I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 265: The new version of "Literature and Art" is on sale! The four masters and apprentices are on top of the charts!

The next day.

After receiving the good news from Kitagawa Hide, the highly motivated Shizuko Kawaide and Rena Saito immediately contacted Gerard.

Because Gerard originally wanted to help Kitagawa Hide, the negotiations between the two parties went very smoothly, and a large-scale cooperative project to translate and publish "The Dancing Girl of Izu" in France was finalized that morning.

This is another work by Mr. Kitagawa published overseas after Paradise Lost.

Everyone believes that with the high quality of "The Dancing Girl of Izu", it will definitely impress French readers.

Coupled with the recent uproar over the Nobel Prize in Literature scandal, the employees of Kawaide Shobo are gearing up to make Mr. Kitagawa proud through this cooperative project!
In order to bring "The Dancing Girl of Izu" to France as authentically as possible, Shizuko Kawaide waved her hand and asked Rena Saito to allocate personnel to form a small working group in France, and fly over to assist the publishing house there in publishing the novel.

With a lot of manpower and financial resources, the French version of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is expected to be published before the end of the month. As for other novels written by Hide Kitagawa, Gerard is also helping to actively contact other publishing houses.

Unfortunately, Japanese literature has a very bad reputation overseas. Even with the sales of "Paradise Lost" as a guarantee, those large publishing houses still chose to sit on the sidelines and wait and see the sales of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" before making a decision.

Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko are also busy. The private website "Kitagawa's Little Bookstore" now has over 500 million registered members, and the number of posts per day is almost catching up with some small sections of Yahoo Japan. In recent days, the "moderator" Yumeko has used the website traffic to promote the new edition of "Wenyi" in January 1997, and announced in advance the good news that "The Dancing Girl of Izu" will be published in France.

A large number of Kitagawa fans came to hear the news and asked about the purchasing channels of the French version - Kitagawa Hide's fans are completely different from ordinary book fans. They are really willing to buy every book published by Teacher Kitagawa and collect them home. Many people are still collecting every issue of "Wenyi" that serializes Kitagawa Hide's novels!

The general manager of Kitagawa Network Co., Ltd., Kyohei Murabayashi, also saw the opportunity and called on employees to work overtime to cooperate with Kawaide Shizuko's team to expose the various scandals of the Japanese Literature Society, while maintaining the heat of the Nobel Prize in Literature scandal.
While placing advertisements online and sending out emails, he tried to let more people know that "The Dancing Girl of Izu" would be published in France.

These programmers used to be responsible for doing this kind of unethical things in large companies in the consortium. If it were someone else, they would definitely rather die than go back to their old job.

But this time, the purpose is to help Teacher Beichuan, and the nature of the matter suddenly becomes different!

Teacher Beichuan is their mentor, who is grateful to them and offers them a salary that is more than twice their previous salary.

Moreover, the quality of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" is obvious to all, which makes them confident when running junk advertisements, and they feel that it is not a bad thing.

Amid this overwhelming publicity campaign, the much-anticipated January 1997 new edition of "Wenyi" was also released in bookstores across Japan.

在此之前，1月15日已经上架了最新一期的《群像》和《新潮》，之后的1月20日和1月25日还将上架《文学界》和《群星》。

But what readers are most looking forward to is naturally the new edition of "Wenyi" which will be released on January 1.

“The new version, new content and more favorable price will bring you the ultimate pure literature feast!”

This banner was hung at the entrances of various bookstores early on. Even readers who went to buy "Group Portrait" and "New Trend" on the 15th stopped to take a look at it curiously.

Having said that, although the new version was also revised, the January 1997 issue of "Gunzo" still failed to get out of the quagmire.

The Oricon chart released yesterday showed that the January 97 issue of Gunzo sold 1 copies on its first day of publication, setting a new "historical record" and becoming the first big joke in the pure literature publishing industry at the beginning of the year.

It is worth mentioning that in order to increase sales, Kodansha also re-signed Oshima Hikaru, who had competed with Kitagawa in the literary arena in the past. His new book "The Girl from Okinawa" is also "being serialized" in this issue of "Gunzo".

Oshima Hikaru, "The Girl from Okinawa". All the elements are in place. It seems that Kodansha is determined to shamelessly ride on the popularity of Kitagawa Hide.

Unfortunately, readers have sharp eyes. Shit is still shit. After the novelty wears off, Oshima Hikaru’s books quickly lose their popularity.

As for the January issue of "Shincho", the second half of "Forever No. 1" was published in its entirety, and thanks to the popularity of the Nobel Prize in Literature's scandal, it sold quite well.

On yesterday's Oricon chart, New Wave topped all major literary magazine sales charts with astonishing sales of 14.7 copies on the first day of printing and a total of 30.8 copies in three days.

If it weren't for the release of "Wenyi" today, the data of "Xinchao" would be considered a good start.

But everyone knows that the last issue of "Wenyi" at the end of last year, which sold 36.5 copies on the first day of printing, is the real big BOSS. It is very likely that today's sales will be higher than the previous issue.

People in the industry are all concerned about what kind of terrifying increase the second half of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" will bring to "Wenyi", and are curious whether it will break the record again and create a new height in the history of pure literature magazines.

Most readers, like Kaoruko and Chihaya Ruri who came to Maruzen Marunouchi Shoten hand in hand at this moment, are only concerned about the content of the second half of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" and do not care about the open and secret struggles between publishing houses.

After the peak sales periods in the morning and at noon, Maruzen Marunouchi Bookstore is no longer so crowded.

"There are really fewer people at this time!" Chihaya Ruri held Kaoru's arm, blinked her beautiful big eyes, and peeked into the bookstore.

Her sexy outfit and Kaoru's innocent looks immediately attracted the attention of many customers.

But when everyone found out that they were both JKs, they immediately retracted their gazes and looked back at the magazines in their hands.

Japanese high school girls are just as magical as their high school boys. The former are "one of the three creatures that Japan must not mess with," and the latter are "the creature that has traveled through Japan the most times."

Normal Japanese people don't want to have anything to do with these two creatures, for fear of bringing misfortune.

If their predecessors, Agatsuma Yumeko and Jabami Rei, were here, they would definitely be very envious of the treatment they are receiving.

Beautiful women like to be noticed, but they are also afraid of being harassed!

The two walked through the crowd and soon arrived at a booth filled with the latest issue of "Wenyi".

"Shopkeeper-san, please give me two copies of the latest issue of 'Wenyi'~" Chihaya Ruri was attracted by the beautiful cover of the new edition of 'Wenyi' at first sight.

After the revision, the cover image of "Wenyi" also changed from a fashionable style to a simple and beautiful sketch style.

The cover of this issue is a sketch of a young geisha.

Although the portrait only has a few simple strokes, the shy and timid expression of the young geisha is portrayed very vividly.

And for some reason, Chihaya Ruri always felt that the geisha girl on the cover picture looked a bit like Kaoru-chan next to her.

"Maybe I've seen too much of Kaoru these days." Chihaya Ruri stuck out her tongue and put this strange thought behind her.

"Two books are 1500 yen in total, thank you~" The young female clerk handed two brand new, unopened copies of "Literature" to the two people.

Behind her, there were several boxes full of "Wenyi" that had not been opened. Further back, a dozen empty boxes indicated that the sales of the new edition of "Wenyi" were very good.

"Arigato~" Kaoru bowed politely, took the "Literature" and walked out of the bookstore with Chihaya Ruri.

"Kaoruko-chan, are you going to my house?" Chihaya Ruri pulled her, her eyes full of expectation, but she was interrupted by several JKs behind her before she started talking.

"Hey, look, look, doesn't the girl in front look like the cover of "Wenyi" magazine?

I heard that the cover picture of this issue of "Wenyi" was drawn based on a real model." "Wait, I'll sneak over to take a look~"

"Oh, Hanako-chan, you're thinking too much. A big publishing house like Wen Yi Magazine would definitely choose someone from the print model circle. How is that possible? Eh! They really do look a bit alike!"

The whispering behind her made Xunzi, who was holding "Wenyi", feel a little nervous.

Not long ago, teacher Reina Saito said that she hoped she would appear as the model for the cover photo. After all, she is the prototype of the Izu Dancing Girl, and her portrait should better reflect the charm of the novel.

Thinking of the recent injustice that Mr. Kitagawa had suffered and the difficulties faced by Kawaide Shobo, Kaoru also wanted to help them, so she agreed.

Anyway, it's just a portrait model, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

But now it seems that the latest edition of "Wenyi" is selling quite well!

After several JKs mentioned this, more and more people on the street noticed Kaoru, who looked very similar to the one on the cover.

Readers who have read "The Dancing Girl of Izu" are all obsessed with the delicate and shy dancing geisha. This cover photo just happens to match their fantasy of the heroine, and a campaign "Searching for the Dancing Girl of Izu" has even been launched on the Internet.

When the readers suddenly saw a real person who looked like the cover photo, they were immediately excited. They didn't care about Kaoru's JK identity and gathered around her, wanting to talk to her.

As more and more people came, there were even men and women who claimed to be scouts.

Fortunately, mobile phones with camera functions were not yet popular in 1997, otherwise Kaoru would have become an overnight sensation and become the first generation of top Internet celebrity in Japan.

The two who originally wanted to read magazines while riding the subway, after seeing this horrific scene, decisively chose to get into Chihaya's luxury car, leaving only a tail of exhaust gas for the fanatical fans who were reluctant to leave.

That very night, a post titled "The dancing geishas in the novel actually appeared in reality - I had a miraculous encounter with a JK who looked like the cover photo of "Wenyi" magazine in Tokyo" went viral on the Internet.

The inexplicable popularity brought about by Xunzi has added fuel to the hot sales of the new version of "Wenyi".

The second half of "The Dancing Girl of Izu" did not disappoint the readers. Unlike "Forever No. 24" which started off strong but ended badly, the six novels in the second half continued to maintain super high quality. In particular, the new Kitagawa aesthetics that industry insiders talked about so much was more obvious in these six short stories and seemed to have become a system.

Nowadays, many university departments of literature have established "Hide Kitagawa Novel Research Group", and the group leaders are all university professors or associate professors, who specifically lead a group of elite students to study Hide Kitagawa's novels.

Before the "rogue school" proposed by Professor Osamu Takeuchi was fully studied, the "new Kitagawa aesthetics" became popular again.

The first-day data for the January 1997 issue of "Wenyi" has not yet come out, but its popularity has already defeated "Xinchao" which was released on the 1th.

Momota Naoki, who had returned from the United States and threatened to introduce the latest American short story writing techniques to China, was silent for a moment. He was not a fool, and he also read "The Dancing Girl of Izu" and finally came to the conclusion that -

Are you crazy? You want me to compete with such a monster?

At this time, Naoki Momota finally understood the pain that Arima Yoshiyoshi had felt.

It’s like your teacher has just taught you 1+1=2, and then turned around and pointed at Gauss, Riemann, Hilbert and others, telling you that these guys are your next opponents.

Who can bear this!

Also causing a stir in the Japanese literary world is a new book by Kitagawa Hidezo's disciples.

However, this time they also added their teacher Kitagawa Hideya to the author column of the novel, making it a co-author.

This is also a major feature of the Japanese entertainment industry.

Because of its unique Japanese master-apprentice inheritance system, you can see several names listed side by side in the author column of many works.

There are also a few works where the master only has a nominal part and the apprentice creates the work, such as the second part of a certain Naruto.

Anyway, readers are too lazy to care about these things, they just read the novels. If it’s good, I’ll applaud, and if it’s not, I’ll criticize it. Who cares about you!

At 1pm on January 18, in an apartment in Tokyo.

As soon as he finished writing a commentary in support of Mr. Kitagawa and angrily criticizing Ichiro Tanizaki and others for the shady Nobel Prize nominations, Tetsutaro Mori immediately sent the manuscript to the Nikkan Sports News via email.

"I hope I can catch the morning edition of the Daily Sports News tomorrow!"

Tetsutarou Mori had previously posted insulting posts on the Yahoo Japan forum, but unfortunately he was too slow to gain popularity, and even with the title of No. 1 Kitagawa, he didn't cause much of a stir.

Regretting not having the chance to take the first bite of the crab, he immediately wrote a new review carefully, and this time submitted it to the Nikkan Sports News, the newspaper that most liked to support Kitagawa, hoping that it would get some attention.

After doing all this, he took a sip of black coffee and happily opened the latest issue of "Literature and Art" - as his work became increasingly busy, reading became his biggest pastime in his spare time.

After receiving the book "Literature" from Hede's study in the morning, he had been waiting until now just to have a good time before going to bed!
However, before reading the book, he habitually clicked on the webpage first to see the reactions of the silly netizens.

After entering 1997, Japan's real economy recovered somewhat, and Internet technology also developed rapidly. At this time, everyone gradually realized the power of the Internet.

After the previous shocks, the literary criticism circle controlled by the print media has been in a slump. Many literary critics have turned to the Internet and established a large-scale literary exchange forum called "Literary Appreciation for You and Me".

Now Tetsutarou Mori is collecting materials and data through this "Literature Appreciation for You and Me" to infer and analyze the true situation of some new books.

You can't tell whether a book is truly good or not by looking at its sales and print media reviews.

The best-selling list, no, the sales volume list can be manipulated, and the comments can be dominated by internet trolls, and even other high-value lists and data can be falsified.

But the reactions of the silly netizens cannot be faked in this day and age.

He clicked on the post list and was immediately shocked.

Topping the list is naturally Kitagawa-sensei's "The Dancing Girl of Izu", which is more popular than the next nine combined, with more than 1.5 hot posts!

In the past, the number of hot posts at the top of the list basically fluctuated around 1000.

What shocked him even more was that the second place was "White Night Walk" co-created by Keigo Higashino and Mr. Kitagawa, with 5342 hot posts.

Ranked third is "White River Night Boat" co-created by Mayumi Aso and Mr. Kitagawa, with 4877 hot posts.

Following closely behind is "Under the Blooming Cherry Blossom Trees" co-created by Dango Shiro and Kitagawa Sensei, with 4012 hot posts.

"Aren't these three the disciples of Mr. Beichuan? Have they published a new book as well?"

(End of this chapter)