to dinner with Kitagawa Hide, she ran over without stopping to stop a car!
Fortunately, I stopped it at the last moment!

"Saito?" Kitagawa Hideya poked his head out of the car window.

"Bei, Beichuan. No, it's bad! Something big has happened!"

Saito Reina bent over, holding onto the car door, and after taking several deep breaths, she said breathlessly,
"The Japanese Literature Society rejected our letter of recommendation!"

"Japanese Literature Society? Letter of recommendation?" Kitagawa Hide didn't react for a moment.

He only remembered that the Japanese Literary Society, like a certain official literary organization next door, gathered a large number of people who were just sitting there doing nothing and drawing salaries. In Japan's literary world, the right to speak was held by university professors, literary celebrities and publishing consortiums. Those people had no real power, so he never paid much attention to them.

When Shizuko Kawaide, who was sitting inside, heard this, her scalp suddenly went numb. Without caring too much, she pressed her plump body against Kitagawa Hide and stuck her head out of the car window.

"The old fools in the Literature Society rejected our recommendation letter??? Reina, are you sure the news is true???"

Shizuko Kawaide's eyes were wide open, and she even forgot to open the door. Her beautiful head overlapped with Kitagawa Hide's and was squeezed in the window. It looked very strange from the outside.

"If they don't recommend Mr. Kitagawa's The Dancing Girl of Izu, what other book can they recommend?"

At this time, Kitagawa Hideya came to his senses. It turned out that they were talking about the recommendation list of Nobel Prize nominees.

"I don't know. The recommendation list is confidential. We only know that "The Dancing Girl of Izu" was rejected." Saito Rena's face looked extremely ugly.

She could never have imagined that those old stubborn people could actually do such an insane thing!

(End of this chapter)